confessions of a city crawler- WHO IS ADETOKUNBO ADEMOLA

I hate to name drop but it is absolutely necessary to this story.

I played kabu kabu to one of Naija’s finest young creatives/entrepreneur who happens to be a personal friend, Clarence peters, our destination was gwarinpa housing estate in Abuja and our mission was to find the residence of Charles oputa, popularly or fondly known as charly boy. Big deal u might say, but not so fast. My people, if u know gwarinpa well, good for u, but if u don’t you will find yourself missing road because it is a contradiction of streets, avenues and crescents and you fit loss. I was beginning to get irritable when Clarence a typical Lagos boy who did not have the address of the house, looked at me incredulously when I said I did not know where charly boys house was. I parked by the side of the road so I could vent properly, when he politely asked a passerby, ‘excuse me, do u know the way to charly boys house? ’ to my surprise, the guy, without missing a beat or pausing to think, gave us a concise description of where the house was. I was a bit surprised but not as surprised as when having a bit of difficulty (due to my slowie nature with directions) we had to enquire several times about directions, everyone knew exactly where the house was, I was not only pleasantly surprised but thrilled.

I am in no way fit to write about charly boy, I have perused and perused his website, I have read through old articles on him and his work both in music (PMAN) and with the community(Area fada, Bikers, coalition for change) and I can boldly say that we do not appreciate talent in this country. I have never had the pleasure of meeting this enigma but since it was announced that we were having him as a guest at GAP I decided to read a little about him and the work he is doing and I was very impressed. A lot of people are quick to dismiss him because of his defiant personality but before you do that, did u know that he went to Harvard? Ah hah now I got your attention. He is a pioneer amongst us young people. Long before artiste and young people as a whole were allowed to express themselves freely in language and dress sense or follow their dreams, charley boy broke all the rules and is still breaking them, rare and odd seeing that he was born to an illustrious father justice oputa (of the oputa panel fame- whatever happened with the reports I wonder?)

I have always been a propagator for young entrepreneurs, and people being more expressive, but long before, even in the face of censorship and ridicule, charly boy never stood down or bowed to the norm and that different way of doing things has taken him places without ever having being referred to as his father’s son. Not a lot of us are that brave. It is important that you don’t miss the meaning of this blog, its not written to praise charly boy, it is not written to encourage deviant behaviour but I write this to say that we should stop censoring ourselves and making excuses like my mother will never let me, or I’m from a disadvantaged home or state. Censorship not only kills creativity it keeps u on your butt making excuses. Take charge.

For those of you that are not aware, there is a global recession that has hit the world hard, Nigeria was already plagued by unemployment, so you can imagine the situation now. we hope it get better but news flash, there are no jobs. Wr concept has designed a YPIBIZ(young people in business) network for young individuals with good ideas and concrete business plans to put their ideas to good use and build up businesses that will not only take them out of the job search market but take fellow young people out of the market as well. Key into it and im sure you will find that you too can make a difference, and someday soon, maybe ill be writing a blog about you.
Goodluck.

P.S- i know who adetokunbo ademola is and i think he was pretty cool.