SURVIVING LAGOS : EPISODE II

Hey Y'all and welcome to another episode of the surviving Lagos series. Hope you can relate. Enjoy

2. Be yourself: Please know that being yourself is the one and only thing you should be. You don’t want to be known as a fake person. Do you all realize that being someone else is really tiring and difficult because know this WHAT YOU START YOU MUST FINISH. Back in secondary school when you are rude to a senior student they would tell you amidst killing you o “you are feeling rude, feel rude to the end”.

I)  I guess everyone knows the example I would give in this column. ACCENT OOOOOOO!!!. When I saw everyone, I mean everyone, every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane has an accent. Even those that I know their family history would be speaking rubbish because they now live in Lagos, the land of the fakes. My dear beautiful Lagosians WHY? Why do you keep doing this? It is not fair to others and to you. Sad part is that people don’t realize that you do not have to have an accent to be eloquent. You can be eloquent and audible without a fake accent. Adapting an accent is not even as easy as people think. I have a foreign friend that has lived in this country for so many years, in fact he is such a Nigerian now that he even went to FUTO but if you speak to him on the phone you can still tell that he is a foreigner. This is someone that has been here for over 15 years and still has his foreign accent so my darlings kindly explain to me why you will go for 1 year masters in the uk and I would have to clean ear wax before I can decipher the code you are speaking because half the time you all are mixing up so many accents that it has become an encrypted code. I for one have never stayed outside this country longer than three months, and then I would now come back and tell my friend “the sun is so hot innit”. Anyways, I know the kind of friends I have. The hot water they would pour on me with this my fair complexion when you guys see me you will think that I bleached. That is why the respect I have for the likes of Genevieve and Omotola can never die because those women with all their fame and fortune are very natural. Now let me tell you guys an embarrassing story. I’m not going to lie, that is how one day I decided to try this accent thing and see how people cope. I entered Etisalat office at the palms and I was speaking my rubbish trying to explain to them what was wrong with my line. By the time the guy asked me “ehh? Hehh? Huh??” and I had to repeat myself like 3 times nobody told me to adjust my tongue and talk like a normal human being. My next response was “Omo my line is effing up” I had to do that if I knew I wanted to leave that place in less than 3 hours plus honestly it was tiring biko.

That being said, there are the real ones and to know the real people with real accents, they try to speak normally because they know that because they “justgotback” a lot of people like LASTMA, Police, market people amongst others would try to take advantage of them.

To all of you that speak these things, I mean FAKE ones o..thumbs up!! Una try well well as for me I fitn’t. That is how someone told me “Soty, I don’t like the way you say hello on the phone” and I am like “unu ahukwa nu m n’esisi biko nu” (have you people seen trouble please). I asked him to spell the word and when he did I said “please am I supposed to say HELLEIII?”. There is nothing somebody would not hear O. Anyone that doesn’t like the way I talk or the way I rack my Ibo sometimes can call me for advice on the different kinds of bodily harm to inflict on themselves as I don’t give a flying fig what anyone may think. I refuse to join the band wagon, the day I did it, I had a migraine. I don’t even know who is worse these days, the guys or the girls?. When a guy walks up to me and starts talking fresh with some accent I make sure I answer him in the most Naija accent I can muster and they always realize that they are being stupid and come back to their right senses because when you look at me, you would know I am not a beans babe so for this babe to be all natural then you “probably” are doing something wrong. (Please note once again that this article is for the FAKERS and not the real ones).

Well this is how I cope in Lagos with my natural accent, it helps me be myself so I don’t forget if I was American to Akin, British to Obiora and French to Usman.

II) Being yourself doesn't just stop with the accent. My dear people, why do we feel the need to lie?. I “justgotback” from Fernando-Po when you and I both know that you have been inside your house in Ojodu berger for the past how many months and have not even crossed 3^rd mainland bridge to the Island or you have been in your house in Sangotedo and have not even gotten to Chevron roundabout in more than a week. Why lie? You are the number 1 famzer on the planet, how you are friends with all the celebrities that Nigeria has ever recorded, meanwhile the closest you have come to meeting them is sitting at the regular seat at one of their concerts. How you make over 500k a month meanwhile you cannot fuel your car or pay your dstv subscription. How your father is Oba Oniru just because you managed to have the same surname, meanwhile your mother is not even one of his concubines. You have saved all your hard earned cash to buy a range rover just to be part of the cool kids on the block meanwhile the car is your mobile home, you either don’t have a roof over your head, you are squatting, or that car is the bane of your existence because you cannot even fuel it or buy one of the damaged parts. Meanwhile instead of buying that car, you would have just stuck to that 2010 Toyota Camry that you are rest assured would not give you a headache and you can comfortably manage.

My dear people do you know that lying drains ones energy. By the time you've lied so much you cannot even remember the lies you have told and you would start contradicting yourself. Telling the truth is easier to remember, trust me. Anyone that doesn't like you for who you are should not even be in your life in the first place, they don’t deserve to be there, they are the wasters, users and the suckers (#ODM). Get rid of them.

Who you are determines what you attract, if you are fake, you will attract fake people that would be in your life for the wrong reasons. If you are real, well you will attract people of similar minds. Be yourself, it pays, trust me because if everyone is alike, who would then be unique, what would make you stand out of the crowd? Food for thought.