Today’s guest article is by Ademuyiwa Oluwaseun, Mental health therapist and founder of BrainFirstNigeria, an organisation raising awareness of ADHD and providing coaching and therapy services in Nigeria. Ademuyiwa is also the author of The Excitement Cycle, a book for adults living with ADHD in Nigeria.
Life in Africa is good, but the bliss that comes from a lack of awareness around neurodivergence creates challenges. Working life is limited by exposure and experience of the subject, affecting how much room you are given to grow.
Until I was 20, I kept asking myself the same questions. Why was my memory so short? Why couldn’t I hold my attention? Why did I think so little of myself?
At secondary school these questions were easier to ignore. I went to a boarding school run on orders and fear, and that rigid structure kept my executive dysfunction and procrastination mostly in check. When I got to university, the structure disappeared. I had freedom for the first time, and it quickly became clear that I wasn’t coping in the same way as the young adults around me.
The questions stayed with me until I was diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis gave me answers, but it also opened the door to condescending opinions and backlash from people around me.
“The home of mad people”
ADHD is not a mental illness. It is a neurodevelopmental condition, meaning the brain has developed differently from the start, and it sits within the wider idea of neurodivergence alongside autism, dyslexia and others. In Nigeria, though, that distinction is rarely made.
Nigeria is not short of psychiatric hospitals. Cities such as Lagos and Port Harcourt have plenty of them, and this is usually where adults have to go to be assessed for ADHD. But psychiatric hospitals are stigmatised as “the home of mad people”, and anyone seen walking through their doors risks being labelled “insane”. Neurodivergence is considered as ‘mental illness’, and both carry a level of shame. That makes people far less willing to seek a diagnosis at all.
At the same time, differences that don’t show on the outside, like ADHD, are often dismissed as “Western things” that don’t apply to us. So the few people who do get a diagnosis can find it treated as either madness or something ‘imported’. For the average Nigerian, especially in rural areas, the first place to turn is a religious leader, not a doctor.
Where it shows most: at work
Nowhere is this clearer than in the workplace. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many neurodivergent people were the first to lose their jobs because they were assumed to be unable to work without direct supervision. They were given no support, no adjustments and no chance to prove otherwise.
Nigeria does have a disability law. The Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018 bans discrimination on the grounds of disability, including in employment. But it doesn’t mention ADHD, autism or neurodivergence generally, few employers would think of these as covered, and the Act itself has been slow to take effect across the country. In practice, a worker who struggles with time blindness, switching between tasks or staying focused isn’t seen as neurodivergent. They are seen as lazy, unserious or “not corporate material”.
So many people keep their diagnosis to themselves to protect their jobs and their reputation. There is no everyday language for reasonable adjustments, and little real protection from being quietly sidelined or let go for traits that come from how their brain works rather than from a lack of ability.
Masking becomes the price of being seen as employable. Think of a woman raising three children on her own while running a small trading business, with an unreliable electricity supply and very little money. People praise her as a great multitasker, but that praise hides her ADHD struggles instead of naming them. A society that only rewards masking is not a supportive one.
What about everyone else?
Therapy gave me understanding and support. It also made me ask: what about everyone else?
Millions of Nigerian adults, many of them workers and business owners, rely on cultural ways of coping, such as community leaders, ancestral explanations and herbal remedies, because nobody has ever told them there is another name for what they are carrying. At work, the cost is paid in lost income, stalled careers and burnout that nobody names. That is why I now work to raise awareness of ADHD in Nigeria, including in the workplace.
Self-employment shouldn’t be the only way out
Nigeria encourages entrepreneurship and innovation, partly because formal employment offers so little flexibility. Many adults with ADHD do well by using their creativity to build their own businesses and income. But that shouldn’t be the only path open to them. Businesses that want to hire and keep neurodivergent people need the language, tools and frameworks to do it well. Individuals shouldn’t be left to work around a system that was never built for them.
My diagnosis gave my passion a voice and a blueprint. I hope Nigerian employers will one day do the same for the many people still waiting for theirs.
