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.