Kobo

How much would those ones drop in his bowl? Tattered, dirty, sellotaped five-naira notes? Those coins that had just been reintroduced but were useless, because not even bàbá dúdú was sold for fifty kobo or one naira anymore? Was one naira actually money if you could not even buy sweets with it?

The new kobo is the same size as the old Nigerian shilling and carries a depiction of cocoa seeds.

In this case, more people buy cassettes than records with the consequence of the musicians losing heavily on their records royalties since these pirates will not give a kobo [penny] to any artiste whose record he recorded for sale.

No one ever had coins, nothing less than a one-naira bill; the driver had laughed at my handful of kobo.

In the play, lawyer Ramoni Alao, because of his nagging wife, decides to go to the market to get special clothes for “Ileya” without a kobo in his pocket.

The market traders, all women, touted their wares in fine voice. I would usually part with a few kobos, or copper pennies, for a small, dusty heap of tomatoes, or a larger pile of oranges.

At this launch, Chief Odutola’s younger brother, Alhaji Jimoh Odutola, who is also a successful businessman, was present from the beginning to the end, but he neither gave nor pledged a kobo in spite of my previous personal appeals.

Then he would guiltily ask my mother to beg for alms outside the churches in the surrounding villages so that we wouldn’t starve. Because she was blind, people would always give her a few kobos (small coins).