We Should Outgrow This

Isaac Aju
Jun 5
12 min read

By Isaac Aju:

April 2024, Aba.

There has been no light for about two months in this part of Aba where I live, even with its new system of giving light, which is pay-as-you-use. Nobody is doing anything about it, and that is where my anger lies, the silence of everybody. What is wrong with the light? Nobody knows. Or rather, nobody that I know knows. We are living in the backyard of Aba, and so what do we really know? This part of Aba at the back of Ngwa Road is not considered as the main town, and it is where I was born, went to school, before I enrolled in a fashion school inside town to train as a fashion designer.

It would have felt better if we were told what had gone wrong with our light. It would have been better to be told that a transformer blew up, as has often happened in Aba. Transformers were always blowing up from too much load. Or an electric pole fell down somewhere; electric poles fall down too often, disrupting people’s light, especially after a heavy and lengthy rainfall. Or that our light had been cut off because we were yet to pay our NEPA bill. Those are the news we are familiar with. Those are believable reasons not to have light. But to be plunged into darkness without any concrete reason is the most annoying thing ever! It makes one feel inanimate, like a non-breathing thing.

I am a fashion designer, and every tailor or fashion designer knows that we cannot do without light. Everything about sewing needs electricity, from the gumming to the sewing, to the designing, to the pressing, to the finishings.¹ Everything is about light, and so the highest frustration of a tailor is the lack of electricity. Plunge a tailor into darkness, and you have killed that tailor. They are more likely to disappoint when there’s no light, and the chances of prompt delivery are also increased when there is light. Electricity is the bedrock of tailoring, the joy of a tailor. Anytime NEPA takes the light in the midst of work you would hear the shouts of tailors: "Oh, they should have waited for me to complete this work! Oh, why are these people so wicked? Oh, why can’t they give us some more hours?" They would throw curses toward the invisible NEPA officials for taking the light and then move on to the next option if they can: a generator.

Nursing my enormous anger toward nothing in particular, I start going out to my friend’s shop, who is also a fashion designer. There are lots of things to make one angry in Nigeria, and so sometimes when you are angry you don’t know what owns your anger for that particular moment, whether it’s the prices of sewing materials increasing every day, or the high cost of fuel and food, or the lack of electricity, or the high cost of transportation. Lots of things make me angry these days, even the push of people in the market who think that where they are heading is more important than your own destination. One person would push you from the back, and another person pushes you from the front. Sometimes you want to retaliate, and retaliation comes with a consequence, and the consequence is that you are going to fight in the market. So when one is pushed you just have to keep moving. You can throw a curse toward the person who pushed you if you are good at throwing curses, but don’t push back at the person unless you want to fight. And be ever sure that market people are always ready to fight, especially the women, with their loose and sweaty gowns. They would release all their Nigerian anger on you and go home sated for the day. Be mindful of we Nigerians living in Nigeria. Some days our anger issues goes up just the way our fuel price goes up.

I’m going to my friend’s shop by foot. If I have money with me, I should use keke na-pep,² but there’s no money now, so I’m going by foot. I’ve been using my feet more often these days because of the high cost of transportation. At least God gave me these feet for a reason! When I made a post on Facebook after the price of fuel increased again by 20%, people came to the comments section to drop their anger and frustration. I posted that I had to cut down on my keke drops. If I had to take two keke drops to reach my destination, I now consider taking only one drop and then trek a bit to cut down on money spent on daily transportation. I wasn’t alone in that thought, as fellow Nigerians also expressed their disapproval about the increases of fuel price:

These people on top do not even think about us!

This thing they are doing is affecting our businesses. There is God o!

Na to just leave this country for the rich men.

I’ve been using my foot more often. E no easy for people who even have car. This new price of fuel no be your mate!

May God have mercy on us. What is this?

Nigerians on Facebook said all manner of things after the price of fuel increased, but nothing happened. The more they complain, the more things become difficult.

