A Comedy of Errors

I try to fix my iPhone 13 Blue, no bumps. Also, happy birthday to me.

Today is my birthday. For the last three years, I have been writing some long-winded-woe-is-me tale to celebrate the clocking of another year. This year, I won’t. Partly because this Substack is getting too big for me to share all the spicy details of my insane life. Instead, I will be narrating an actual story that happened and may tell you quite a bit about me and this year than any long-winded-woe-is-me tale. Here are the articles for 2023, 2024, and 2025.

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The week before I moved, I was on my balcony (the only redeeming factor of my ex-apartment) overlooking the sights (someone’s toilet) and pressing my phone. Suddenly my phone tumbled from my hands and fell onto the floor. All the worst things in the world flashed before my eyes. Losing a phone (blue iPhone 13, no bumps) in this era is like being stranded in the plains of Ukraine. No way forwards, no way backwards. And a drone is about to explode on your head.

Can you imagine such a thing happening to you? I immediately converted to all the religions and prayed to all the Gods. Please don’t let my phone spoil. My mother is always praying for me. Don’t let this disaster befall me, your son. Please, consider me in these trying times. I had just paid my rent, so things were looking rather catastrophic on the financial end. If my phone really got damaged, I was looking at the real possibility of going to Jigawa to collect Keke Maruwa for delivery.

I ran downstairs to check on my phone and realized that God is good, and he is good all the time. Jesus is indeed alive. It was damaged but not broken. The back screen had shattered badly, but aside from that, the phone was in okay condition. I thanked my lucky stars and my mother and went back to posting my dumb tweets.

Over the course of the next few days, I noticed my phone getting hotter than normal. Scared that this was because of the shattered back glass, I went off to go and fix the damn thing. I didn’t want to go all the way to Ikeja, so I took the phone to a 3Chub outlet nearby. These hubs usually have an onsite engineer, and this engineer, a fellow named General, looked like a villain. I mean he had only one eye. Literally a one-eyed dude. I am not being ableist (and by the end of this letter, you might have even better choice words for General), I am just saying if I got a prophecy that a “one-eyed demon shall rise upon your noon and ruin your month” and then saw this guy later, I would go, “Hey, that is the one-eyed demon I was warned about.”

General came over to me and asked what was wrong. I explained my predicament and he said, “Wow, that is so easy.” He took my phone, used his one good eye to look at it, and said it would cost eighteen whole thousand of Tinubu’s finest to fix it. Before we go further into this story, for you may not understand what is happening fully, let me explain my current life situation to you.

My Current Life Situation

I look like a yahoo boy.

I don’t believe this is actually true. When someone first told me, I told them they were high. But when the 10th person told me, I had to accept that it has some element of truth in it.

Now, if you know me in real life, and are of the same persuasion, you would argue till the sun burns out that this can’t be true, and you would have some pretty good reasons. First of all, I do not dress well. In truth, I believe my fashion sense (or lack of it) is just another reason I am above the rest of the mass of humanity, but the consequence is the same; my dress sense is atrocious. I know, and I don’t care very much.

To further substantiate my point about how badly I dress, I remember going to my cousin’s place and she let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I would not be going out with her in my shirt. We were going to a rave, and she really cared about how I would look in the dark standing next to her in that shirt.

I thought it was a decent T-shirt, but she (and my other friend) disagreed and instead gave me this shirt to wear. I think the shirt was even worse, but I allow you to be the judge.

Now, I know yahoo boys dress atrociously, but mine isn’t atrocious in the same way. I never wear name brands and hardly wear what counts as street fashion in Lagos. So the above is usually what I look like, even on my better well dressed days. Therefore, I don’t understand how anyone can look me up and down, in my slides, shorts, and a jersey, and think, “Hey, this dude is a fraudster.” Yes, there is the matter of my ear piercing, but I have been treated the same even before I got the piercing, so that cannot be the only reason.

However, if you do not know me, then this characterization may make sense. I work remotely, live above my means, and engage in wealthy activities like not arguing with strange guys at the bus stop. Of course, people think I am a yahoo boy. Of course they do, why wouldn’t they?

Given that, the General told me fixing it was 18k. I had no idea how much it was supposed to be, as I had never changed it before. It seemed excessive, but again, I was in a celebratory mood over the survival of my phone and essentially my livelihood. Secondly, I generally do not like haggling with service providers, as I also hate when others haggle my pricing with me. Call it a professional courtesy if you like. So I said, “You know what, let us do it. 18 thousand of Tinubu’s finest it is.” What could ever go wrong?

Error 1

General tells me to come back by 4:30 to get my phone. I reach there by 4:30, and I am informed he isn’t around. I am asked to come back by five. I come back by five. I look at my phone, and it looks okay. I try to open it with my face, and the Face ID doesn’t work. I think this is a fluke and lock and unlock the phone, and the Face ID doesn’t work either. I hurriedly tap the man. “Hey, Mr. Foolish, why is my Face ID not working?” He says that cannot be. I myself do not understand it. How did my back glass affect my Face ID? What is going on here? I was so mad.

