1/Joe (not real name) is a Beninoise young man who has been my family plumber for over 8 yrs. Very effective, competent, friendly & trustworthy, he graduated from petty kitchen sink fixes in our rented apartment to being the only artisan we did not collect a comparative quote for

2/ He has helped with full house plumbing works for 2 projects in the past 6 years, both costing millions in material and labour. But the more important part is, we introduced him to a big man brother, a bank executive, about 5 yrs ago and he has been their own family plumber too

3/ He has helped the brother to do the plumbing jobs in all the projects he has done since then. Impressed with his work (and character), this VI based brother has also introduced him to his friend/neighbour, another bank executive (husband CEO of a bank, wife ED of another bank)

4/ He has been their go to guy for all water issues in their houses. The last thing I saw on his Whatsapp status was video of him fixing the water system of the swimming pool in the palatial home of these execs.

5/ We that introduced him are probably the smallest fry in his portfolio now. But he remains humble. Still use him for renovation work last week. He still takes small N30k jobs from his low to middle income neighbourhood customers.

1/ This 10 year old Buhari-branded Tee must be my oldest piece of cloth (bar a couple of agbada inherited from our patriarch).

The story?

In 2011, when Buhari was a hard sell in the South, before he joined forces with Tinubu et al, some of us volunteered to sell him

2/ So a group of us on Nairaland then came together, raised some funds among ourselves. I was the coordinator. I remember one Nairaland guy - from Kogi? - I didn’t know came to my then office and dropped N500k cash and 100 pieces of this Tee from the booth of his car.

3/ We raised about N800k in all and did jingles in radio stations in Lagos, Osun, Oyo and Rivers states. I think we called ourselves Buhari Online Support Group or something like that. We also did some publicity material and distributed those shirts.

4/ I churned out over 20 articles in newspapers making a case for Buhari candidacy. That was also where I got to be friends with people like Femi Adesina and Tope Fasua, through pages of newspapers.

5/ Well, with GEJ’s 2011 goodwill (recall the “I had no shoe” & “Breath of fresh air” campaign mantras?), +with absence of political xture (forget volunteering by small boys like us, you cannot make inroads into a region without xture), GMB only managed to get 200k votes in Lagos