My mother brought me to Lagos in 2006. I had just turned 10. It was my first time in Lagos, so I was very happy. We were going to visit some family members for a while; that’s what my mother told me. We packed a lot of clothes and left for Lagos on a Friday morning. My younger brother and my dad stayed back in Benin. On my first day in Lagos, we went to Lagos Market, past through the busy markets and the crowded bus stations. I couldn’t stop looking around; at the tall buildings, the old ugly buildings — it was all so different. I developed neck pain that day, but I was insatiable; I wanted to see everything.

We used to go to the Island very often. I didn’t know it was because my mother was a maid for the woman she called our “Aunty”. I knew something was funny because we didn’t chat like we usually did with family at home. She often called my mother or me out of the blue or at odd hours to help with something and that was the end. After about two months, we returned to Benin.

I didn’t think about being an adult when I was younger. I don’t think children can understand what it means to be an adult; how do you want to explain all the things that adults go through to them? All I did as a child was go to school, do housework and play. That trip to Lagos was the first time I was in a place where I had to gauge everything carefully. It was my first adult experience. The next time I went to Lagos after I finished JSS 3, I went to start work. My parents had been talking about getting work; they felt that I had to start earning my keep.

The truth is, I’m not from a wealthy family. My father drives a bus and my mother does anything she can find as long as it brings money.

I initially thought they would ask me to learn a skill like sewing or hairdressing. But when they started talking about going to Lagos, I asked, “What’s happening here?” In response, my mother advised to be a good child. She said I had to face my work and be honest with other people. I thought it was good-natured mother-to-child advice until she told me that I was going to live with one of our big aunties as a househelp.

I didn’t have to think twice before I ran away from home two days. I ran to our pastor’s house and asked him to beg them. With time, I calmed down. They convinced me that we needed the money, so I came to Lagos a second time. The only plan I had was to do exactly what my mother did back then. I thought that if I made enough money, I could just leave after a few months.

I’m still with the same family that I moved in with. I think the day that I collected my first salary of 20,000 naira was the first day I saw myself as an adult. I didn’t spend the money; I gave it to my madam and she helped me send it home to my mother. The other thing that made me mature was loneliness. My madam used to come back from work at around 9 pm. Her children were outside the country for school, so it was just us helpers in the house. In my first year working there, I was almost raped. It was the boy they brought to man the compound gate. It was on one of those nights when my madam and her husband went to church for vigils. I was afraid to tell anybody. And if I had told my mother, she would ask me to come back. I didn’t want to. About two years ago, I got the courage to tell my madam and oga about the almost-rape incident. They had already sent the boy away before this time. In fact, he was sent away not long after he forced himself on me. They were very angry that I did not tell them when it happened. I thought, “Something wey don happen since.” But I understand sha.

The family has been so nice to me from day one. Most people don’t know I work for them, even in the estate. They have two boys and a girl. They’re all older than me. People often assume I’m their niece.

Many things have changed, and I’m not as close to my family. We always talk on the phone, and I travel home twice a year for one week. Benin has become a different place for me. It’s almost a different life. I don’t know how to explain it. Somewhere along the line, I started to make the most of what I had in Lagos.

Since I moved to Lagos, I’ve learned to make hair and fashion design. I’ve also gone to good schools. Currently, I’m getting ready for exams in UNILAG. After this, na final year. Them no dey tell person. My people are okay at home. Things are better and the money from here still helps. I don’t get a salary for housework. My madam has a shop along Ogudu Road. I manage the place. We sell drinks in wholesale, so she pays me from there.

My oga is late now. He passed last year – you know these sicknesses that old people always have. So it’s just me and my madam now. She’s very old, but she’s still stubborn, and I’m the only one that can take care of her. It doesn’t affect school that much, except during exams. She always wants to talk about something. Her children are all abroad; she used to travel there before but not anymore.

Just take every day as it comes.

That’s my big lesson from growing up. See that time I was crying about coming to Lagos? What plan did I have for myself? I just wanted to stay with my family. I’ve been lucky sha. Some girls have come to this same Lagos and the story has been something else entirely. When I tell people who are close to me that I never cooked for the house, they don’t believe. But that’s life. I’m just taking it as it comes. I’m not thinking about what will happen when my madam dies. When we get there, we’ll see what happens.

