One thing my great-grandmother loved most was to pray to GOD and to pray for man. On Thursday, the 17th of January, 1974, when she turned 90, I was preparing to go to work because pools houses were always busy from Thursday to Saturday. She asked me to kneel while she prayed for me. I guess she was doing that …

For the first time in several years, I found my two hands clutching each other peacefully at the back. I dared not make the mistake of unlocking them. Even when I needed to use one of them to scratch the back of my neck, I couldn’t because I was in the presence of “Senior”. In the presence of “Senior”, there …

After I was technically sacked by the Chairman of the Board of Management of “Iya Ibadan Bread Depot”, Madam Moriamoh Aṣabi Buraimoh aka Iya Ibadan, I quickly sorted myself out. By the way, what was my offence? I was accused of being distracted in my duties by extraneous activities thereby subjecting the 89 year-old Chairman to the agony of playing …

There was no time to waste. I chose to go into business immediately. I picked “Try Your Luck” as my first business venture. Though it didn’t require too much capital, I still needed like 25 shillings to start small and about one guinea (one pound, one shilling) to start big. I thought that if I went for something small, I …

I was playing ‘set’ at Paddington when my friend, Ibikunle Euba came to inform me that they were crying in my house. “Set” is a game of football that you play in turns or batches. A ‘set’ is over as soon as one of the two teams has scored the required number of goals ahead of the other. I immediately …

After arriving Lawanson on Tuesday, I didn’t go to school again for the rest of the week. The relocation was so sudden that there was no time to give any official notice to the school. Obviously, the school didn’t miss me but Red House did. I was very good in 100 and 400 metres races. I was excellent in relay …

As I picked the stone, I wasn’t sure what to do with it but the man helped me decide; he looked back and I couldn’t throw it at him again. Instead, I threw the stone back on the ground. I then “had a rapid dialogue with my two legs” (apologies WS) before there was any change in atmosphere. As I …

Alfa Ligali must be right with his Abiku deductive logic. Sometimes, I used to wonder at the kind of affection or passion I had for “street assembly”. I was the one who loved dancing to the songs of “Alumongiri”, following them around the streets, dancing to their “Babiyala” melody with harmonious delight. I was the same person who followed “Ajiwere” …

I returned from school to find out that Iya Ibadan was sick. She was down with a sudden disrespectful fever. As usual, she resisted every attempt to take her to the hospital. Not even the appeals from Baba Shaki (Mr. Adewale ) and Alhaji Raji that they should take her to Vita Chemist had any effect on her. She told …

Surulere was a bubbling area in the late 1960s and all through the 1970s. It was full of life and fun, sanity and morality, benevolence and communalism. We were never short of fun. Sometimes, we looked for it. Sometimes, it looked for us. In the morning, we would go to school but once we returned from school and had our …