Not all African students believe in Education because our Government has thought or made us believe that even if we go to school we still stand the chance of being unemployed, so it takes a lot of resilience and persistency to get to the Graduation stage and phase…
University Student and their Experience as Students
Street Interview to know what people think about being Educated in Africa (Nigeria)
In African (Nigeria) Education is mostly said to be a scam because most times the Educated ones don’t end up with a job after schooling, sometimes they even end up with a very very little pay…and to get a good job you have to be connected to a political power or oil and gas…so I stepped out on the street to ask Students in the campus what they thought…
I ride with one gear.
Not because I can’t afford many. Not because I don’t know the ease of shifting, the way derailleurs hum when the chain glides across cogs. No, I ride with one gear because one gear is enough.
A fixed gear or a single speed—it doesn’t matter. What matters is the philosophy of constraint. The simplicity that forces you into rhythm. The surrender to terrain, to gradient, to wind. With one gear, you don’t conquer the road. You make peace with it.
In a world of endless choices, one gear is my anchor. One tooth less or more can mean the difference between spinning freely or grinding painfully uphill. I know the numbers well: 48×17 (76.2 gear inches) for speed, momentum, and the thrill of chasing horizons. 48×18 (72 gear inches) when the city asks me to dance with stoplights, corners, and fatigue.
Switching between them is switching between moods. One whispers urgency, the other offers patience. Both remind me: life doesn’t need twenty-one speeds to move forward. Sometimes, one is enough.
It always happens in silence. The sudden grind of pedal against asphalt mid-turn. The jolt through the frame. The heart that skips, legs that tighten, and in one breathless instant—the possibility of going down.
I’ve had my share of crashes. Scraped palms, bleeding knees, chain tattoos etched in grease and pain. I’ve limped home with bent wheels, cracked rims, handlebars turned crooked. Each scar is a punctuation mark in my story.
But pedal strikes teach humility. They remind me that arrogance on a fixie is punished quickly. You cannot lean like a geared racer in corners; your pedals keep spinning whether you’re ready or not. Life is the same—momentum never stops. The trick is learning when to hold back, when to lean softer, when to trust balance over bravado.
I remember one night—rain-slicked streets, delivery bag heavy with orders. I cut a corner too sharp near Muradpur. The left pedal caught the road. My body launched sideways. I landed in a pool of water, the order still strapped to my back, steaming against my spine. The customer never knew the drama of their food arriving. But I knew. I limped away soaked, sore, wiser.
Pain writes its lessons deep into the flesh. And each time I pedal again, I whisper: Don’t fight the spin. Flow with it.
There is a silence only a cyclist knows. It isn’t the silence of an empty room or the stillness of night. It’s the silence inside the motion.
Spin after spin, cadence becomes breath. Breath becomes rhythm. Rhythm becomes prayer.
On long stretches—the Bayezid Link Road, the curve toward Bhatiari, the endless run toward Kumira—I lose myself in repetition. 90 RPM, heart steady, eyes fixed on the horizon. It is meditation without incense. Prayer without words.
The city may roar around me—buses honking, rickshaws clattering, vendors shouting—but inside the circle of my wheels, I am calm. Each revolution says the same thing: keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
And in that endless mantra, worries dissolve. Deadlines, arguments, hunger, exhaustion—they blur into the hum of the chain. What remains is pure being.
Cadence has taught me that peace is not found in stillness. Peace is found in motion without resistance.
There are days I ride my 48×17 fixie—the gear inches heavy, the ride demanding. It is the road of ambition. Each push is a declaration: I will not slow down. It feels like chasing dreams with urgency, daring gravity to break me.
Other days, I swap to 48×18 single speed—softer, slower, kinder. This gear forgives fatigue. It lets me coast on descents, catch my breath after long shifts, turn corners without fear of strikes. It feels like living gently, without forcing the world to bend.
And the truth is: both gears live inside me.