We want to know how young people become adults. The question we ask is “What’s your coming of age story?” Every Thursday, we’ll bring you the story one young Nigerian’s journey to adulthood and how it shaped them.

Sometime last year, my family began to take down photos of my father around the house. He often disappeared for long spells. Each time, when he returned, he was in tatters and broke. This time was different; it was the longest he’d gone. We knew he would return, but we decided there would be no room for him when he did.

My older sister and I wanted to create a normal life while drugs could still relieve the pain of our 56-year-old mother who suffered from diabetes. We craved normalcy, even if it felt a little too late.

When I was born 25 years ago, my parents were traders from Eastern Nigeria who were finding their feet in Lagos. My father had come from Owerri to apprentice with an older uncle and set up his cassette store after a few years. They had my sister immediately. I was their way of celebrating their first decent apartment, a room and parlour in Ebute-Metta.

Life wasn’t eventful while growing up. The exciting things that happened were my mother’s not-so-frequent bouts of illness, mostly because someone always got to stay home with he — usually my sister. But she always got well after a few days, especially when her people sent herbs from home. So we’d settle back into routine; I was assistant daddy, I’d finish from school and go to the shop. My father would tell me stories about his childhood while I helped around. My sister would go to my mother’s stall in the market and we’d meet at home at night.

It was a good way to live if you’re the kind of person who believes in the dignity of labour. Not if you’re ambitious. Definitely not if you dreamed of seeing out your final days in a big house in your village. That was the reason my father gave when we first noticed things were going south with him. And I believed him. On some days, I’d go to his shop and he’d be nowhere to be found. So I’d wait until he returned, reeking of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. He’d instruct me to not tell my mother, but she noticed when he began to return with bloodshot eyes and empty pockets. Then he began to buy big bottles of Regal gin and take long swigs as he wished, home or at work, day or night.

Looking back, we shouldn’t have just watched it happen. When my mother got tired and confronted him for the first time, he hit her across the face. I can still remember the sound and the swelling. I was in SS1 at the time and now had a key to the shop. He stormed out and didn’t return for days. When he did, he was hungry, drunk and a complete mess. My mother rushed out to carry him. She was crying. She cleaned him up, gave him food, painkillers and put him to bed. My sister and I were shocked. It was our father, but we were upset that she seemed to have so quickly forgotten about a fresh wound.

That’s how it began. First, he stopped going to the shop. Then he’d disappear for days at a time, and later weeks, only to show up at my mother’s stall at the market. Sometimes, we’d meet him at home when we got back from church. By the time my sister left secondary school in 2008, our relationship had broken down. My mother’s ugu and condiments kept a roof over our head. We still lived in the same house in Ebute-Metta. Our landlord was nice enough to let us pay our rent every six months as long as we paid on time. My father was a complete no-show, even when my mother had her first crisis in 2011.

They say she was always falling sick as a child. In those days, things like that were chalked down to ‘ogbanje’ so she had several ritual incisions down her back and arm to keep her alive. Still, she kept falling sick. As she grew older, her health forced her to live safe, so she ate well and had no vices, except, of course, my father. Things gradually worsened when she moved with him to Lagos. The pressure of being a sole provider didn’t help either.

Neither myself nor my sister ever gave university much thought. I can’t remember discussing it with my parents. Who would send us? Our alcoholic father? A mother who’s been bedridden for years?

When I left secondary school, I continued to run the CD shop which also became a game centre. Since then, I’ve learned to do some electrical jobs: fixing television sets, irons, minor wiring, installing DSTV. Most of the money goes into getting drugs for my mother.

My sister has had to grow up too. After secondary school, she took up my mother’s stall. But she was never going to stay there for long. She’s hardworking but also very pretty. It’s the kind of youthful beauty that rich people like to spend on. When we were younger, people often gave her money; my father scolded her for it, but we all knew it wasn’t her fault. She has ‘friends’ who ‘helped’ her open a small food place in Jibowu. She sells Igbo food to drivers working in the transport companies. I think she makes new ‘friends’ there too. That’s none of my business. She often comes home, tired and angry. She’s 28 now. I know she’s thinking about her life too.

