I never had a mentor, I needed one but never had.
I will be 30 in June.


CHAPTER 1. In the Begining


In the beginning I was laying on the excessively sandy synthetic carpet in my room; I’m a great thinker and until I got up, I was doing just that. I am obsessed with thinking and I was good at it. Out of the 36 states of Nigeria I had just thought out and decided where I wanted to settle down so I got up from the carpet, dusted the sand off my bare body and went outside to make the call.

My brother had just finished his Industrial training at FCDA and had made some contacts in Abuja which I could really use. These contacts could influence where I will be posted for my upcoming NYSC program. After making the call I was told to raise N20,000 for the process.

The following day or so if I’m not mistaken I quickly ran to my bank, then FinBank to empty my domiciliary account where I had remnants of foreign currency I had lost while trading FOREX; next stop was Hotel Presidential where I changed the money to Naira from a FOREX vendor a friend had introduced to me some time ago. The next task was to locate any branch of Bank PHB where I needed to deposit the money for my Abuja contact to start processing my NYSC posting. The nearest Bank PHB was at Trans-Amadi Industrial Layout so guess what; I went there.
With only N20,000 on me I called my contact and informed him that I had only N20,000 and I was going to deposit N19,000 instead; he agreed and I went ahead with the deposit of N19,000.

Afterwards I did the same postings for a couple of my friends making N5,000 profit from each of them; all went well except one and up till this day I don’t know why. When I confronted my contact about it he had no explanation and the burden of repaying the money was solely on me. A brother later revealed to me that when doing “Runs” for a large number of candidates some candidates will be used as sacrificial lambs. I didn’t know this before did u?

In July 2009 I was posted to Lagos for my NYSC as planned; I chose to come to Lagos because of one of my numerous Inventions I had developed just in case you are wondering; I didn’t come here because I wanted to work in Shell I graduated with a 2nd Class lower 3.17 CGPA.
Lagos is a city where ideas thrived, at least that was my ideology about the city; especially considering the fact that I am a “Thinkerholic”. I didn’t know anybody in Lagos so I didn’t know where I would stay. So my mom arranged for me to stay with one of my distant cousin and his wife in Ikeja area of Lagos.

So on the 19th of July I drove myself with my brother in the car so he could take the car back home so I could board a Lagos bound bus. At Eliozu junction close to ABC Motor Park in Port Harcourt a convoy of mobile police men were trying to clear traffic for their usually noisy convoy and they wanted me to stop for their convoy which was still two poles away. My brother challenged the Mopol and he pointed his gun at us to stop; that was the first and only time someone put a gun in my face. When they had passed I cautioned him to keep his superman attitude for use only when he is alone and shouldn’t endanger my life like this again. I just graduated and here I am going for my NYSC to serve my country, and She’s already pointing guns at me; this is crazy.

When my bus was ready we left Port Harcourt for Lagos. The bus was very cold because of the Air Conditioning and I was wearing just a T shirt. I never knew somewhere along the journey my excitement will momentarily give way for tears; yes I cried later in the journey because I was leaving home. I never saw this coming but I guess it’s what the love within does to you and don’t bother trying to control it because you just can’t.

I maintained contact with my cousin who was to pick me ones I got to Lagos and I remember seeing a stone wall beside the road as our bus made its way. The way the wall was constructed was beautiful and I wondered why so much effort was put in trying to beautify a road in the middle of nowhere. Our bus made a few stops and I couldn’t wait to get off the bus each time just to catch a sun bath because the Air Conditioning was freezing cold. After the stop we all boarded the bus again and went on our way. Did I mention that we were served jellof rice and chicken in the bus? Yes o!.

As we drove by, you could see different accident wreckage beside the road and some inside the bush and each had its own unique story to tell. Some were burnt and others were just too far tangled that the owners just abandoned them in the woods. Probably because the cost of salvaging the wreck will by far surpass any value still left in the vehicle.

