Bring back the 70's

Looking back, I enjoyed the 70's.

I was young, very young had just arrived in Nigeria from England, so my brothers and I got fussed over a lot. At the time we thought we were on holiday and having an adventure in a foreign country.

Nigeria itself at the time was relatively peaceful, the economy was good, in fact the economy was enjoying a boom so much so that the government decided to splash out.

The All African games prompted the building of the National stadium in Lagos, a few years later Festac 77, with the building of the grand theatre with a roof that looked like a General's military Cap, Festac town and the greatest splash out was one that benefited every working Nigerian, the Udoji award. Oil money was speaking everywhere.

Christmas in the 70's was fun, we lived in Lawanson, Surulere and street parties were the in thing, and we the kids would stay up late and watch the world from the balcony of our houses. If we had visitors and were lucky to be given money when they left, we would be over the moon! The magic amount in those days was One Naira (100 Kobo), a lot of money! Sometimes instead of giving the money to our parents, we would keep it and when they are not around would go to the shops and buy ourselves a bottle of coca cola, in those days it cost a princely sum of 10 Kobo!

While we were not super rich, we lived a comfortable life, went to private nursery school and the family had a car so we didn't start using public transport until we started secondary school.

Life was good, a lot of good music came out at the time. Fela was young and making waves, Juju had Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey fighting for supremacy.

I started secondary school in the 70's and attended one of the prestigious schools in Lagos at the time Igbobi College. There are a few events that I remember from my days in secondary school, the first was the military coup of Friday 13th February 1976, which stopped me from getting to school, another was the day of our inter-house sports, which ended in riots, and I had a difficult time getting home.

Most of the memories I have of the 70's are good, one thing I don't miss is the fashion! Platform shoes, those ridiculous trousers, Afros weren't too bad.

Do you have good memories of growing up?