We don’t know how long my mother has left, but we’ve spent every day preparing since we took the photos down. She doesn’t leave the house anymore, except to attend church or go to the hospital. The day my father came back home, she was asleep. My sister had gotten some area boys to look out for him, in case she ever showed up. Because we’d lived there for so long, they knew the story. He returned with a friend, who looked like he’d been in a drug den all his life. The boys didn’t let him into the compound. When he began to make a scene, the boys carried him away. All I heard was his screaming, and later, stories of what happened. He never came back.

Sometimes, I catch myself waiting for my mother to go so I can start living. I know my sister does too. She talks about it. “Who go marry me when I don be like old cargo,” she says. I want to tell her that marriage isn’t a great idea; the only one we know broke everybody involved. I feel like I’ve settled for a lot of things because of my parents. I don’t have a girlfriend. I can’t afford the girls that I like.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned from my parents and adulthood, it’s that the people in your life are crucial as the decisions you make. That’s why I move at a steady pace; I don’t want to be like my father. I want to go for a technical program and learn electrical work properly. For now, my life revolves around what’s left of my mother’s. It’s this uncertainty that leads my day-to-day life. What will happen when she passes? I don’t know. For now, we do what we can and hope for the best.

We want to know how young people become adults. The question we ask is “What’s your coming of age story?” Every Thursday, we’ll bring you the story one young Nigerian’s journey to adulthood and how it shaped them.

I’m one of those few people who can say, not so proudly, that in 2000, the year I was born, my parents didn’t exactly want me. The circumstances of my birth, as I’ve heard a few times, were weird. My parents were entering their forties at the turn of the Millennium. They had ticked all the boxes that most people their age aspired to.

They had three kids – one teenage girl, another in her preteens and a boy who was almost out of primary school. They had finished their house in Ikorodu too, and were planning to move when my mother got pregnant with me. In my father’s opinion, having a child at that age carried too many health risks. But the idea of one last child grew on my mother.

A lot of older couples who can afford it like to have a child, whether it’s theirs or adopted, to serve as a companion as they enter their twilight. I’m one of those kids, although I can’t say I’ve ever really understood the reason. The older I got, however, the more I noticed that I was treated very differently. For one, I was never beaten as a child. Sure, I was often scolded and there was the odd ‘abara’ on my rear end. But they never beat me as punishment. This was weird because my older siblings, and cousins even, feared my father’s belt like a plague. 

My siblings are much older than I am; for context there’s an 8-year gap between my brother and me. So there was bound to be a disconnect. For the longest time, they treated me more like a fragile house pet than their baby sister. Things were even worse when we went out for the owambes that my parents frequently signed up for as senior civil servants. I remember how some of the events, especially birthdays, would have separate halls for kids because 8-year-olds aren’t exactly Sunny Ade’s target audience. I remember the feeling of loneliness that washed over me when I was always pushed to stay with my parents. I would spend the afternoon having my cheeks pulled or poked, or sitting with my father who would busy himself by talking to me in baby-speak. I was capable of speaking normal words. I also really wanted to go play with my mates.

Life as a living porcelain doll was rather uneventful. We had a front-row view of Ikorodu’s expansion into the busy suburb that it is now, and as more roads were tarred and more families moved in, I gradually grew into my weird circumstance. I can’t say I experienced childhood for the sake of it. On one hand, I’ve always been seen as someone’s child. Here’s an example; the primary school I attended was like a neighbourhood project, owned by a retired public servant who just couldn’t sit in his house and rest. Many of the teachers were neighbours as well, so they knew my parents and called me by their name instead of mine. I got the special treatment to match; and even though it got me out of trouble more than once, I grew to hate it. I had very few friends too, mostly because I found early on that many of them just wanted to hang with the cool kid and have the first option on whatever luxuries I was no longer interested in. Not being able to make close friends was one of my life’s biggest paradoxes because, on the other hand, the role I played in my family forced me to be around adults more than I really wanted to.

I mastered social skills at a very early age by shadowing my parents, especially my mum who people describe as a ‘mama adugbo‘ because of her need to raise every child she sees. She was born into a big family and growing up, I saw her navigate numerous human relationships with dexterity and my watchful self on her lap. 