The guy collects the phone and tells me it is a minor error he would go and fix right now. This was around 5:30 PM and I agreed. General goes on a journey of almost no return and leaves me standing at 3Chub with the closing staff. Two hours later, the business was closed and three members of staff were also waiting with me.

General finally appears, and I fear the worst. If you have ever employed worthless Nigerian artisans, you would understand my fear here. Before telling me the state of my phone, this idiot informs me that my camera had spoilt and he used his own money to fix it. “Okay, how is that my business?” I wondered. Then he says the only tiny problem is the Face ID. It was no longer working, you see, and I could fix it for just 12k at Ikeja.

If you cannot believe what you are reading, imagine how I felt. I almost lost my mind. First of all, what is this fellow’s business with my camera and Face ID? I asked him to change the back glass. How did we even get here?

He had a queer story for that alright. Apparently, iPhone back glasses, especially original ones, are removed using a machine. (What?). His mistake, he says, was that there was no light so he used generator power to use the machine. This made the machine get so hot that it broke the camera and the Face ID. This was around 8 PM, but I was half of the mind to take the guy to a police station to tell his story.

However, that was certain to cost more money, as the police would also charge me for it. And who knows? The Nigerian police is such a wonderful organization that there is a non-zero chance of me sleeping in the cell next to General on account of my ear piercings and my actual real-life job that depends entirely on communicating with several foreigners. Given those circumstances, I believed the best thing to do was to go to Ikeja and fix it myself. After all, I still had the 18k I had planned to pay this fellow. Besides, I wasn’t sure the police could do anything in this case, as nothing criminal had happened.

Was this a dumb mistake by me? Well, feel free to judge at the end.

Error 2

The next day I woke up bright and early. I was in the middle of finding buyers for my wardrobe (my new apartment came with one) and my kitchen cabinet (my present kitchen is far too small for it). I was also supervising the removal of my AC and other such things that required my presence. Despite all of this, I found my way to Ikeja to fix the iPhone.

Have you ever been to Ikeja? If you haven’t, let me paint a picture for you. Imagine, if you can, a market where every third person has an elaborate scheme to rob you. While I have never been scammed at Ikeja, I have heard enough crazy stories to be careful about who I give my phone to. Since I don’t know any engineer in the market, I wandered a bit in search of someone who could fix my phone, and fix it fast.

After about ten minutes of ignoring people shouting “Biggie, I dey fix phone, I dey sell phone,” (I weigh 76kg, if you can believe it) I enter the shop of this fellow. It looked like he had a shop and a lot of time on his hands to attend to me quickly, so I walk up to him and explain my predicament. I was anxious about whether a phone’s Face ID could be fixed at all, and he quickly reassured me that it could. “But it is quite expensive, you see. It will cost you forty thousand Nigerian Naira.” Forty thousand? How did we even get here? How am I on the hook for forty thousand? I immediately resolved to get the money back from General, no matter what. I asked if the engineer, who is actually a namesake, could write a receipt for the payment, so I could get reimbursed.

He didn’t have a receipt so he asked his neighbor for one. His neighbor, a fellow who looked like a friend from childhood, asked me what I needed the receipt for, and I told him the whole story. I then told him I planned to use the receipt as proof for reimbursement if I have to get the police involved in the case. The fellow instantly recoiled and stopped talking about the receipts. I asked the engineer what was wrong, and he told me that no one wanted to get involved with the police no matter what. I explained why I needed the receipt again, and he looked at me sorrowfully. “But e dey happen now, if na something you fit free, abeg free am. Even me, I don break person screen this morning. Dem no fit kill me.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, but right there, as the boys spoke to me, some thug came over to demand two thousand from them. The thug threatened to beat them up, and it was clear that this was some Mafian organization, not the government. “Na so dem dey collect am for our hand everyday.”

For some reason, this episode gave me a change of heart. I saw that I was in a much better place than him (even though, now that I am writing the letter and spelling out my rationalizations, I realize that I was probably wrong in that assessment). A loss of forty thousand on a phone that could have had even worse damage if not for a stroke of luck isn’t the worst thing in the world. It wasn’t a life-ending debit, and I could easily charge it to the game. It was basically my entertainment budget for the month.

Interestingly, the boys soon came to disagree with me when I told them how much I had agreed to pay the General. The back glass was apparently just eight thousand, and the fact that he charged me eighteen for it irked them so much that they begged me to arrest him.

The story gets worse from here.

All of this was happening while the guy was dismantling the phone. While removing the Face ID, he informs me that he has to shatter the back glass that was just fixed. I am not glad about this, but anything to fix the phone. He then got to the point of removing the Face ID and then apparently remembered that I had already changed the camera, so the Face ID couldn’t be fixed without the original camera. I had to go back to the original engineer to get the original Face ID, you see. So there was nothing he could do.

Well, there was something he could do. As he put the phone together, I noticed a bright line on the screen.

“Oga, the screen don get issue oh. Be like that engineer don too open am.”

