Here, you go to a restaurant, they say it’s a family business and it’s been in the family since 19 gbogboro.
The other day, I stopped by a small natural honey store in a village outside Ottawa. Small talk with the avuncular owner. Oh, it’s been in the family since 1916.
Everywhere I turn to, there is a small store owner, a small business owner telling me that his great grandfather started the business, passed it down to his grandfather who passed it to his father who passed it to him.
Or some small business passed down from a great great grandmother to the millennial now grinning behind the counter.
Then I think of home. Every buka, every bookshop, every printing press, every bakery, every small business that defined my childhood from Isanlu to Kabba to Egbe to Ilorin has died.
From Ibadan to Lagos to Ondo town to Abuja to kaduna to Sokoto, every small business that defined my adult years before I left Nigeria is dead.
Woye Press in Ilorin – where is it?
Where is Ade Super bread in Ondo town?
Where is Atoto Press in Ilorin?
My life as a youth corper in Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, would have been miserable without Ade Super bread.
Of all the bukatarias I frequented in Ibadan, only Inastrait is still there struggling…
There is hardly a Nigerian who can point to a restaurant anywhere in that country and say – my grandfather used to eat here when he was a young man…
Credit: Pius Adesanmi, Facebook