Even though I’m like her in many ways, I can’t say she’s my role model. I don’t have any. To drown out the mundanity of my life, I lived in my head a lot and often imagined myself as a really adventurous person, riding through jungles and deserts. Obviously, I didn’t know anyone who was living that life at the time, so I poured my adulation into TV and video game characters that were, like Dora The Explorer, Zelda, Xena The Warrior Princess and The Black Widow. Just thinking about it now cracks me up.

Life got even more monotonous after my siblings got into university . By the time I turned 12, I was the only child at home. We had a maid, so I rarely did housework. This was what I was born to do: be a companion to my ageing parents. I wanted none of it.

At 17, last year, I got admitted to UNILAG to study Mass Communication. I can’t honestly say I broke a sweat over any part of it, and since I’ve resumed, things have been very comfortable. All my siblings send me money regularly – the first two are employed. The third, the only boy and the person I’m closest too, has always had a knack for making extra money. But none of that comfort can get rid of the listlessness I often feel. I would never say this out loud but some of it comes from seeing classmates who had to earn their place and feeling like I just sat on someone’s lap while everything happened for me. I’ve spoken to my mother about this more than once, and she says I shouldn’t overthink it because all fingers are not equal. That hasn’t helped at all.

I have very bad FOMO too. When I hang out with friends, they talk about a lot of experiences that I can’t relate to or worries that have never crossed my mind. For the first time, I have a friendship that wasn’t borne of the need to just disappear into the crowd. She comes from a family of overachievers, and as much as she downplays it, I find myself feeling like I missed out on the chance to really live life.

The only thing I look forward to about adulthood is being independent. I have no pretences about how difficult that can be. I know that when my oldest sister, who’s now engaged, comes home; it’s usually to ask for help, not to give it. But from what I’ve seen so far, adulting is about standing on your own and becoming your own person. You may have something to fall back on but for the most part, you’re responsible for yourself.

That’s why I need to make the best of my time in school. I hate going home during the holidays. It’s not so much about getting good grades. It’s about finding out that I really like sports, stage plays, and gisting in front of my faculty with friends till midnight. It’s about finding out who I am by being away from family and people who see me as an extension of my parents.

I won’t say I’m equipped. It’s only been a few months and people have already tagged me as disrespectful because I tend to talk to adults like they’re my age mates. Big surprise! Whatever happens, I know I have time on my side. I’ve had enough time to think about the kind of person I want to be, now I have the space to work at it.

We want to know how young people become adults. The question we ask is “What’s your coming of age story?” Every Thursday, we’ll bring you the story one young Nigerian’s journey to adulthood and how it shaped them.

I grew up in Mile 12. It’s most known for the sprawling food market – the place where other markets come to shop. I remember it for noise, drama, fights and crowded apartments. There was no better example of Mile 12’s rowdy mix than our compound – it had no gates, two beer parlours, a barbershop, a church and 40+ occupants.

There, my parents managed the enviable task of raising me and later, my two younger siblings, on their terms. We were the only children there who had a private school education. While they couldn’t give us life beyond that environment, they showed it to us, first in newspapers and later, bootlegged cable television. 

I can’t tell if it was this exposure or an unwarranted ‘child prodigy’ tag that set us apart, but we were always treated like an exotic species. Even at school, when I was 8 and my school got into fights with the neighbouring primary school, my friends would ask me to look out rather than get involved. Once, I forced myself into the situation and got my uniform ripped. A friend begged until I agreed to swap shirts. We knew the implications, but he would rather catch a beating than let me stain my white.

Adults were barely different. I remember our landlord, a man in his early 40s, coming to our door to ask me what ‘moving stairs’ are called. “Escalators”, I said. I had no idea how I knew the answer. At that point, I was already tired of being treated differently. I wanted to fight on the street like my friends. When half of my friends didn’t make the jump to secondary school, I wanted to be like them too. 

It wasn’t meant to be. I learned to punch above my weight from my father who moved to Lagos from Ibadan in the 1980s, with a letter of referral to the Nigerian Defence Academy and some change. He didn’t get to the army as he’d hoped, so he turned his attention to other, more pressing matters like surviving, and later, raising kids and giving them the life he never had. 

Adulthood to me was what my father did – waking up before your kids and returning after they’ve gone to bed, providing for multiple extended family members, with little to show for your work.

