As a young & single Nigerian woman, AGENCY is my #1 need

All the decisions I have made or have attempted to make since my teenage years have been me trying to attain and exercise agency.

I’m finding out things about myself that I’ve never known: like how much I dislike small talk, how generally cynical I am of people and complements from Nigerian men who are not my father/brothers, how l prefer being direct than beating around the bush, and how much I need to do to improve my emotional intelligence and awareness. 

This year did not go as planned. I wanted to japa because:

• My dad was fond of telling me how much Nigeria had nothing to offer me. He is right, Nigeria has very little to offer me.
• I have many times struggled to feel a sense of belonging, individuality, and community in Nigeria. What that means is that there are times I don’t see myself as Nigerian — I am too progressive for this country and its values and priorities increasingly do not reflect mine.
• I wanted peace of mind — if you are a woman living with your parents, you know what I mean. 

I initially started by applying to four schools I had painstakingly selected because their programs had a good dose of theory and practice. You see, I was very very picky about my choices — just because I wanted to immigrate didn’t mean I needed to settle for less. As crazy as it sounds, my professional growth far supersedes my desire to move away from a sinking ship. 

So, in December last year, I applied to one school in the UK and three in the US. Then, three more programs in February: one that would have given me a scholarship to study in three countries: Latvia, Estonia and Finland, and two more in the US because I was scared shitless of rejection. Out of seven of those schools, I got accepted to five. But I didn’t have enough funding to pursue any of them, plus, the organization I work for (Sonder Collective) renewed my contract. After a brief decision-making crisis, I decided to continue working, invest in an affordable online master’s degree and use that as leverage for a physical one three years from now, travel with a friend, build my passion project, and rent an apartment in Abuja, a city with very expensive housing. The last few minutes of FK & Jola’s sunk cost episode go deep into the sunk cost that makes people feel they need to pause their lives because they haven’t accomplished their dreams. As an ambitious and somewhat impatient person, I wasn’t willing to pause my life because of the lack of funds. 

Needless to say, I would not have been able to do all these things or plan to do them if I did not have agency; if I had not gained agency.

First, you gain agency, then you learn how to deal with it, and dance with it, and play with it

I define agency as one having control over most aspects of their life. “Most” because realistically speaking, life is an ass. Agency is independence, power in its raw and human form, an accountability to one’s self (most of the time) or the ability to define who one is accountable to. Our ability to choose our education, choose our careers, choose how and where we move, who we are friends with, who we marry, who we reject, choose our thoughts all without the overburdening needs of external influences is agency. Now, we are all, in one way or the other, influenced by the people around us, but what matters is the degree and flexibility of this influence. Does it dominate every aspect of your life or does it act as a guide for your decisions while also allowing you to carve out new experiences that are supportive of your goals and ambitions?

When I talk agency or independence or power or accountability to one’s self, it is me breaking away from the overprotectiveness of my parents, from the life prescriptions of my family and older Nigerians — you know, the ones with unsolicited advice. When I settled on moving out of my parents’ house, my dad and siblings were supportive, my Aunt too, although I could tell it was shocking news to her. The rest? Not so much:

• “travel abroad, get a masters, work a little and then get married.”
• “You must have children now because your biological clock is ticking”. I’d just like to say that, this, is absolute rubbish! 🙄🙄🙄
• “Don’t move out of your parents’ house, stay, endure, and manage with them until you find a good husband because good men do not marry independent women.” Well, that’s none of my business 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
• “Don’t, move out of your parents’ house, why are you dashing a landlord your money, just stay with your parents and manage till you can travel out of the country.” No, I’m not a suffer-head. 😬
• “What you are doing (moving out) is not an accomplishment and doesn’t make sense. I would never advise someone else’s child to do same.” Ah well. 

Agency is more than my ability to reject these opinions: it is me being able to recognise that the commenters do not necessarily know what is best for me, especially if they dismiss my ambitions. That even though the people around me have in different ways influenced me, I can use their advice as guardrails in my quest for agency rather than allow it to dominate my decision-making. 

BUT before deciding to move out, I had to gain my agency. And to gain agency, you need money and you need money because, in most Nigerian households, agency is not something parents teach their kids to have. Surrounding a child with agency is just as important as providing for their daily needs. As Olatunji says, “The people I know with the most agency surround themselves with people, systems, and consumption that are agentic and passively improve their own agency as a result of the experiences they’re exposed to.”  If you are not brought up in a household that promotes or encourages agency, you will not have it, you won’t even think of having it until you interact with people that have it. And if you decide to get it in the future — which is in itself agentic — you will have to gain it.

