AKANNI (POV)
My name is Akanni. I will turn fifteen this December, but I no longer mark birthdays as milestones. They belong to people who have the time to celebrate. I do not.
I have just been promoted to Senior Secondary School Two at Community High School. At home, two younger siblings trail behind me. Busayo, eleven, is curious and restless, constantly asking questions. Charles, eight, still believes the world will respond to kindness, that if you smile enough, life will smile back. I allow them to keep these illusions—they are children. Reality will find them soon enough.
People say I am distant. They describe it as though it were a flaw, an illness, a condition to fear. Teachers whisper it in the staff room when they assume I cannot hear. Students speak it louder—in corridors, behind my back, sometimes directly to my face.
"Akanni never smiles."
"His eyes are sharp, like he sees too much."
"He keeps everyone at a distance."
I do not respond. I do not need to. Observing is stronger than reacting. People who expose themselves too readily are vulnerable, and I have no room for vulnerability.
Feelings complicate thought. They slow movement, cloud decisions, and leave openings that others can exploit. I learned this early and chose to guard myself. My emotions are private property. I lock them away, hold the key in my hand, but never use it.
My family is poor. Not the kind of poverty that waits for the next salary to buy new clothes once a year. Poverty here is relentless: kettles whistle emptily, meals are counted by the smallest portions, and silence fills the house when the day passes without work.
I do not blame my parents for their poverty. I blame the world for making survival so difficult. I remember a preacher once saying: If you are born poor, it is not your fault. If you die poor, it is your greatest failure. I intend to avoid that failure.
Night brings questions I know are useless. Why were we brought into scarcity? Why must survival be constant labor and hunger? And then I chastise myself for thinking such thoughts. The womb is not a choice; what we do after leaving it is everything.
I have identified five forces that keep people like us restrained.
First: Parents who never climbed, so they cannot lift their children.
Second: Religious systems that promise miracles but deliver little. Hours spent praying, offerings given, while others prosper quietly elsewhere.
Third: Government structures that fail. Roads that crumble, power that falters, promises that vanish, opportunities that never come.
Fourth: Environment. Growing up where violence is normal, where survival requires toughness from a young age, where every street corner is a lesson in fear and endurance.
Fifth: Oneself. Discipline, choices, hunger, and will. The only power I have belongs to me.
Discipline shapes my days. I rise before the sun. I sweep the compound, fetch water from the nearest borehole, bathe with the coldest water that bites into my skin, and dress carefully in a uniform ironed the night before. My mother smooths my collar with hands roughened by years of washing for others, saving every coin she can.
"Eat some garri before you go," she says.
"I will eat at school," I reply. She does not argue, and I know she wants to. She reserves food for Busayo and Charles.
School is a forty-minute walk. The gate leans, rusted iron and faded letters: COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL, ADO-EKITI. The buildings are patched blocks, roofs covered in dented zinc. The field is more sand than grass. It is not beautiful, but it is ours. It is opportunity.
The first day I stepped into Junior Secondary School One remains vivid. New students clung to friends, shouted, cried, laughed. I observed. Always observe first. My mother's words echoed in my mind: Know the child of whom you are. Remember where you come from. Do not allow anyone to diminish you.
I landed in Class C, I picked commerce department, my mother saved every kobo she could from her laundry work. The class was rough, crowded, loud. Girls from wealthier homes were placed in A and B. They moved through the room with an ease I envied briefly. I suppressed the feeling quickly. Envy was wasteful.
I chose commerce deliberately—Economics, Accounting, Government, and Commerce alongside the compulsory subjects. Science might have promised money, but I wanted control and understanding.
My mother asked repeatedly, "Akanni, are you sure this is what you want? People say science pays better."
"Yes, Mama. This is what I need."
She never forced me. My father rarely asked questions. He came home, ate, slept, and woke early to look for daily labour at construction sites. When work came, we went to school. When it did not, we managed.
The lessons I learned at home shaped me more than any school lecture. My mother managed everything—food, money, chores, my siblings—while my father came home silent or angry. He would criticize her, claiming she was responsible for every hardship, that she had taken over duties that were his by right. She bore his words with quiet endurance, never retaliating, never exposing the cracks in the household she held together.
I watched her. I absorbed the lesson. Power and survival were inseparable. Weakness invited attack. Vulnerability guaranteed pain. I promised myself that I would never carry responsibility without control, and I would never allow anyone to dominate me the way my father dominated her.
That resolve became practice. I studied relentlessly, outran every boy in training, pushed my body beyond exhaustion. I did not play. I did not joke. I did not allow distractions. The ladder of life is narrow and steep; I cannot afford to stumble.
Then a new governor declared free secondary education. The first time government ever gave us something without taking more in return. No more school fees.
My mother cried that night—not loudly, just quiet tears while she pounded yam.
Many students relaxed after that. Free education removed pressure, so they played more and read less. For me, it only added fuel. If the ladder is free, climb faster.
I study like a man running from fire. First position, second position—it does not matter. What matters is progress.
I had my first confrontation in JSS1. A boy from JSS3, large and confident, demanded my notes. When I refused, he shoved me. I did not raise my voice. I did not flinch. I looked at him steadily, measured, and waited. When he tried again, my actions responded faster than his assumptions. One went down, one ran, one learned quickly that arrogance would not defeat me.
After that, whispers changed. Respect replaced ridicule, and fear laced the distance. I had not sought confrontation, only ensured that no one could impose themselves on me.
Back home, nights are quiet. My siblings sleep in the other room. My mother rests from labor I cannot repay. I sit alone, candlelight flickering on the floor, thinking: I am not powerless. I am not helpless. I am not defeated. And yet, there is life beneath the surface. Something I protect carefully, like a fragile flame. I allow no one to see it. Warmth in the wrong hands becomes ruin.
I have learned to survive. I will continue to climb.