A younger me would never admit how I admired him. I’m like an updated version of the man, one who never combs his hair and is more given to excesses than he was.

The other people I looked up to were too distant from my reality to offer any true lessons, like Anakin Skywalker, Frodo or Nas. Those who were close were too defective to be worthy of emulation, like Uncle Solomon, my childhood best friend who got addicted to cocaine and ripped a bass drum open with his head.

In 2008, I left home to study Law at a university in Ekiti. It had come as fast as everyone expected. Tertiary education is considered a luxury where I come from so it felt like the entire neighbourhood was sending me off. I like to say I never returned home after that.

Ado-Ekiti was a different world from the one I grew up in. I was a 15-year-old with pressure to deliver on years of promise, but I found myself in a place with no electricity, lethargic lecturers and all-powerful students. 

Maybe it was the freedom or a need to treated like just every other person. But a few gang fights, some police trouble and many spontaneous inter-state trips later, four years had passed. 

My first semester in university had been a parent’s dream. I’d skipped most of my lectures and managed to score in the top 5% of the class. When I graduated at 21, I was in the bottom 30%.

Somewhere in those six years, I lost every inkling of who I was. People have blamed my parents for sending me off so young; others say it was being forced to study a course I had no love for. I only blamed myself. I’d let too many people down. I had to regain their trust and belief. That was what my year in law school and the few months I spent in practice were about; showing I was worth it.

In 2016, the year I was supposed to go for NYSC, I moved to Benin for what was supposed to be a year of personal discovery. There, at the end of several cannabis joints and old Majek Fashek songs, I found something. Even when I feign disinterest as I often do, I’ve always felt like I had a point to prove.

People often say I have a saviour complex. And it’s true. It shows up in my obsession with emerging artists, and how I like to commit to more work than I can reasonably handle. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Somewhere beneath the reckless exterior, a part of me believes I have a duty to everyone who looked out for me, from the guy who gave me his uniform to the Head of Department who let me graduate on the promise that I’d make something of my self.

It’s why years after my family moved, I got an apartment with my girlfriend a few minutes from the place I grew up in. No-one from Mile 12 knows that I live here. They don’t need to. I’ll go when I have something to offer them.

I’ve spent the last four years cutting my teeth as a storyteller. I have an intense passion for music and diverse perspectives. It’s come with its own wins, but my biggest accomplishment is providing for my family. Overachieving for so long has caught up with my father, and while he insists he’s capable, I’ve taken on his role as provider, albeit from afar. I’m not the child of their dreams, the one neighbours would come to ask questions, anymore. Now, people are warier than anything when they look at me. But I like being misunderstood; it’s more exciting than being pampered.

As proud as I am of hewing my path, life often reminds me of my backstory. A few years ago, I missed out an important job because “I’d never been outside the country and thus lacked the requisite exposure to tell stories on a wider scale”.

Adulting to me is making sure no one will offer such an excuse to any of my kids. It’s making sure that my baby sister can attend her convocation, even if it means I have to take a loan for it. Adulting is making sure that I deliver on every promise that I made by being the kid who never fit in, even if it means disappointing the people around me by constantly lifting more than I can carry.

It’s why I decided early that there can be no room for regrets. My journey could only have brought me here. Sometimes it feels too far from my destination but the excitement of not knowing if I’ll ever be fully capable of what’s expected of me is enough.

There’s too much to prove; too little to time to slow down and take stock.

We want to know how young people become adults. The question we ask is “What’s your coming of age story?” Every Thursday, we’ll bring you the story one young Nigerian’s journey to adulthood and how it shaped them.

What’s a good word to describe the feeling of comfort in an imperfect situation? ‘Lethargy’ sounds like I’m lazy – I’m not. My mother says you can leave me in a spot as the world collapses and I’ll stay put until something comes close. I move at my own pace, even in the worst situations. I’ve been called many things for this: lazy, unbothered.

Before those monikers, my role was being the only son of a customs officer. It was an important position. My father was a driven man who gave a bigger share of his life to working and got married in his late 40s, decades after his mates. My mother was 25 at the time they got married. I was born the next year. In family photos of outings during my childhood, we look like three generations – one stern, grey-haired man in flowing traditional wear, a fine woman in her 30s and a little child. 