Ambition and patience. Urgency and surrender. The hunger for speed and the wisdom of slowing down.
One gear teaches me to adapt not by changing the machine, but by changing the mind. When the road rises, I rise with it. When the road eases, I breathe deeper. Life is the same.
The delivery rider’s life is measured in kilometers and orders. But between the pick-ups and drop-offs lies another world: the coffee break.
In GEC Circle, a small café knows me by my helmet and sweat. I order a cup—sometimes black, sometimes sweet, always steaming. I sit by the window, my bag resting like a tired animal beside me.
In those minutes, I write. Poems scratched into notebooks, reflections typed into my phone. The city rushes outside—horns, dust, chaos—but inside, words flow like the steam rising from my cup.
One time, after a brutal 60 km shift, I wrote a verse on a napkin:
“Wheels spin,
but words hold still.
The road rushes by,
yet coffee teaches pause.”
Those moments of stillness are survival. They remind me that even machines need rest, and even riders need reflection. Coffee breaks are not wasted time—they are the breath between stanzas in the poem of the day.
Some people write in quiet rooms. I write in motion.
Every street corner has a line of verse. Every delivery route is a stanza. The city itself is my notebook.
When I ride through Chawkbazar, I see metaphors in markets overflowing. When I climb the slope toward Bayezid, I taste the rhythm of resilience. When rain soaks me in Bhatiari, I feel poems dripping from my skin.
I have delivered food with one hand and written phrases in my head with the other. I have composed entire verses on a 20 km stretch, repeating them until I could scribble them down. My poems are sweat-stained, grease-marked, born from cadence as much as thought.
To me, cycling is not separate from writing. They are the same act: turning chaos into rhythm, motion into meaning.
And when I finally sit at night, tired legs stretched, I pour those poems onto paper. Wheels whisper wisdom louder than books. The city becomes literature. And I, its courier, deliver both food and words.
In the end, the one gear is more than a choice of bike. It is a way of living.
It says: simplify. Strip away excess. Find discipline in limitation. Accept the road as it is.
It says: keep spinning. Through crashes, through fatigue, through deadlines and hunger. The wheels do not stop. Neither should you.
It says: write your story in revolutions. In coffee stains, in pedal strikes, in scars, in poems.
And above all, it says: one is enough. One gear, one life, one rider, one road.
Because the truth is simple: you don’t need more to move forward. You just need to keep pedalling.
Listen to what I got from interviewing these persons when I asked them about the difference between Talent and Skills..
The idea came to me not in the middle of a race, not while scrolling through cycling forums, not even from a coach or training plan. It came while I was locking up my single speed outside a coffee shop. My bike stood there—simple, clean, purposeful—its one gear catching the sunlight like a badge of honour. No derailleurs, no unnecessary complexity, just chain, crank, wheel, and faith.
It was at that moment I decided:
One gear. One objective.
No excuses, no shortcuts. The challenge wasn’t to be faster than others, but to be truer to myself.
People often ask me why I ride single speed or fixed gear when the world is full of multi-speed carbon dreams, with electronic shifting and featherlight wheels. To them, a single speed feels primitive, even masochistic. But here’s the truth I’ve found:
Simplicity is Freedom.
With one gear, the world becomes less cluttered. No more thinking about the right gear for a hill or a sprint. You have what you have. Your body adjusts, your rhythm adapts. Life feels cleaner.
Maintenance is Minimal.
Fewer parts mean fewer problems. A quick wipe, a chain check, and I’m rolling. While others spend hours tuning derailleurs, I spend mine riding.
Strength and Endurance.
One gear doesn’t forgive laziness. If it’s a hill, you climb it. If it’s wind, you push against it. Over time, the body grows resilient, legs stronger, lungs deeper.
A Pure Connection.
There’s no machine in between me and the road. Just my cadence, my breath, my willpower. Every pedal stroke feels honest.
A Statement of Intent.