When we approached Lagos at about 9;00pm one could begin to appreciate the lights and level of modernization that presented itself from the redeemed camp axis, so I immediately called my cousin to inform him of our location. When we got to Berger in Lagos my cousin was there waiting for me; because we didn’t know each other, he kept calling my name when ever any ABC bus stops to drop passengers; so that’s how he located me when we finally arrived.

He then took me down some steps to where he had parked his car earlier and we drove to his house where his wife was waiting. The following day I joined them about their daily business in the city and that later included stopping at a market to buy some items we felt I would need in the NYSC camp.

The next day I was dropped off in camp and immediately I passed through the security checks at the gate I preceded into the camp proper and almost immediately unto the parade ground where corpers had started to assemble. I remember calling a former course mate who also got posted to Lagos and he confirmed he was also present in camp. After the usuals, I proceeded to secure my room and bed. I got a very spectacular NYSC code number (1000). This number had so many advantages; one being that it was almost impossible to hear my code number 1000 called whenever there was a problem. I always heard other complicated numbers but never 1000. Also I get noticed whenever my code number was called during attendance or group calls, it was a special feeling I swear.

Yes I joined the Road safety club in camp because I wanted to get their ID card with which I could drive in the streets of Lagos; because I had heard of the exploits of the much dreaded LATSMA officials on Lagos roads so I felt the Road Safety ID Card would get me out of LATSMA wahala whenever I get into their net. Although it took several weeks if not months before the ID card finally got to me but it served its purpose I swear again.

For four days I didn’t use the lavatory in Camp, I may have weighed 80kg I guess instead of my usual 75kg. After day 4 my bowel couldn’t hold it any longer and I did it. Subsequent I tried minimizing the number of times I use the Lavatory in Camp; a practice that disorganized my entire system. I can’t explain exactly what happened to my system but I think my ability to control my bowel started to diminish. My system took few months after camp to correct itself.

While I was in Camp some sharp corpers who were more focused had started preparing their CV and that woke me up from my CV slumber. Everybody wanted to be posted to Shell or Mobil and no one wanted to teach. I was especially careful not to injure myself in camp because if I did I wouldn’t be posted to a place of primary assignment; and that is adding salt to the injury of 2nd class lower. So I carefully and jejely selected the type of physical activities I engaged in; if it was slightly dangerous I just “waka pass”.

I was posted to a software outfit somewhere on Allen Avenue; so after Camp, my cousin and his wife took me in search of the mysterious company. It took us almost one hour to locate the premises because the address was within another address if you know what I mean. I was imagining what my future will hold if I walk through the valley of the shadow of this firm. As I made my way down the corridor, there was a staff sleeping on his desk and that was the first sign that I don’t belong here. So I was sure by now that I needed to be rejected at the firm so that it could pave way for me to be reposted to another company; one that my cousin could arrange. So, on my next appointment I gave reasons why I should be rejected and my reasons were accepted.

With my rejection letter and request letter from the other company I was able to secure my reposting. The new company was a privately owned Oil Servicing Company somewhere in Opebi and I could give anything to serve there. I was desperate; the wait between the rejection from the software firm and the reposting to my dream company was difficult. I prayed a lot for God to intervene in the matter.

Finally my reposting came back and I was posted accordingly. I was happy, it was not comparable to the Shell and Mobil everybody dreamt of, but it was a fantastic place for an Engineer to start and I was very happy.

My first days at Oil Servicing firm were very challenging as my Boss would always test me on various Engineering task to see how I performed and each time I exceeded his expectations. I was a wizard when it came to designing things and I was also good at computer programming. The tasks never really translated to any profit for the company but I enjoyed every bit of the challenge. He put me through all the aspects of Engineering tests he could possibly think of, and I delivered beyond his wildest imaginations. I was a genius in his own words; He ones referred to me as “The Kid on the Block” not “The new kid on the Block”. I got all these feedback through my cousin just in case you were wondering.

This guy can write!!
Jeez!!
*i dey follow this topic just the way peter follow jesus*

Wonderful story. The nysc in lagos part caught my eye sharp sharp. I wish I had a contact so I can go for nysc in lagos. I really need it. Please, Is your contact still active?

