Episode 1: Small Dreams

I grew up in a place in Lagos where over 70% of the people did not know the past tense of “grow up”. Some people might tell me to grow up and not write this way about people, but how do you appreciate where I am now without understanding where I come from? I come from a place where the people did not have a direction for their lives, they just took whatever life threw at them. A place where the people took what did not belong to them, and belonged to gangs that took everything from them. A place where being a tout was seen as very lucrative, and people rarely engaged in anything educative. A place where the men had no vehicle moving them towards a cause, but had mastered the course of jumping down from moving vehicles. Fun fact: I’m a boss when it comes to jumping down from a moving bus. A place where people only built themselves by lifting weights, and going past secondary school was a burden.

I am the real definition of “local”. The hospital where I was born is just a small canal away from the secondary school I attended, and a walking distance from where I lived. Funnily, after I got a good job and married, that was the area I still lived. In fact, till the last minute I left Nigeria, it was in Surulere I lived, yes Surulere! I struggled for a long time with mentioning the secondary school I attended in public. Actually, my secondary school is a very public school that is so public that other public schools used to call us “those public school students”. Ok, I attended Ansar-U-Deen High School Falolu.

Lucky Events

Both at home and in school, I was not really surrounded by dreamers, and the environment wasn’t even conducive for dreaming. Throughout my Senior Secondary II (SS2), we did not have a physics teacher, and all through my SS1 to 3, we did not have a further maths teacher. I had school mates who would wait outside after school hours to beat the teachers, and those who would bring their tout elder brothers or neighbors to school fights. Oh yes we had intra and inter school fights — fights between SS1 and 2, JSS3 (Junior Secondary School) and SS1 and so on; fights between my school and other public schools where on several occasions I had to escape through the class window alongside my other classmates and teachers.

We had teachers who beat for fun, oh I can never forget Alhaji. If flogging was a course, Alhaji would be the school. Teachers would even rent him to help them beat students. There was a time he was going to beat 3 students arguing about football in class, of course I was one of them. He asked us to name our favorite footballer, I said Okocha, the other guy mentioned Kanu and Vitalis said Andriy Shevchenko. Little did we know that the letters in the names we called were going to determine how many strokes of cane we would receive. People taught I was crying while receiving my 6 strokes, but I was really crying for Vitalis. Still, for some weird reasons, I had an unrealistic dream of becoming a mechanical engineer and working for John Holt. I was a dreamer, a big one! Maybe this was fueled by the series of lucky antecedents I had.

My maths teacher once smuggled me into a group of 10 students to represent the school in a quiz competition. Of course I did not merit it. All I was to do was to sit in the audience all through, cheering. The students were super smart, and only a few questions will slip through the candidates to the audience. I had no clue to the questions that came to the audience, even after taking it home. My dream was to be able to answer a question that came to the audience so other smart guys in the hall could even see me as a smart guy too. Luckily for my school, we got to the final and the organizers announced that there would be gifts on the final day for anyone in the audience that correctly answered any question. The questions were super hard and I wasn’t even sure if they were secondary school topics. So the very last question of the competition came to the audience and I saw people who had taken their time to solve the maths problem raise their hands and still miss it. I raised my hand too just to look smart but unfortunately, the moderator called me to answer. To be very honest, I did not even hear the question. The hall was silent and all eyes were on me. Saying “no idea” would ruin my reputation for life because why did I even raise my hands. I did not also want to say an illogically wrong answer and look super stupid. Well, I just decided to call any number that came to my head, so I said “250”. And the moderator shouted “that’s the correct answer!”

That event changed my life forever and made me even dream more — at least if I dream, I might get lucky and see it become a reality. While in SS2 I dreamed of getting 5 Cs in the core subjects (Maths, English, Chemistry, Biology and Physics) in my GCE, this rarely happened in my school or the street where I lived. I even made my first vow in church to God that I was going to give 200 naira if I could get 5 Cs. I felt I might get lucky, so I changed it and said I’ll give N200 If I could get 7 Cs out of 9 subjects. I wasn’t ready to part ways with a whole N200, haha! I told my grandma about the vow and without context she prayed about it. The result was out and behold I had 9 out of 9 (with an A in maths and Bs in Physics and Geography). My grandma heard about it and made sure I followed through with my vow. In my WAEC, I decided to register for further maths, despite that I neither knew nor read about any topic, and yeah I did not get an “F”.

Call to Bar

After I was done with secondary school, I did not get admission into the university immediately. I only knew of about 2 people that had gotten admission to the university — the most inspiring one was Lagos State University (LASU). I had a discussion with the 2 people and they told me not to aim for top schools like Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) or UNILAG, that I should aim for lower schools such as Olabisi Onabanjo University(OOU), University of Ado Ekiti (UNAD) or even the ones in the north. They also advised me not to go for top courses such as mechanical or electrical engineering, that I should try maybe Agric Engineering or even a course in Education. Then this became my dream — to just enter any university and I can always change my course later. Then things became tighter at home — we barely had enough to eat, and I watched my mum (a widow and mother of 3 boys) start selling off her clothes and belongings so we could feed and pay for education. This broke my heart and I would spend days just crying secretely. As the first born and acting father that needed to raise the bar, I decided to step in and literally raise the bar — I got a job at a bar!

I now had enough money to live part of my dream. I always dreamed of eating 50 naira worth of Suya all alone, go to an eatery and eat food with plenty meat while sipping a bottle of malt, go to a Game Center and play more than 5 games…..I achieved all. I was able to give my mum some money too, buy food in the house etc. Then one day, a half-drunk guy called me and told me that he sees me doing great things and would want me to leave this job and go to school. You’ll be surprised to know that God can speak to you even in a beer parlor. His words struck me, coupled with what my mum had been saying too and the fact that I was getting distracted, I decided to quit and face my studies. I started teaching children and getting paid in my area and also took on a teaching job at a private primary school. I saved up and bought the book that changed my life forever — no it’s not “rich dad poor dad”, it’s Engineering Mathematics by KA Stroud.

The ‘Differentiating’ Book

I read that book cover to cover and I became a further mathematics guru in a few months, yeah I taught myself. I started a pre-degree program thanks to support from my aunt and uncle. My dream getting to the program was to just go to class, read, pass and start my degree. It seemed like a big dream knowing that my score was among the lowest in the entrance exam and the program was filled with people that went to really good schools, smart guys that had even gotten admission into some other universities but just wanted this university in particular, children from wealthy homes, guys that had represented their states in debate and quiz competitions, students that had all As in their WAEC (I did not even know it was possible).

In a few weeks, I saw that people started coming to me to help them solve not just mathematics, but Physics, Chemistry and even English problems. Some of these people also did everything to be my friend — girls and guys. At the end of the program, I was among the top students in the Engineering stream and got into Obafemi Awolowo University to study Mechanical Engineering. it started as a small dream, now it’s here!

Read next episode here >>> Episode 2: Medium Dreams