In a world obsessed with shortcuts, a single speed whispers: I choose the long road. I choose effort. I choose clarity.
That’s why the Single Speed Bike Challenge isn’t just about distance—it’s about living differently.
Cycling has always been more than just recreation to me. It’s rebellion against pollution, noise, and dependency. When I mount my bike, I remind myself: every kilometre I ride is one less litre of fuel burned, one less puff of smoke in the air.
I ride for my lungs, yes, but also for the world’s lungs.
The Pedal for the Planet mindset is what makes me smile when sweat pours, when my thighs burn, when strangers in cars look at me like I’m crazy. They don’t realize—I am not just riding for myself.
I’m carrying the message that the planet deserves simpler choices, slower choices, cleaner choices. And nothing embodies that more than the stubborn honesty of a single speed bike.
One Sunday morning, I decided it was time to push beyond the daily courier miles, beyond commutes and errands. My goal was clear:
100 kilometers. Solo. Fixed gear.
My bike of choice: a 48×17t setup—a gear ratio that gives me about 76.2 gear inches. Enough speed for the flats, enough grind for the climbs, but never forgiving.
The route wasn’t about chasing PRs or drafting behind groups. It was about me, the road, and the hum of the chain.
The city still yawned awake. I passed tea stalls where steam rose from kettles, rickshaw pullers stretching their backs, children in sandals chasing footballs. My cadence found its groove. No rush, no panic—just legs spinning, lungs filling.
This is where the chatter begins. Why are you doing this? You could’ve been home sleeping. What’s the point of pushing so far?
But each pedal stroke whispered back: Because I can. Because I must.
On a fixed gear, there’s no coasting. Downhills aren’t rest; they’re wild, spinning legs keeping up with momentum. It forces mindfulness—no distractions, just presence.
Something changed here. My body stopped resisting. My breath found rhythm, my legs felt lighter. I noticed details—the smell of fried snacks from roadside stalls, the laughter of school kids waving as I passed, the endless green fields shimmering under the sun.
This is what I call cycling meditation.
Fatigue arrived uninvited, as it always does. The fixed gear felt heavier, every rise in the road an insult. But this is where faith becomes fuel. I whispered prayers under my breath, not for speed, but for strength.
And in those final kilometers, something clicked. The bike and I weren’t separate anymore—we were one machine, one heartbeat, one stubborn streak of will.
When I finally reached 100 km, I didn’t raise my hands in victory. I just smiled, unclipped, and whispered to myself:
One gear. One objective. Done.
Not every ride has to be epic. Sometimes, the greatest joy of a single speed is in the little rituals.
Riding to a coffee shop is my version of a pilgrimage. The journey matters as much as the destination. The clink of the cup, the smell of roasted beans, the quiet hum of life around me—it feels earned after miles on the saddle.
Some of my best writing has been done this way. Arriving sweaty, legs tired, but mind sharp. I pull out my notebook, jot down thoughts about rides, struggles, dreams. The bike leans against the wall outside, a silent partner, a reminder of the morning’s effort.
Coffee and cadence—both fuel different parts of me.
The Single Speed Bike Challenge isn’t about numbers or medals. It’s about proving that in a world of endless choices, sometimes the greatest strength comes from choosing less.
It’s about showing that discipline and freedom are not opposites—they are partners. The one gear disciplines you, but in that discipline, you find true freedom.
It’s about riding not just for fitness, but for meaning. Not just for yourself, but for the planet.
It’s about discovering that every 100 km solo ride is a journey inward, not just outward.
It’s about sitting in a coffee shop afterward, sipping slowly, knowing that what you just did was more than cycling—it was living deliberately.
Life itself feels like a single speed ride. There are no shortcuts, no easy gears to shift into when things get hard. You just keep pedalling. Some days the wind is against you, some days the road lifts you forward. But the objective remains:
Keep going. Keep believing. Keep riding.
One gear. One objective.
Not just on the bike, but in everything.