@keiry my contact is no longer active o! I wish it was I would have loved to assist you.
Regards!

the slow response is not encouraging me to paste more of my story so I'm just writing it on my laptop till further notice.
Cheers!

I wasn’t s sure what the company did to make money, the only clue was the usual definition which we had to cram whenever we had a presentation to make somewhere. The saying goes thus; …is an Indigenous Engineering and Construction and business solutions provider company… and in the course of my service year the company did the following; Man power Outsourcing, sales and servicing of fire extinguishers, Safety Case, FSRMS-Facility Safety Reliability Management System was a management system I developed from using a downloaded Mapping software and integrating an AutoCad layout of any facility with which one could access every aspect of a facility which included parametric data, pictures and even video; but the flaw was that none of this information could be displayed live. To achieve a live feedback from your facility, we needed to incorporate sensors including cameras and feed same into the computer before the FSRMS could be plugged in. Unfortunately my wizardry had gotten to its limit and we didn’t have the structure to fuel such a venture.

We were also involved in jetty construction by proxy so I never saw the project; I only heard about it as the project went on. For two years I was not involved with any profit yielding venture for the company but I was my boses favorite and that made me very uncomfortable. It meant that my days of favoritism could be numbered because if my job was not directly bringing any profit for the company how long will I remain relevant.

The services I was involved with were FSRMS which was not a conventional service offered in the downstream sector where most of our clients belonged. It was very difficult to sell; infact we literally forced it on one of our clients taking advantage of the fact that my boss’s wife was one of the directors.

The other service I was involved with was servicing of fire extinguisher and just like before we could only offer this service to our client inlaw. To make matters worse the company procured one very expensive machine from Germany used for servicing powder fire extinguishers and mounted it on a very expensive truck. The combined cost was over ten million naira and we used it to service one extinguisher for less than fifteen thousand naira. And just like before we only had one client; our client inlaw.
If you are conversant with powder extinguisher you will know that they service them every six month so like you can deduce, that truck came out ones every six months to service a handful of extinguishers. It takes us almost a week to service a handful of extinguishers whereas our igbo brothers at Orile would do it in a day at three thousand naira for each. It got to a point we started using our ten million naira rig to take the extinguishers to those igbo guys at Orile to service for us. It got to a point we removed the machine from the truck so that we could use the extra space to pick and drop these extinguishers every six months.

Do you know how it feels knowing that your sweat is not what pays your salary? It’s a very scary feeling. To make matters better we got our salary on the 15th of every month and Biscuit and Beverage were shared every Monday morning. I had a colleague who had started her NYSC service three or four months before I did and the first question she asked me the first day she saw me was “are you shy”. Who answers that type of question?

There was another colleague from rivers state who was the Operations Excellence Officer (OEO), whatever that means. The three of us were supposed to sit in the same office but the so called Operations Excellence Officer kept trying all he could to make sure I don’t stay in the same office with them; not until he needed me to teach him AutoCAD. For months I had no table of my own so I had to share the Ladies table with her. This arrangement kept our faces just 3feet from each other from morning till we closed for the day; don’t ever try this at home because it can make enemies become lovers. I was waiting for the structure on ground to provide my own office table but that never happened; I had to salvage a table from the store down stairs and got a carpenter to fix it to a manageable state.

There was a tradition of celebrating employee birthdays in the company and we had just celebrated the birthday of the Head of Engineering this August, an elderly man with so much Engineering Experience; he had spent most of his youthful life in Germany. We also had an accountant who was also standing in for a couple of underground companies operating from the same office complex.

We celebrated the end of year at a guest house somewhere off Opebi road and I learnt that the previous year was celebrated at Sheraton Hotel if I remember correctly. For people like me this meant that the company was already on a nose dive before I joined them. But who am I to question the direction of flight when I am just here for my NYSC.

On business development, myself and my female colleague would set out in the company truck to visit companies to promote our services, and being new to the streets of Lagos I would ask my female colleague if she knew exactly where we were going to and she will reassure me that she knew the way that I should just drive. My brother as soon as we get to Maryland that’s when she would start asking me if I knew the way. This story is funny now but it was not funny at all then.