Well yes, here is my story! I lived in Aremo, Ibadan, a very poor ghetto for almost 15years. Growing up, my house was the only house with a perimeter fence within a 10 mile radius. Every house in my neighborhood was in
the ‘face me, I face you’ format! Bariga is much better than where I lived, because Bariga is a hood in Lagos. Mine was a hood in the village.
I always knew I was different from my neighbors. I didn’t share their ideas, taste in music, fashion sense and general outlook of life. Do u kno that it was so bad that no girl agreed to date me because according to them I was ‘different’. At 19 I got my first job in BCOS IBADAN and moved out of my parents home into a BQ in Bodija, a much nicer area and the effect was immediate, girls understood me better and I had my first relationships.
I was now among people that shared my ideas and mentality. As soon as I was done with school, I relocated to Lagos. Let me ask you guys, how do you think I would have turned out if I didn’t upgrade my mind and friends? Or if I didn’t move out of the ghetto? Only 1 or 2 out of the 20 of us that played together as kids amounted to anything. I remember vividly the last time I saw my childhood best friend Banji, he was a bus driver and Waheed, the kid I played table tennis with, had become a VULCANIZER or Kehinde who I was very close to, is now a gravedigger.
I know this sounds funny but it’s true, these are actual people. And at least they had real jobs as most ended up living a life of crime! If my best friends had become drivers, vulcanizers and gravediggers what were my prospects if I didn’t change location? What were my chances of becoming successful? Someone sent me an insulting DM, saying to me that if I were Bill Gates I would discriminate against poor people, simply because I advised against hanging out in places of poverty. My answer was simple; “let Bill Gates move to Aremo for 15years and let’s see how well he would do there”. By poor people I don’t mean people in a state of financial depression, I mean people who are in a state of mental impoverishment.”
