You learn more from the street than school — Portable

By Ayo Onikoyi

Nigerian singer and entertainer Portable has opened up on his childhood struggles, street experiences and the lessons he learnt outside the classroom, stating that life on the streets taught him valuable skills.

The singer shared his experience during an interview on The Honest Bunch Podcast, where he spoke about losing his mother at the age of 13 and how the loss affected his upbringing.

According to Portable, although people were available around him, nobody could provide the same care and support his mother would have given him.

“You learn from the street more than school. I lost my mother at the age of 13, nobody to take care of me. It wasn’t like they couldn’t take care of me, but they wouldn’t take care of me the way my mother would have taken care of me.”

The singer recalled how his mother used to provide him with basic needs such as food and pocket money, adding that he had to engage in small businesses as a young boy to survive.

“My mother would give me pocket money and food. Would anyone have been able to do that for me? I sold pure water at Joju inside School 3.”

Portable also defended comments made by Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, encouraging unemployed Nigerians to embrace small-scale businesses.

The singer argued that many successful Nigerians were raised through income generated from petty trading and informal businesses operated by their parents.

“Nigerians misunderstood what Remi Tinubu meant. If you look at many wealthy people in this country, their mothers trained them by selling pepper and roasted corn.”

He stated that small-scale businesses can be profitable, sharing an experience he claimed to have had during a visit to London, where he saw a corn seller who owned a luxury vehicle. “When I went to London, I even saw someone selling corn while using a Benz.”