The ceiling is way higher.

Coming from a school where 80% of the students, even the computer science ones, were straight up computer illiterate. I had the drive, I knew I wanted this, but the standard around me was so low I genuinely didn't know how far I could take software engineering until much later.

I look at some of these Unilag tech guys now and there's this specific kind of envy. Not "I wish I had their opportunities" envy. More like, I wish I had people to look up to where I was. People whose work I could stumble on and go "wait, this is insane, how do I get here."
Because that's what a good environment actually gives you. Not talent, not shortcuts. A ceiling you can see past. When almost nobody around you is pushing past the basics, "good" becomes whatever the room accepts. You don't know you're underselling yourself because there's no one there to show you otherwise.

I built what I know without that. No senior dev down the hall, no cohort of people shipping insane side projects to compare notes with. Just me, figuring out on my own what "far" was supposed to look like, usually by finding it online months or years after someone else already knew.

I'm not writing this for sympathy. I'm writing it because I think there are a lot of people who went to schools like mine, who had the drive too, and just never found out how big the ceiling actually was. If that's you, the ceiling is way higher than your school ever showed you. Go find it.