I was forced into watch repair and service, but I’ve been on it now for the past 27 years

He was not a trained guidance counsellor.

He was merely interested in guiding his students on their future careers.

I was one of those students.

His name: Mr Abifarin.

The school: Government Secondary School, Babanla, Ifelodun Local Government Area, Kwara State, Nigeria.

My name: Toyin Tawhid Anigilaje, and I was in the school between 1989 and 1995.

Mr Abifarin taught us commerce and business studies.

He used to ask us what we would want to become in future and then advise us on the subjects we should focus on. 

In my case, I wanted to be a lawyer.

I did not have any lawyer as a model. I simply hate cheating and I believed that as a lawyer, I would be able to help defend people who are cheated. 

Mr Abifarin told me I would have to do well in subjects including English Language, Literature and Government 

In our school, however, literature was not being taught. So, Mr Abifarin said that if I wanted to be a lawyer then I must go and find how to read and pass literature. 

But, it was going to be pointless because my father, Hamidu Anigilaje, had said that he was not capable of sponsoring my education beyond the secondary school. He said I should either join him in his occupation – watch repair and service – or become an apprentice in a vocation of my choice.

I was not interested in his line of job. He had had his shop at what used to be called Adeniran Ogunsanya Shopping Complex in Surulere, Lagos, since about 1981. It is now the Adeniran Ogunsanya Shopping Mall where you now have the Shoprite store. He was one of the legacy tenants. 

I used to be in the shop during our holidays from secondary school, but I never got involved in what he was doing.  I was not interested in the job.

So, when I finished secondary school in 1995 and kept showing up at the shop, my father’s constant companion at the shop, called Baba n' Kwara called me one day and said that it was best for me to pay attention to the business, and that I could one day take it to a higher level. He added that it was better than having to go and learn another vocation. I was not interested in any other vocation, I just wanted to be a lawyer.  Towards achieving this, I began to go for evening classes. My father, however, insisted that he was not capable of funding my further education.

I had no choice but to heed Baba n’ Kwara’s advice, and that was how I began to learn the job. 

With my father, I learnt for three or four years. But I also got instructions from other people who were masters on the job. That took another year. But, with horology, it is continuous learning, so I can say that I keep learning new things. 

I had hoped that my father would pay for me to go to Yaba College of Technology which used to have a course in horology (supported by Swiss watchmakers) but he still said that he had no financial capability for such. 

My father, now eighty-five or eighty-six years old, has left the business to me and my younger brother, Damilare. He comes around maybe twice in a week. We are fortunate to have inherited the shop although many of the tools we use now were acquired by me. We keep looking for new tools to enhance our services. 

Our trading name is Wrist Equation, and besides repairing and servicing watches and clocks, we also sell new watches. 

The thinking is that with mobile phones which now come with time pieces, people would no longer be wearing watches but, as you can see, it is not so.

One of the challenges we face is customers who are not honest about the services we render. For instance, one customer whose watch we fixed came back and said that the battery was no longer working. When we examined the battery, we found that it was not the battery we had used. How did we know? We have a particular brand of battery we use in watches. But, when the customer came back with the watch, it was not that brand that was there. Sometimes, we would change a watch’s engine and a customer would tamper with it and the watch would develop a fault and they would return it without disclosing what they did with the watch. 

Traffic is highest in the evenings and over the weekends. 

I can be contacted on 08026156291 (WhatsApp) and 08052600939 or through my brother via 08175583706.

My dream is that, sooner or later, we will be able to go beyond repair and service, into the making or assembling of watches and clocks. It would mean going to Switzerland to undergo specialised training or, and, have technical partnerships. If God makes a way, then it will happen.