Three months ago, I was offered a senior management role at a bank in Lagos. Salary: ₦15 million annually. Benefits: official car, housing allowance, the whole package. I turned it down. My family thinks I have lost my senses. My father, a retired civil servant who spent 35 years in a cubicle, has not spoken to me since March. My mother cries on the phone, asking where she went wrong. My cousins mock me at family WhatsApp groups. Here is what they don't understand. I spent five years in that corporate world. Five years of 4 a.m. alarms to beat Third Mainland Bridge traffic. Five years of office politics, fake smiles, and performance reviews that had nothing to do with performance. Five years of spending 60% of my salary on survival — rent, fuel, school fees for children I was too tired to see. I was "successful" and miserable. Last year, I visited my uncle's farm in Zaria during the Sallah break. I spent two weeks waking up to birds, not alarms. I ate food I watched grow. I felt the sun on my back and slept like a baby. I realized I had been living in a cage with golden bars. So I made a decision. I used my savings to lease 10 hectares in Kaduna. I am farming beans, maize, and ginger. My first harvest is in two months. I earn less, but I own my time. I breathe clean air. I see the stars at night. The mockery is relentless. "So all that education wasted on farming?" "You will regret it when the rains fail." "You just want to be a lazy village man." But who decided that a life in a Lagos cubicle is the only valid life? Who said happiness must come with a business card? I am not romanticizing poverty — I am optimizing for peace. Is the Nigerian obsession with "big city jobs" actually just a sophisticated form of slavery? Would you choose peace over prestige? Or am I just a deluded millennial running from responsibility? Let's hear it.
