The sound of a clock fills Bala Muhammad’s watch repair shop, located on a bustling street in Kaduna state, northern Nigeria. The shop is a maze of clocks, each displaying different times, with a small chair tucked under the table where he makes his repairs.
Bala’s shop is situated between hardware stores, making it a prominent spot on one of Kaduna’s busiest streets. Until recently, he had regular customers who brought their watches to him for repairs or battery replacements.
“There was a time when I used to repair over 100 watches in a single day,” said the 68-year-old known as Baba Bala.
However, he fears that the skills he learned from his father and younger brother will soon be lost.
“One day, there will be no one left to repair watches,” he lamented, pointing out that more people are spending time on their phones, which is threatening to cripple his business.
“Mobile phones and technology are trying to eliminate the only job I know in the world, and I am always angry about it.”
For over 50 years, I have been supporting my family through my watch repair business.
“I built a house and took on the responsibility of educating all my children from this business,” he explained.
His father traveled extensively throughout West Africa for over six months, from Senegal to Sierra Leone, just to repair watches.
At one point, Baba Bala lived in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, where many wealthy people reside. There, he had the opportunity to repair watches for some of the country’s most affluent individuals, which he considered a blessing.
He remembered that several prominent figures from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) used to come to him for watch repairs.
Many of them wore Rolex watches, which are known for their high prices; the least expensive models start at around $10,000, equivalent to about £8,000 or 16 million Naira.
According to Baba, these watches are beautiful and have deepened his love for Swiss timepieces. He wears a Longines Swiss watch and even sleeps with it.
“If I leave the house and remember that I didn’t take it with me, I have to go back. I can’t leave without it; you can feel its importance to me,” he shared.
In his shop, he proudly displays a large photo of his father, Abdullahi Bala Isa, taken while he was at his desk many years before he died in 1988.
Isah was a skilled watch repairer who worked in cities like Freetown and Dakar, where he was often sought after to fix a large number of watches.
He frequently traveled to Ibadan, the city where Nigeria’s first university was established, in the southwestern part of the country.
Baba Bala mentioned that no one knows how his father learned to repair watches or whether it was a family tradition, but it likely began during the British colonial period.
Baba Bala was born four years before Nigeria gained independence in 1960. He said, “My father was a master watch repairer, and he was taken to various places to repair watches. He learned the trade when I was a child, so I followed in his footsteps as I grew up.”
At the age of 10, Baba Bala began to grasp the mechanics of watches—their long and short movements—and he improved his skills as he started earning money from repairs.
“When my friends in high school complained about not having money, I had money to spend because I was a watch repairman.”
He recalled how his expertise in watch repair impressed one of his teachers: “He had a problem with his watch and took it to other repairmen, but they couldn’t fix it. When he told me about it, I fixed it for him the same day.”
At that time, watches were considered an essential part of everyday attire; it was rare to see a grown man without one.
