The Bodija Housing Estate is the oldest estate in Nigeria. It is located in Bodija, the eponymous district in Ibadan which the estate is named after. If you have been to Ibadan, you would no doubt have heard about the famous Bodija market, the primary place of petty trade for people living in Bodija and environs. But Bodija did not use to be the hotbed of Ibadan highlife until 1959, when the regional...
As we step into the new year, our mental health and overall wellbeing have to become a source of concern to us. To achieve this we have to pick up new habits and do away with old knots that may have impaired our living conditions. I decided to collate a list of 10 simple things we can do this year that can help us improve our physical and mental conditions. The best thing about this? They are really...
Ever since the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency in 2009, the world of blockchain technology has experienced a phenomenal rise in relevance within the world’s financial markets. With more companies and organizations taking a detour off traditional transactional routes, one may begin to imagine what it means for real estate markets all over the world. This...
Sometime last year, a picture of a document circulated on social media detailing the pre-conditions a landlord in Port-Harcourt gave potential tenants who intend to rent his apartment. Bizarre as it looked, that picture represents the lived experiences of a lot of Nigerians who have had to put up in rented apartments. At the workstation the other day, this came up in our conversations and some of my...
Ever since the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency in 2009, the world of blockchain technology has experienced a phenomenal rise in relevance within the world’s financial markets. With more companies and organizations taking a detour off traditional transactional routes, one may begin to imagine what it means for real estate markets all over the world. This...
The menu at Metroville has been reviewed. There are more seafood options now and the prices of everything else have gone up by a few extra digits. This development precipitates our conversations tonight. Eddie has a story about an experience with a friend in an African restaurant in Dubai many years ago. (Expensive food prices will always be hilarious to me, lol.) He says one time he was in Dubai with a...
In case you have been wondering where I have vanished along with all my office gist to, I have just been up and about my national duties as a patriotic 20-something-year-old Nigerian is required to do. The khaki life has not been easy and frankly I would really not mind doing without the “...under the sun or in the rain” part of our NYSC anthem. Anyway, I’m back to the office again and the gang at...
We are at Metroville tonight. Mallam Hassan and Mr. Cele are here earliest. We typically wait for Mallam Hassan to join us much later, and even today he didn't particularly come earlier than his usual time. Yet his arrival preceded Eddie and Tokunbo’s. (Because I like free food, I almost always arrive first.) While we are waiting for the quorum to form we try to catch up on the latest happenings in the...
Eddie called me. He wants to know how to navigate Twitter and its complicated interface. I ask him what's new, and why he suddenly wants to be active on a platform he once called “the idle people's app.” He asks me if I'm aware of his love for women. I tell him that even the devil is aware of his weakness for femininity. He says that he's getting somewhere. I ask him to go on. He...
On my first day in Abuja, I woke up at 5 A.M. to prepare for a 9 A.M. interview at Central Area. I thought that if I left Gwarimpa early enough, say, before 6 A.M., I would be able to beat the traffic and get to the venue in time. I got to the express by 6 A.M. and everywhere was deserted. Abuja was still asleep, and there was little or no traffic here. The Lagosian in me was shocked to...