Money breeds agency

Because, in many Nigerian households — whether you like it or not — money has power, plenty plenty power. In some cases, the way your parents perceive you — woman or man (man, especially) — is connected to the amount of money you have. And no matter how much you try to set boundaries, the way your parents perceive you when you have money will always be different from the way they perceive you when you don’t have money.

As Tracy, one of my very good friends says, “…you can finally cement the boundaries you want to build. And stand on them. So much so that even if you move back home in the future, nobody will ever try you like they did now.”

Once you have gained agency, then you can learn how to use it, and play with it, and dance with it, and utilize it to your benefit and convenience. 

Agency means having the power to understand that not everything has to be figured out and more importantly, that the path my parents and the i-too-know Nigerians have carved for my life is not necessarily the path I will follow.

But here’s the thing, life is a foggy landscape, and your agency is the light that lets you know which path you want or need to follow. Olatunji believes 

“we live in a culture that discourages agency because productivity is indexed by uniformity in growth and direction. Education is decided by how many people have university degrees as opposed to other types of education; prosperity is measured by how many people have official salary-paying jobs; and good housing is defined as modern white and black block housing with a two-car garage that doubles as a playfield for the kids (– these metrics are not inherently bad things, btw).”

— Olatunji Da Yung, Some Notes on Agency

The metrics used to describe agency and define success are limited — Success is not finite, it is relative. There is so much exploitation in the world today, so much extremism and utter disregard for the issues that plague us that we, young people are triggered to feel an “innate powerlessness over the trajectory of everything, including/especially your own life” (Olatunji’s words).

I could make the case that I am obsessed with my agency because I feel powerless about my life and I want to regain what seems like full control of it. My parents, family, and older, i-too-know folks (the ones who give unsolicited advice) who try to measure my actions against their expectations could make the case that evil has befallen the world and their control/influence over my life choices is their way of protecting me from this evil or making grave mistakes. But what good is this protection if their expectations go against my ambitions? What good is this protection if they expect me to live for them, not myself? How do we learn if we do not make mistakes?

People who have little agency don’t know what it feels like to have agency and so they try to — sometimes unknowingly — prevent other people from having agency (by sometimes fear-mongering about changes different from the status quo) because they think it is the best way to thrive and survive life. I want control over my life and since I didn’t ask to be born (yes, I said it), my parents owe me that control. They owe me the ability to make decisions for myself, achieve agency, and utilize that agency in an unharmful but self-rewarding way. I’m not their investment, I am their responsibility. Their responsibility as parents is to support their child’s quest for agency but also leave room for them to make mistakes while supporting them through those mistakes for the sake of their growth.

Like all things in life, agency comes at a price, agency discriminates. 

To reference Tracy again, “Only thing be say bills and prices fit break your heart into air.”

I chose to move out of my parents’ house and rent an apartment which means I have in a way switched responsibilities. I am no longer responsible for the whims of my parents, neither am I directly accountable to them, I am no longer beholden to live by their rules and adapt my schedule to their demands — for the most part, I am now responsible for myself, I now pay my bills. I make sure that the stuff in my apartment is maintained and working. I am responsible for my comfort. It’s a costly, but wonderful kind of power! 

Here’s my epiphany for you: there are different degrees of agency — the agency a parent or a married person has is different from the agency a young single person has. If we break this down, the agency a young single person with middle/upper-class parents has is different from the agency of a person in the same demographic with lower-class parents. It all depends on who you are accountable to at a given moment. Since I am young, single, and childless, I am mostly accountable to myself. I’m going to spend my 20s obsessing over my agency, abusing it, stretching it, and probably wasting it because I have the resources to do so and I am uncertain of how long this accountability to myself will last. In our life journey, agency ebbs and flows. It can be lost and re-earned. 

Be obsessed with your agency. Use it, abuse it, stretch it, waste it even. The only way to realize the depth of what you’re truly capable of doing is by using and analyzing the results of exhibiting your agency.

— Olatunji Da Yung, Some Notes on Agency

I moved out of my parents’ house at a time of high inflation and economic turmoil in Nigeria (Shame on you, Tinubu supporters, SHAME!). But I wouldn’t have if I could not afford it. So, that begs the question: What’s the point of exercising agency, if you don’t have the resources to do so? 

I knew moving out would be expensive. But I did it, anyway, because not only could I afford it but for me, spending a ton of money on an apartment I could design to my taste was me paying for my peace of mind, I was paying for my agency and zeal to live independently as comfortably as possible. I staunchly believe that if you can create an experience for yourself, don’t put your life on hold waiting for the right moment to create it (cue: FK & Jola’s sunk cost episode). Patience and delayed gratification aren’t always the wisest choices. 🙂

I am very fond of dismissing my accomplishments because I’m a sucker for perfection. I’m not going to do that this time — I am immensely, immensely, proud of myself for pulling through. & this is the beginning of a very spontaneous chapter for me.