The market square hums with its usual chaos—hawkers shouting prices, buyers haggling, the air thick with the smell of ripe plantains and diesel fumes. In this familiar Nigerian chaos, I've learned to spot them: the mumus and the mugus.
A mumu walks with a certain lightness, unaware of the eyes tracking his movements. He pays 5,000 naira for what costs 2,000, nods gratefully when shortchanged, and leaves satisfied with scraps. His ignorance isn't just lack—it's an active emptiness, a blank space where questions should live. He doesn't know to ask why his phone data finishes too fast or why his "Tokunbo" generator sputters after two weeks. The world eats him slowly, and he thanks it for the meal.
Then there's the mugu. Oh, you'll know him by the way he holds his phone mid-air, lecturing the POS agent about blockchain while his transfer fails for the third time. He quotes 2016 prices in 2024, argues with mechanics about carburetors in an age of fuel injection, and insists the "old way" works fine. His wallet suffers, but his pride thrives. The tragedy isn't his ignorance—it's his armor against knowledge, the way he wears "being wrong" like a crown.
I've sold to both.
For the mumu, you unfold the world gently. "See, Aunty, this tomato lasts longer if you store it like this..." The light in her eyes when she realizes she could've saved half her market money all these years—that's the sweet spot. Education is the product.
But the mugu? You must break his world first. "Uncle, you say Bitcoin is scam, but your pension fund invests in it. Let me show you the annual report..." Watch his face twist as facts dismantle his certainty brick by brick. Only then can new knowledge enter. It's exhausting, necessary work.
At Balogun market, in boardrooms, even in family meetings, these two kinds are always there. The mumu bleeds from wounds he can't see. The mugu bleeds from self-inflicted ones he proudly displays.
I keep a mental ledger: This supplier needs data. That client needs his ego surgically removed before he'll listen.
Never say the words aloud—Nigeria doesn't forgive such bluntness, dont go calling people these names please—but we all know the truth.
The wise adapt. The foolish persist. And life, like a good market woman, charges each according to their capacity to understand the price.
Have you met any other in your locality? What are they called?
