Jos Diary: When You Can’t Say No to an Adorable City

 The ringing phone cut short the interesting conversation I was having with Nnenna, my hardworking and efficient PA.

The person on the other side was someone I couldn’t afford to ignore.

I had just met her about three weeks prior to this day but it felt like I had known her all my life.

“Boss, I need your help,” Doris said with a shaky voice that showed off she assumed I couldn’t say no.

I’m a broke ass, I thought to myself. If this babe is thinking of asking me for money, she better think again, ooo.

I had less than 20k in my account and just over 100k in my 03 Credit Card which I was counting on to pay for my new lenses at the eye-clinic I was driving to.

 “Can you go to Jos this weekend?” she asked with the sweetest sounding voice she could muster bringing me back to reality.

Jos ke, I thought to myself.

“What’s happening in Jos?” I managed to ask

“My former MD isn't happy with every staff in his newsroom,” Doris said.

“My former colleagues are hard working and it will hurt me if this suspension remains.

“Would you be willing to do the same training and more for them?

“How much will you charge?”

Doris Izang is a colleague I had just met a few weeks earlier when I went to Kano for a training. She stood  out from the rest of the park – of course because she was beautiful – but that’s not all.

She just had this radiating smile that you couldn’t help but notice.

And notice, I did.

Since my return to Lagos, we have kept the communication channel and in that short period, I’ve come to realise what a beautiful soul she is.

So, when she asked if I could go to Jos, I didn’t even need to think about it, I knew for a certainty that I would.

All I just wanted to know were the details and what exactly is expected of me.

I had gone to Jos for the first time in 2008 as a final year student and fell in love with the city. I’d been looking for a chance to return and here was someone begging me to go.

Before nko, why won’t I?

Plus, my good friend Andrew Randa and his Mees Palace team were on the last leg of the annual Jos Chilling festival that weekend.

Everything just felt right.

“When does your MD want me to come?” I asked as it was a Monday.

“If you can come this weekend, that will be fine,”  Doris replied.

“He’d sort out all your logistics, all he just wants is a commitment so he can just start the process,” she added.

My newsroom had a beach party planned for that weekend. I had postponed it twice, and it looked like there would be just another postponement.

But Lagos beach party can wait fes, lemme go and enjoy Jos Chilling and cold, I concluded in a split second in my head.

“Tell your MD I will come this weekend but I need to speak to him so I will get all the details that I need,” I said.

And that’s how the plan to go to Jos began.

To be continued...