We lived in Bashorun, Ibadan. In the 1970s, it was reserved for wealthy civilians and influential military men. When I was growing up, it wasn’t as exclusive, but life was good.

I went to the best school in Ibadan. My dad’s name got me in and his money kept me there. On the best days, usually Fridays, I’d return home to him and my mum, a full-time housewife, sitting over drinks in the shade of the veranda while the driver pulled into the compound. 

Once, when I was 12, I returned from school early for the wrong reasons. The look on my mother’s face changed from fear to shock when I told what happened.

A classmate had made me the butt of a nasty joke, so I played a more practical one on him. He wasn’t the first person in my school who unknowingly sat on a pencil, but my mischief bruised him so hard, he bled. Knowing hell would break loose if his parents showed up, the principal sent me home.

I returned with my dad, apologised and stepped out of the principal’s office on his instruction. That was it. Nobody laid a finger on me, not even him. I swear. I guess people in their 60s don’t get surprised easily. If my father was ever fazed, it happened before my lifetime. Granted, he had the range to solve his problems and every family member’s. But he’d make them drink and talk about random things first.

It was his way of getting them to relax. It gave me the impression that people tend to overreact to issues. Perhaps, he wanted them to see that.

I know boys say their fathers are their heroes, but when I look at my father’s photos, I see the only man I’ve ever wanted to become. My dad and I were an unlikely pair. Between spending weekends with him and sitting at his feet while he talked to guests, I only ever looked up to one person: him.

My fairytale was cut short on the 16th of September 2009. My father was 66 when he died – peacefully, I assume, in the backseat of his car on a trip home from Lagos. They say he lived a full life. I don’t know. All I felt was emptiness.

I should have been in my third year studying Psychology at the University of Ibadan when it happened. It was when things had passed and cooled off that I told my mom I hadn’t been a student there for over 6 months.

I was placed on probation after the first session and advised to work on my grades or be withdrawn. But I was too distracted. I had everything I wanted and a two-bedroom at Agbowo. At the end of the first semester, I didn’t have enough attendance to write exams. My time at U.I was done. It became official when the session ended.

My mother was disappointed, but she no fit carry two things wey dey fight to be the one wey dey pain am pass, so she gats fix wetin dey her power.

Strings were pulled and I got into the pre-degree program at The Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA). Everything started well. Raw regret fuelled a new level of diligence. Starting afresh was simply humbling. But I soon noticed I was on the fringes. It didn’t help that my mum had become tight-fisted after my dad passed. I couldn’t beat them, so I joined them. 

I was doing things like travelling to party in Abeokuta for the fear of missing out. FUTA isn’t well-run, so I could skirt the problems that got me sent away from UI. I could catch a cruise, miss classes and pay for grades. I graduated as a 25-year-old who lived a 19-year-old’s life. Youth Service at the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) was next, from 2016 to 2017. I practically lived at home.

I think people are eager to project their responsibilities so they can appear more serious adults than others. What’s that? Why would you want to prove you’re better at suffering than others?

I haven’t held a full-time job since BCOS. I can afford not to. My father left everything to my mother and me.

I live with my mother and help manage his investments. That’s making sure no-one sells our land, houses are maintained and tenants pay rent on time. I spend my spare time with friends, travelling or exploring small business openings. Ibadan is a big place and opportunities are opening. Taxify launched here recently. More people are moving from Lagos. Soon our nightlife will start popping properly. I have to get in on that action.

I know people say stuff about me and the money, especially family. A lot of it comes from envy. Is it my fault that my dad left money behind? Am I to blame for being an only child? 

My mum has suggested I get a full-time job. She once asked if I would like to move to one of our flats. Why should I leave a house that’s big enough for me, my mum, extended family and friends, just to prove a point? For what though? In a country where the reward for hard work is getting by? Half the people who yarn about me want to be me.

Am I adulting? Yes, but I think if you ask most people, they’ll disagree because of my privilege. But what does it matter? I like what I have and I don’t see the point in plunging myself into adversity to prove something.

I miss my father a lot. Maybe I’d have a better sense of how I’m doing if he was still here. It would be fun to ask if he thinks I’m doing okay.