Memoirs of a Lagos City Hustler (LCH) - Part 7 #LCH

Part 7......

Let me take you all back memory lane, I was kind of a bully in primary school, I'd always play the thief in "police and thief" and the "police" were scared to catch me. My school bag weighed nothing less than 30kg with stitches that served as war scars, my understanding maths 1-6, brighter grammar, queen's premier, 

Macmillan English, all my notes from primary 1-5 were always in my bag and I would cry anytime my mum asked me to remove them. I remember taking at least 15 sharpened pencils to common entrance. I had my brown bata cortina and my Wednesday canvas.

This must be Kennedy and his cronies from way back! hahaha

I remember agbo, edet, wakama and odion, ada, ali and simbi etc, playing that game of opening pages and counting the number of people on the pages, table soccer, baba dudu, sisi pupa, plucking 'fruint', mangoes and apples, inventing things out of nothing, renting bicycles, nicking coins from our parents(we all did that, chai)! I had fun spending holidays with cousins or at the village, going on excursions, watching kiddie vision, waiting for 4pm for TV to come on; clapperboard was the best movie station, telematch, gboro miro, Sunday rendezvous. Such fun memories from the days of parlie soda, limca, tandi, dr pepper, ginger ale, Christmas clothes, cupboard TVs, daewoo racer, spin dial telephones etc

All these were just primary school experiences, some of us had more fun than others but we all had fun......what happened to all that?! Guess we got too busy growing up. Now I flip News channels and all I see is some bad news in Syria, Egypt or turkey or some train and plane crash. The environment is not friendly let alone subtle for we entrepreneurs. They say we(entrepreneurs) contribute mostly to the GDP of the country yet the dividends are hardly visible. We invest so much money, time, driving, bus jumping, backaches and headaches just to break even. Most of our '9-5' colleagues that envy the amount of time that we have to ourselves are the same that mock us when we ask them for loans. The Government isn't doing much about loans and incentives(how would they when they are busy stockpiling for the next election). Just a week back, I was pissed at Mofolusade (what! is Kennedy taking a shot at me, on my own platform?!) for spanking her boys because they refused to sleep, then I thought to myself; if I was out hustling all day and came home deadbeat and some 'fingerlings'(Na you go born fingerlings!) were running round the study while I was trying to calculate my daily expenditure, I'd probably kick them with a timberland boot.

But the honest truth is; we had fun in Primary(and some till university days) and now we decided to work our 'donkeys' off by ourselves while slowly gathering clients and a network of friends in order to build an empire for ourselves. When we all retire(ourselves and our 9-5 colleagues), they would be living off pensions and begging to invest in our businesses while we are on vacation with our laptops split between bloomberg and skype sessions with our staff and the accounts manager on speed dial to confirm cheques. If you are an entrepreneur struggling now, all you have to do is believe in your struggle and see it through. This we will do! No giving up. No sob stories about government and the environment to hold us back.

Its a Monday after-all, I'm outta here....the street is calling my native name. You can always follow and check out my favorite tweets on @4Qhen(I can't assure you sanity, maturity or responsibility though) like they say, I'm responsible for what I say not what you understand.