Nigeria at 58

When I was leaving primary school, I was eager to be able to school far away from home,even though I'd be returning home everyday.

The thrill of meeting new friends, getting new books and bags with stockings and shoes was premium.

I was tired of my primary 6 teacher who I stopped short of hating when I realized 3rd term was almost over. I was tired of being called a pupil.

I got to secondary school and the world was bigger than I had expected. It was fun to explore but it was frightening with more homework, tougher subjects, and meaner teachers. At least i was now a student, not a short wearing pupil. The wood of my sit in class always smelled of caked Biro ink and mould. Many mornings, it reminded me of how many students wrote exams on it and failed. I was that petrified, sometimes.

I couldn't wait to leave...

But university was an amplified scenario. Much more work. Much more fun with ironically much less time. Lecturers were not overtly mean. They just didn't care! Their indifference was probably more damning. And once again, adulthood turned out to be much less free than I thought.

There was no punctuality prefect to make sure we didn't arrive late to school. No senior prefect to address a morning assembly with oversized authority. No teachers threatening with thin long canes raised to the sky. No students yelling in pain from being flogged as classes go on.

But...

This time, there was sinking grade points, impromptu 6.30am tests, eccentric lecturers, night classes, and the invite of wild parties to make you not attend them. There were horny girls in bum shorts and drunken boys in sagged rip jeans.

On the other side of college's hyperkinetism were nice folks reminding you of the life you left behind at home. The morality, the rules..."Come worship with us this Sunday" they'd invite us with theatrical smile. It's not like church at home but it is church all the same.

You didn't have to worry if you should be a bad boy in primary or secondary school. You couldn't be one effectively...until now that you have a choice and the independence to be anything without question.

And then you realize so quickly,yet again, that being anything has its rules too!

Freedom is a powerful thing because we chase it with the romantic ideal of a sterile, patternless world where rules don't exist and imperatives fade into historical abyss...where we are at liberty to do anything and not have consequences to deal with. Ironically, the power is in this illusion.

As I have learned in my oomph for more freedom, independence doesn't come with the absence of regulations. In fact, there's more of it in the shadows, lurking behind every new and thrilling experience. Instead, freedom is the willingness to win by those rules; to challenge them when need be and to understand how they affect us now and later.

Our priorities in freedom is the will to win, to understand and to challenge the boundaries of the principles that guide us all. Then, freedom no longer becomes an elusive power but an entertaining promise.

Happy independence day.