I just want to check if there is light in my friend’s area by mistake. Sometimes they give light to one area and leave the other places in darkness, like a mother giving her best food to her favorite child and leaving the less-tasty food for her other children. If they don’t have light, then I will leave to do some finishings on my work, the clothes that I have made for my clients. After that I will head back home and call it a day. I will think. I will read a book, and I will drink tea—my consolation whenever I’m angry, whenever the frustrations of my country descend too heavily on me. One of my colleagues once told me that I think and worry too much, which is true. And I’m working on myself to reduce it, if that would be possible. He also jokes about me wanting to be a freedom fighter, and I often tell him that we are too quiet as a people. We are just too quiet, we citizens. Nigeria, as I know it in its wealth and riches, shouldn’t be a place where the people are struggling to have good roads, electricity, affordable fuel, and other basic infrastructure. Yes, I think a lot about Nigeria. Always. He tells me that people are afraid to speak so that nobody will kill them. Years ago, before I would think about sending my written works out to editors, he said to me, “Maybe it would be safer for you to express yourself in your writing. You know many Nigerians do not care about literature or writing and reading in general. But it will be good for you to write, so you can feel better.”

If I were a writer, I thought I would want my audience to be Nigerians, but I was shocked to find out that Nigeria isn’t a viable market for literature. I was shocked too when I found out that the Nigerian writers I adored were first published outside Nigeria. Publishers in Nigeria published them in the face of popularity. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was first published by a European publisher who described the manuscript as "the best first novel since the war."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whom I love so much, was also published outside Nigeria, in America, after a small, American publisher decided “to take a chance on her.”

With my humble short story, when I finally wrote one, I began to send the manuscript to publications whose audience wasn’t “purely Nigerians.”

As I walk through the streets, there is a sound of generators coming out from different houses, as there is no light. People who can afford fuel are buying it, and people who can’t afford it are in darkness. This is such a shame in this modern time and day, I keep saying to myself, and I often tell people. This city is supposed to have outgrown this. Aba should outgrow this darkness. I remember when I travelled to my hometown, Abiriba, for a wedding and there was no light for the two days I spent there. For me to charge my phone, I had to go to a phone center and pay so they could charge my phone for me. I came back to Aba and said to my father, “Abiriba is supposed to have outgrown this. We should outgrow being in darkness. After all the prestige we claim to have, it’s so appalling that we have no light. This is not the first time, or the second time. We hardly have light every time we travel. Imagine someone who has heard a lot about the Abiriba kingdom and finally visits the Abiriba kingdom just to discover that they have no light. It’s a slap in our face. All these billionaires from Abiriba should really do something about this.” My father went defensive and said some hoodlums stole something from the transformer that was supposed to give light in Abiriba, and was it in Abiriba alone that we had darkness? Darkness was everywhere in Nigeria, even in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Sometimes when he travelled to Abuja to sell his goods, he wouldn’t see light for days. If there could be darkness in the capital city of Nigeria, then surely darkness could also be found in every other part of Nigeria.

“All I know is that we shouldn’t still be begging for light in this day and age. This is 2024, for crying out loud. People are getting advanced technology, and we are here stuck in darkness, still begging for light, even if to charge our phones,” I said.

On reaching my friend’s shop, it is closed. Many shops in the building are closed. It’s a new two-story building in town, mostly occupied by tailors and fashion designers, and because there’s no light, many of the shops are closed. The few that are open are using generators to work, and it has to be an urgent work, and the client has to pay well; if not, tailors hardly buy fuel these days to do any kind of work, with the way they are increasing the price of fuel. Before a tailor buys fuel for your work, you have to pay well. You have to be a big fish³ too.

My friend is hardly in his shop these days, and he hardly buys fuel, and I understand the situation very well, the situation of one’s clients refusing to pay extra money because of fuel. Many clients refuse to pay well, unless their work is urgent, especially the clients from Aba. You have to haggle with them over prices as though you are selling crayfish in the market. It’s easier with clients who are not in Aba; they are much more willing to pay better. People who reside in Aba often think that making clothes should be cheap because tailors are everywhere in Aba, and there is a competition among them. There’s no fixed price to sew anything, and so prices differ from one tailor to the next.

I leave my friend’s shop, as he is not around. I see many tailors sitting in their shops, doing nothing, some of them chatting dispiritedly, their tapes worn on their necks like necklaces.

Aba is a city of tailors. Sewing is one of the things Aba is known for. Sewing is one of the desirable handworks to get. When you don’t have any handwork or skills in Aba, you would be advised to go and learn how to sew. Among the list of handworks to get, sewing would always appear in the first three choices. These days, people who have university degrees are going back to learn handworks. You have to keep busy till you land a better job, they are told. Sometimes they never land the jobs they had in mind. At the end of the day, most of them became self-employed. In Aba, we often hear stories of university graduates driving commercial keke na-peps and doing odd jobs. When I was training as a fashion designer, we had graduates who studied medicine and public administration when they were in school. One of my closest friends did microbiology and later came to learn how to sew, something he never imagined that he would do in his life. In our Fashion House, when I was still training, we once had a very quiet and taciturn law student who often left me wondering if law was the most suitable thing he should have studied in school. While our master taught us about the processes in sewing, he would flip out his notebook and begin to write and draw instead of keeping his eyes intently on the sewing machine as our master worked on a particular cloth.

