It’s time to go back to the basics. We have to go back to that old landmark where we let people know that working hard and growing progressively should be the norm. Parents, preachers, and leaders of our communities need to emphasise that unexplained or sudden wealth is not acceptable. We need to make people, especially the younger ones, understand that life is in phases and anything that will last will take time.
I usually tell people that I bought the land where my house is in Ibadan in 2006. I bought it for three hundred thousand naira at that time. It cost me all my life savings. For a long time after I bought that land, I couldn’t afford anything else. Then, I laid out a plan to build. I did the survey of the plot. I did the architectural drawing. I got it approved, and after a long time, I went on a hiatus.
It took my neighbour, an elderly man who is my father’s friend, to encourage me to do it in bits and pieces. Thankfully, he offered me one of the rooms in his own building to store my cement and other valuables. He also sat with the workers to supervise the materials they used.
I would collect my salary and buy 200 blocks in one month. The following month, I would add another 200 blocks. I would buy planks in another month and relax for a couple of months as I struggled to pay my fees for my MBA, support my younger siblings and my family. I struggled to raise the building to the lintel level.
I recall that I would drive to the site and admire the lintel. I was proud of myself. I can’t forget the struggle to roof the building. After I roofed it, I would sit under the open roof for hours, imagining the completed building. I had no other source of income at that time apart from my salary, and my wife was a school teacher then.
The big break I had was when I wanted to plaster the building, and my benefactor, the late Mrs Modupe Sobodu, gave me 150 bags of cement, for which I paid in two instalments. I asked for 100 bags but she gave me 150. I thought it was excess then but the architect who supervised my project wanted to con me. I ended up plastering the house twice because he didn’t do conduit-wiring before plastering the building.
There's nothing wrong with growing little by little. It took me seven good years to build a bungalow. Our younger people need to be taught the value of honesty, hard work, and patience. Share on XHe sent me pictures indicating that my fence was completed, and without informing him, I drove to the site (I had been transferred to Lagos then) only to discover that the pictures he sent were just one side taken from different angles. He is right here and will read this. I completed that house in 2013.
It took me seven good years to build a bungalow. It wasn’t a duplex. I live there now, debt-free. I remember the joy on my parents’ faces when I brought them there to see the building after I completed it. My father prayed his heart out and laid hands on all the walls of the building.
I tell people that if anyone knocks on my door, I’m glad to open it because I owe no one. I don’t bite beyond what I can chew. I am not in a competition with anybody except myself. I am running my own race.
There’s nothing wrong with growing little by little. Progressive growth is the best kind of growth. As long as you’re not stagnant, you’re making progress.
Our younger people need to be taught the value of honesty, hard work, and patience. They also need more role models who can show that it’s possible to make an honest living. We need to go back to the basics.