What?

Error 3

Let us take account of my losses here. I had begun my adventure with just a broken back screen, and now I had a broken back screen, no Face ID, and a broken screen. And all of this was happening a day before I moved. I told the engineer that he had to repair the screen, and he says it wasn’t his fault as the original engineer — sorry, the original idiot — had already tampered with the screen. However, he will replace the broken back glass as that was explicitly his fault.

I was lost for words. I had always known my luck in life was horrid, but was it really so bad that I had somehow found the two most incompetent phone engineers in Lagos on a back-to-back basis? Was it really that awful for me? Was I so unfavored by God? What sin could I have possibly committed in a former life to have this sort of rotten luck? Was the God of Chosen finally punishing me? Had God answered the prayers of that sister that was crashing out in the comments of my CCI substack?

I imagined the different paths the evening could go. I could begin a shouting match with this engineer and use magic word sorcery to get my money out. However, as I surveyed what he called a shop, I realized this fellow wouldn’t be able to cough out the money. This was someone who had almost been beaten up over a thousand Naira just a few minutes ago. Was I about to really do that?

I could also go to the police and get him arrested, but that also carried with it its own unique disadvantages. I would have to bribe the policemen (this is Nigeria and we technically live in an AnCap El Dorado where you can buy police services) and even that didn’t guarantee the coughing up of my money. What crime could he even be charged with? Last I heard, it isn’t criminal to be a stupid clown awful at your job. I remember my early days in freelancing where I was also a stupid clown (and perhaps I still am; it depends on which of my bosses you ask) awful at my job.

Or, I could go home, get the original camera from the engineer, come back the next day, fix my phone, and get a new screen. It would hurt my pocket a great deal, but it wasn’t financially devastating. I could indeed charge it to the game just as I had charged my two years’ rent at my awful ex-house. This option seemed reasonable because I watched him lose the screen, and I didn’t notice any reckless movement that might have broken the screen. There was, to me, a non-zero chance that the screen just did that. And if that was the case, do I really want to become the villain who locks up an artisan because of an iPhone screen? Was I really going to be that person?

Option three seemed the most suitable for my temperament that day, and that is exactly what I did. I went back to 3Chub and tried to get the camera. I asked about the General and I am informed that he isn’t around. In fact, he won’t be around for a while, you see. He actually lives in Ikorodu; he isn’t from around here. This information is passed on to me by a member of staff he is likely dating. How do I know this? Call it an educated guess. In any case, it was obvious what was happening. The General was running away. I got his number, and eventually got the camera.

The next day was move day, and I didn’t have time to go back to Computer Village.

I eventually got the camera from a member of staff there and went back to Computer Village to fix my phone. Since I was in the middle of moving, I could only go back to the engineer after.

After a day of waiting for a competent engineer to take a look at the thing, I learn that my case was royally messed up and there was only a slight chance that it could be fixed. And even if it was, I had to wipe my phone and leave it over with the engineer for a day. All of this would cost just fifty thousand Nigerian Naira. Just fifty thousand.

I had to make a cost-benefit analysis of the situation, considering the fact that I now had a screen to replace. I decided against fixing the Face ID since it wasn’t guaranteed anyway and spent the rest of the money I had on fixing the screen. That day, as I collected my phone and went back home, I marveled at the misfortune the last one week had brought upon me.

But my woes were not done. The next day, I realized that this fellow had forgotten to put the camera in while coupling the phone. That’s right. A third error. Thankfully, this one didn’t cost any money to fix, as I just had to return to Ikeja twice to find the guy and put the camera in it.

I thought about how I could get my money back and saw nothing but sweaty days and a hoarse throat and possibly no money. The fact that the 3Chub was at Bariga made the whole situation even more annoying. Was I really going to be going to Bariga every other day to get my money from this guy? Really? Was I going to get the police involved? Maybe I will, but right now, as I write this, I don’t see it happening.

My final accounting of the whole affair is thus: I almost paid eighteen thousand for a back glass worth eight. I almost paid forty thousand for a Face ID that was could probably not be fixed. I paid a certain amount (I am even scared to write the words) for a screen that broke because of accumulated incompetence across two separate engineers. And then, as a bonus, a third engineer forgot to put my camera back. In total, I spent the better part of a week and somewhere north of sixty thousand Naira to end up with approximately the same phone I started with. Minus the Face ID. This, I have decided, is a perfectly acceptable summary of my last 12 months on this earth. Things happened to me. I survived them. The phone still works.

Special Birthday Request

For the past few months, I have been working on this Substack with the kind of dedication I really should have applied to other areas of my life. It is showing, slowly. But “slowly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If you have ever enjoyed anything I’ve written here, share it. Tell someone. Post it somewhere on the internet and walk away. A larger readership means I have more reason to research, write, and generally justify the time I spend doing this instead of something more financially sensible. Please take this request seriously! Thank you.

If you have any questions, suggestions or ideas on how to make this substack even better, you can reach me at Jojoniyi007@gmail.com.