₦airaland Forum

‎# SWEAT, SPIRITS, AND SOLDIER FLIES: My Crazy Journey Through the World of Nigerian Farming
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‎## Part 3: From Toyin Street Auditor to the Call of the Soil
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‎They say that a man can run away from his shadow, but wherever he stops to catch his breath, the ground will still be right beneath his feet. For a very long time, I genuinely thought I had successfully locked the soil out of my existence. I was comfortable inside the beautifully air-conditioned offices of Toyin Street, Ikeja, tracking corporate numbers, balancing ledgers, and auditing financial statements. But as a proud Yoruba man, I know that what is written in a person's heritage cannot easily be erased by a fancy corporate pen.
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‎My people have a profound proverb for this exact situation:
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‎> *“Kò bádubá kò bádubá, ológbò á padà síbi tí wọ́n ti gé tẹ́ fún un; àtọwọ́dọ́wọ́ kò gbé sọ nù.”* > **Meaning:** No matter how far a cat wanders into the bush, it always returns to its original home; family heritage and ancestral destiny can never be entirely thrown away.
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‎While I was busy crunching numbers in the city, life was preparing a massive structural shift behind the scenes. Before my father passed away, I always knew that my family had a deep, historical connection to the soil. My grandfather was a father of many nations—a retired police officer who had successfully ventured into politics and built a large local farm. My grandmother, on her own part, also possessed an extensive, valuable family farmland.
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‎In fact, my father had heavily bought into the vision much earlier. He had gone as far as buying a professional palm oil-making machine to prepare and process palm fruits, as the majority of the local farmers in that region had heavy palm fruit plantations. But as life often happens to a military man, he eventually abandoned the idea and traveled out of the country. The land just sat there silently for years, waiting.
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‎After his passing, the gravity of legacy truly hit me. I sat down