Sometimes, You Have to Be Your Own Saviour

After I graduated from the university, I returned to Ibadan to live with my brother who ran a laundry business. I was an extra hand for him in his business but for me, running a laundry business wasn’t my thing. Because I felt odd managing a laundry business, I left the business. This was around 2007-2008. To be very honest with you, the only thing I knew at the time I was leaving was that the laundry business was not for me, I was not cut out for it. But there was something about me which I had realized – whenever I wanted to make a dress from myself, I always had my designs in my mind but at the end of the day, the tailors could hardly ever put it together like I had pictured it. I knew I was inclined to drawing designs and creating beautiful things but I didn’t know how to sew.

I really wanted to go to a tailor and learn how to sew. I had gone round to the best of the tailors that I would have loved to learn from but their prices were off the roof. There was no way I could raise the money by myself. At the time, I had no money and my brother whom I was staying with was not ready to support me in that direction because sponsoring me to learn sewing will mean I won’t be able to at hand to manage his laundry business. I took a leap of faith by deciding to learn the sewing, any way anyhow.

There’s a guy, Asofem in Oke-Ado, he is the closest I have to a teacher. He opened my eyes to the basics and fundamentals of sewing. Apart from him, I learned how to sew from multiple tailors. I was blessed such that whoever I walked up to, they were always willing to open their doors to me and accommodate me with all my questions. If you are a tailor and I know you’re good, I’d stay with you for a while. I’d hang around for a short time and then I’d leave to practice whatever I had seen you do. I was going about like that, gathering different skills from different places and fusing them together into what was going to become my own craft.

One day, I was with my friend and I told him what I had been busying myself with. I persuaded him to get a cheap Ankara fabric and that I’d sew him a nice dress from it for free; I told him that after sewing, if he loved the dress then he could pay me. I did that because, at the time, I didn’t have the confidence in my craft and so I couldn’t charge for something I wasn’t sure what the outcome was going to be. Confidence in one’s craft is one of the things that apprenticeship gives you – your Oga would have built your confidence and you’d be able to bill a client but in my own case, I was never an apprentice to anyone so I was flying solo and my confidence was not very high.

In those early months of my bold venturing into the sewing business, I had friends who gave their clothes to me to sew because, well, we were friends. One is Niyi and another is Johnson. Those days, I will sew their clothes and their trousers will be very big, like kembe. They understood my journey – that I was hustling my way to learn and hone my skills so they took me like that, giving me the benefit of the doubt that I would grow and, one day, become a pro too.

With no formal training, no stranger was going to take a chance on me. I had to get my friends to do that. Sometimes, the dress could be so tight that it would tear at the seams when they tried to wear it. Anytime these slips happened or I received these complaints from myself, I remind myself that ‘guy, someday, you will get there – you will sew the perfect dress without any complaint.’

“When I was starting out, no one encouraged me. Even my own brother didn’t encourage me. In fact, he did everything to put me down. My mother is a petty trader and my father had died in 2003 so my brother was all that I had then. In the heat of the struggle for my freedom to pursue what was my passion, my brother told me to my face that he had the power to determine my fate – ‘ma fi e dara to wunmi and nobody will ask me.’ I am talking about my own biological brother!

My first machine was one that was passed down to my uncle by his in-law and then he passed it down to me. However, it was only the machine I had, I didn’t have the peddler for running it. One day, my pastor called me and asked me to help him clear his store. I was clearing out the store when I found the peddler of a sewing machine lying idle in a corner. I asked him what he wanted to do with it and he asked me to dispose it off. Sharply, I told him I would love to have it and he gladly dashed it out to me. My brother, that was how I got my first sewing machine in 2010.

When I coupled them together, I’d sit by the machine and run the peddler, I didn’t have so much I was sewing at the time. Just my friends’ clothes which were not regular. At that time, I wasn’t even sewing for the money, I was sewing for the love of creating something from nothing that someone would wear and will derive so much pleasure from. If money was my objective at the time, I would have been frustrated. The journey was not an easy one at all.

My first major break came in 2012. I met a guy, Adebayo. He worked at First Atlantic Bank (now FCMB). He called me up one day and told me his friends wanted to sew some clothes and he had recommended me to them. By then, I had learned so much and my craft had tremendously improved. I got the clothes and sewed the dresses and they came out perfect. Those friends became my friends, then they began to recommend to their friends who worked in other banks. So I had clients in the then across FCMB and then in Oceanic Bank too. It was from then on that my business picked up and there was a turn-around for good.

Today, I live in a choice apartment, I have my own family and I have a flourishing fashion outfit. It is not me, this is God at work and I continue to be a Work in Progress. I am not a church person but I can’t deny the truth that the hand of God has led me to where I am today. These days when I go out and I meet people – bankers and employees with high paying jobs, they say they wish very desperately that they could do what I was doing.

I look around me and I see that there are people all around who need encouragement, who need support, who need guidance – young chaps all around whose present story is what my story was back in 2007/2008. My biggest success is impacting lives, not how much I have in my account. I have trained some people for free because I remember how hard it was for me when I ventured out in 2007 to sew. It was bleak period of my life. I didn’t even know what path I was heading down on.

I look at me today, my life is a testimony to the glory of God. Now, the same brother who countered my pursuit of my passion, now calls me and asks when I will be visiting. Of course, when you visit, you have to part with cash. I may not be at the peak where I want to be yet but God has been faithful.”

❤️