In Freedom Way, writer-producer Blessing Uzzi and first-time director Afolabi Olalekan collaborate on what might be one of the most urgent and emotionally jarring portraits of Lagos life in recent Nigerian cinema. Drawing inspiration from the real-life 2020 motorcycle ban by the Lagos State Government, this debut feature transforms a single bureaucratic decision into a devastating chain of events that ripples across classes, identities and ideologies.
Through nine interconnected lives, Freedom Way stages a chaotic but arresting meditation on how Nigeria—its systems, its institutions, its absurdities—finds a way to touch everyone, no matter where they fall on the ladder of privilege.
The film opens with promise: Tayo (Ogranya Jable Osai) and Themba (Jesse Suntele), two tech entrepreneurs, have just received government approvals for their motorcycle-hailing app, Easy Go. Their optimism is palpable, their faith in the Nigerian system naive but believable. Yet within hours, their dreams are gutted by a sweeping policy ban that criminalises their entire business model. If this were a Hollywood film, that might be the main plotline. But Freedom Way is interested in more than the death of a tech startup.
From here, the film unfurls a web of interconnected stories, each character caught in the blast radius of the ban. There’s Abiola (a magnetic Debo “Mr. Macaroni” Adedayo), a commercial motorcyclist whose already-precarious livelihood dissolves overnight. His wife, Funke (Meg Otanwa), works tirelessly as a seamstress, and their mutual goal is painfully simple: to keep their daughter (Tiwalola Adebola-Walter) in school long enough to graduate. There’s also Edidiong (Mike Afolarin), the tech bros’ lawyer friend, whose disillusionment with the country runs so deep that his instinct in a crisis is to save his passport before saving his mother. And then there’s Officer Ajayi (Femi Jacobs), the film’s most grotesque embodiment of unchecked authority, a police officer so entrenched in extortion and callousness that he becomes both villain and victim.
In charting these lives, Olalekan and Uzzi create a kind of Lagos epic; one where the city itself becomes a suffocating, living organism. You don’t simply pass through Lagos in Freedom Way; it corners you, traps you, and bleeds you dry. Cinematographers Kabelo Thathe and Muhammed Attah shoot the city not with the sweeping tourist glamour synonymous with New Nollywood but with grit and intimacy. Their colour palette, dominated by earthy tones and natural light, emphasises a lived-in world. Drone shots capture the city’s sprawl without aestheticising it, and tight close-ups plunge us into the characters’ emotional claustrophobia.
What makes Freedom Way such a powerful experience is its refusal to offer comfort. While many Nigerian films exploring systemic failure feel the need to underline solutions or offer some moral clarity, Freedom Way is content to dwell in the grey. Its characters are not heroes or villains, they are people simply trying to survive. The choices they make are not always admirable, but they are understandable. When Abiola begins to blur the lines between victim and oppressor, it’s not a plot twist, it’s an inevitability. When Dr. Cheta (Taye Arimoro), a weary physician, chooses to self-preserve at the expense of his conscience, it feels less like betrayal and more like submission to a system designed to break you down.
The film’s structure—divided into four chapters named after verses of the Lord’s Prayer—adds a layer of spiritual irony. Titles like “Give Us This Day” and “Deliver Us From Evil” suggest divine intervention, but in Freedom Way, prayer is powerless against policy. This framing device is rich in symbolism, even if it doesn’t fully integrate into the narrative. There’s a sense that the film flirts with theological and existential commentary but ultimately pulls back, perhaps not wanting to drown in its own ambition.
That ambition, however, is both the film’s strength and occasional weakness. The narrative’s web of interconnected characters, while thematically resonant, sometimes strains credulity. Coincidences pile up. Paths cross with narrative neatness that doesn’t always feel earned. At times, you can feel the writers pulling strings to ensure everyone fits within the same picture. The emotional logic holds, but the realism frays.
Another noticeable shortcoming is the film’s gender imbalance. While women are certainly present— Temi (Teniola Aladese), and Officer Ajayi’s superior (Bimbo Akintola) all have their moments—they are rarely given the same narrative agency or interiority as their male counterparts. Their arcs are more reactive than active, serving to anchor or reflect the crises of men. In a city where women navigate layers of marginalisation, this feels like a missed opportunity.
Still, what Freedom Way achieves far outweighs its flaws. It understands Lagos, not just its geography, but its psyche. It captures the Kafka-esque absurdities of trying to live with dignity in a place where hospitals require police reports before administering care, where entrepreneurial energy is punished instead of harnessed, where corruption isn’t a bug in the system but the very operating logic.
One of the most harrowing scenes comes not from violence or death, but from bureaucracy: a hospital refuses to treat a patient without an official document, and the process of getting that document becomes a journey through red tape and inhumanity.
The performances, while uneven in a few places, mostly land. Mr. Macaroni, better known for his comedic work, delivers a career-best performance as Abiola, capturing a man unraveling under pressure with remarkable nuance. Femi Jacobs is a standout as Officer Ajayi, imbuing the role with enough charisma to make his villainy all the more chilling. Mike Afolarin’s Edidiong brings a quiet, simmering desperation that mirrors a generation on the edge.
The film’s final chapter, “Amen,” leans a bit too hard into sentimentality, threatening to dilute the sting of what came before. It’s not that Freedom Way ends on a hopeful note, rather, it gestures at closure in a way that feels too neat for a film otherwise defined by mess and uncertainty. Still, even this softer turn doesn’t negate the film’s central thesis: in Nigeria, hope is fragile, fleeting, and almost always costly.
Freedom Way is not a perfect film, but it is an essential one. It offers no comfort, no illusions, and certainly no policy prescriptions. What it offers instead is clarity: a raw, pulsating look at how a single policy can set off a chain reaction of despair, and how ordinary people—flawed, frightened, but endlessly resourceful—keep moving through it.
As a debut, it marks Afolabi Olalekan as a filmmaker of vision and courage, unafraid to confront the systemic rot that defines daily life for millions. He is definitely one to look out for.
In the end, Freedom Way doesn’t just tell us that the Nigerian system fails you. It shows us how and why, and dares us to keep watching.
*** Joseph Jonathan is a film journalist and critic whose work explores the intersections of history, culture and film