My father is also a tailor, and he made sure that I learned how to sew. He had to force me though, because I wasn’t interested in sewing until after many lectures about how important it was to learn a handwork. “When you have a handwork, you have the chance to get better in life, because Nigeria may fail you. Nigeria may crush your ambitions,” he always said to me during those years of learning. I would realize the truth of those words years later when I would see some of my age mates doing odd jobs because they didn’t have any skill or handwork. Some of them would meet me on the road and say, “Oga, find me something nau. You na big man nau.” Other times, I would see some of my age mates smoking weed inside uncompleted buildings, and I would walk past making sure I was not seen.

Many of the shops inside town are occupied by tailors. I pass by those shops, which are now plunged into darkness. Just two out of every ten shops are using generators. The rest are doing nothing, waiting for light, or for an urgent work, or for a client who can pay well. So here in Aba, it’s a very common thing to hear people label tailors as thieves who would eat your money and refuse to sew your clothes. From time to time on Facebook, you would see someone say in their posts that no tailor would make heaven, because they were always disappointing people and leaving them stranded when they are supposed to use a cloth for an important occasion. Sometimes I would skip the posts, because I know better. Sometimes I would read them and say, "Sorry o" in the comment section. Maybe it would make the poster feel better.

I’m looking for a finishing shop where I can put button holes on trousers, trouser buttons, stitching and hemming, but all the finishing shops around here are not working. Most of them also depend on electricity. I continue my walk until I find a shop that is using their generator. They tell me that the price of their services has increased. I see a man walking away, refusing to accept the new price. “That is too much for a single trouser,” he said. “How much did I charge my customer for the trouser?”

“We are using fuel, Oga, and you know how much a litre of fuel is being sold,” the shop owner said.

“Is it because I came here? I have people who do for me at a lower price.”

“Not now, Sir. The price of fuel has increased. Or maybe you can go back to the people who did for you at a lower price. Go there now and check again, and you will understand what I’m talking about.”

The man isn’t convinced. He continues to walk away, throwing curses at the government and the NEPA officials who has refused to bring light. "They should fold up this country like a mat, let everyone go and rest. If Nnamdi Kanu calls them animals in a zoo, they will begin to get angry, but that is the pure truth. If we are not animals in a zoo, we shouldn’t be here looking for light while many other African countries we are richer than are having constant electricity."

I agree to pay what I am charged, without exchanging words with the shop owner, and they give me a seat to sit down as they start working on my clothes. There’s no need to start arguing with anyone over prices. We are all in this together. And moreover, this is the only finishing shop I can see after a long walk looking for a finishing shop that is at work. The fumes of the generator start to welcome me where I am sitting, and I begin to think about the present government. They promised light, they brought in a new system of electricity distribution, but yet, there is no light. Our government is still promising us light in this age. I think about all the idle tailors sitting beside their sewing machines doing nothing. I think about all the shops that are closed because there’s no light and they can’t afford to buy fuel. I think about myself coming here by foot. I think about my friend who hasn’t worked steadily for weeks. I think about all the talents that are languishing in this city. I can tell you for free that there’s a lot of talent in this city. I can tell you for free that works produced in this neglected city have gone all over the world. I can tell you that the clothes of governors and top politicians are made here. I can tell you for free that fashion designers all over Nigeria come to this city to make clothes that they then send out of Nigeria to different parts of the world where clients pay in dollars.

I start to think about Nigeria as a whole, this country where unbelievable things are believable, and I ask myself, “Are we coming out of Egypt, or we are going backwards into Egypt?”

1. Finishings: The remaining processes that a cloth goes through after the tailor is done sewing it.

2. Keke na-pep: A popular vehicle used as transportation in Nigeria.

3. Big fish: Someone who is rich.

Isaac Aju lives in Nigeria, where he writes and works as a fashion designer. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Poetry X Hunger, Writers' Journal, New York City, and is forthcoming in Steel Jackdaw Magazine. He was recently featured in the Flapper Press Poetry Café, where he was interviewed on his historical poems set in pre-colonial Igbo land and 1960s Nigeria. He runs his own fashion label, Dominion Fashion House, which he started in 2024.