11/12/2025
STORY TIME
*Life Hacks*
At Felele, back in the days when the street was still red dust and open gutters, two compound houses sat almost opposite each other like rival kingdoms.
To the left was the house of Baba Alalade — a civil servant with a loud laugh and a louder heart. He and his wife raised four boys: Tunde, Femi, Seun, and Lanre. From the time the boys could walk, their father dragged them into the street life. “Go and play,” he would say. “Go and know everybody.”
Every child on the street, rich or poor, had their birthday marked on Baba Alalade’s calendar. When the day came, one of the four boys would appear at your door with a gift wrapped in old newspaper: six glass-bottle Coca-Cola, a pack of Okin biscuits, a packet of Bic biro, sometimes a single Sweet Sensation meat pie still warm. It didn’t matter if your father was a professor or a vulcaniser; you got the same gift and the same wide smile.
Because of this, the Alalade house was never empty. Hungry boys came to eat. Thieves came to steal mangoes and left with full bellies and half-hearted repentance. Area boys came to fight and ended up playing football on the Alalades’ front yard. The four boys grew up tasting every flavour of humanity — the sweet, the bitter, the dangerous, the loyal, funny, wicked. They knew who owed school fees, who had a sick mother, who could fix a punctured football with candle wax and pure genius. By the time they were teenagers, they could speak three languages: English, Yoruba, and Street.
Across the street lived the Oyenoworoyes. Tall gate, high fence, German shepherd that barked like the end of the world. Three boys and one girl — Tobi, Shade, Kunle, and Demola. Their father was a banker, their mother a principal. In that house the motto was simple: Read your books. Speak Queen’s English. Do not cross the gate unless it is to school or church. The children did not know the name of the next street. They did not know Kunle who sold second-hand tyres, or Sikiru the footballer with one bad knee, or Iya Basira who fried the best puff-puff in Olorunsogo. When the Alalade boys passed by on their way to buy garri, the Oyenowo children watched from behind curtains and whispered, “Those ones have no future ambition.”
Years rolled on. Both families sent their children to the same primary school, same secondary, same university, yet the wall between them only grew taller. The Alalades knew every conductor on the bus route and could borrow money from the mai-guard. The Oyenowo sat in front with the driver, headphones on, noses in textbooks.
Then life began to bite.
Mama Alalade lost her teaching job. She turned the boys’ old playroom into a provision store right there in the neighbourhood. The four boys — now men — became her unofficial staff. Tunde drove the delivery bike. Femi managed the accounts. Seun charmed the market women into supplying on credit. Lanre, the youngest, still 30 today, could sell sand to the desert. Everybody knew “Aunty Alalade store.” Everybody greeted the boys by name. Life was hard, but it was loud and warm and full of people.
For the Oyenowo, the grades were excellent, the certificates shiny. But the day NYSC finished, reality landed like a slap. No uncles in Shell, no family friend in the bank, no former classmate who could dash them a job. Just four children and their parents inside that tall gate, speaking Queen’s English to one another while Lagos and Abuja swallowed résumés and spat nothing back. Insecurity crept in. They ran abroad for masters degrees they didn’t particularly want, just to postpone the silence of the real world.
Then Baba Alalade died.
The burial became legend.
From every corner of Lagos, from London, from Atlanta, from the motor parks and the markets, they came. Kunle arrived in a Lexus, belly big, gold chain heavy, now the biggest importer of Tokunbo engines in Alaba. Sikiru the footballer came with his Premier League medal hidden under his dansiki — bad knee and all. The boy who used to steal mangoes now owned three houses in Magodo. The girl who used to cry because her mother was sick now flew in as a consultant gynaecologist. They brought cows, they brought drummers, they brought stories that made the women weep and the men roar with laughter.
The whole street shut down. It was the biggest reunion felele had ever seen.
That night, during the wake, the Oyenowo house was dark and quiet.
Their father came home late, tie loosened, eyes red from palm wine and memory. He gathered his four children in the parlour and spoke in the same Queen’s English they had all perfected.
“I was at Baba Alalade’s wake-keeping,” he began. “Do you know I saw that boy you used to call ‘no future ambition’? The one who brought Coke and biscuits to everybody? He’s a director in a telecoms company now. Another one owns half the buses running ibadan to abuja to maiduguri . The thief that used to climb their fence for mangoes and almonds now has a warehouse in Ladipo. The footballer boy has a football academy in Ibadan.”
He paused and looked at his children — polished, brilliant, lonely.
“I am richer than Baba Alalade ever was,” he said quietly. “I have more degrees on my wall. But if I die tomorrow, this street will not miss a beat. Nobody will shut down the road for me. Nobody will cry the way they cried for him today.”
He stood up, walked to the door and opened it. Music and laughter from the Alalade compound floated in like a challenge.
“Go outside,” he told his children. “Go and find those boys you looked down on. Apologise. Drink with them. Cry with them. Fight with them if you have to. Make mistakes and fix them. Borrow money and pay back. Love people and let them love you back — even when they disappoint you.”
He looked at them one last time.
“Life is not a certificate. Life is people. And people are out there — right now — remembering a man who taught his children how to belong to the world.”
The gate stayed open that night.
And for the first time in thirty years, light from the Alalade compound spilled all the way across the street and touched the Oyenowo house.
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*True life story and let not be too important or more value than others only God know future of a man.*
*Aku ipalemo Ódún, Ódún ayò ni a ó sé ó.🙏🏿*
