Portable Vows To Return To Class, Says Dropout Is His Deepest Regret
Fame has taken Habeeb Okikiola, the street-pop entertainer known to millions as Portable, from the rough edges of hustling to sold-out stages and viral headlines, yet the singer says one wound has refused to heal: he never finished school. In a preview of the Honest Brunch Podcast, billed for release on YouTube on Monday, the Zazu Zeh crooner opened up about the years he spent scraping to stay in the classroom, the fees he could not pay, and a dream of graduation he insists he has not abandoned.
“I go still finish school as I dey like this. I no finish school,” he said in the clip.
By his account, it was money, plain and simple, that ended his studies. He recalled hawking sachet water to keep himself going before the cost of remaining enrolled finally overwhelmed him. There was, he said, no one to carry the burden on his behalf.
“I no see anybody to sponsor me again. The school fees is high. I go still finish school as I dey like this,” he added.
Portable said he had gained admission into Kwara State Polytechnic through the institution’s indigene quota and was studying Business Administration before walking away from the programme. Of all the setbacks he has spoken about over the years, he described that exit as the one that stings the most.
“Na Kwara Poly pain me pass. I be student. Na indigene this thing I use enter. I studied Business Administration,” he said.
It is a claim worth treating with some care. Widely published accounts of the singer’s life place his roots in Abeokuta, Ogun State, where he was born on 12 March 1994 and raised, which sits awkwardly beside a reference to entering a Kwara institution on an indigene quota. PUNCH Online, which first reported the podcast remarks, noted that it could not independently verify the artiste’s admission status as stated. That caveat is a fair one, and nothing in the public record settles the question either way.
What is not in dispute is how far Portable has travelled without a certificate to his name. He reflected on being written off early in life, the child least expected to amount to much, only to become the one now standing in the gap for his household.
“Person wey dem dey call olodo for my family na me still dey feed my papa now,” he said, adding that his sisters were also working to fend for themselves.
For all his bravado, the message he pressed was surprisingly measured. Portable urged young people not to walk away from education, even as he argued that a degree is not the only road to a good life. Success, in his telling, can arrive first and the paperwork can follow.
“It is not a must you finish school before you get am. You fit go get am from outside and come back finish school. I go still finish school as I dey like this,” he said.
The remarks fit a familiar pattern for a man whose career has been built as much on candour and controversy as on music. Since Zazu Zeh detonated across Nigerian streets in December 2021, propelled by Olamide and dancer Poco Lee, Portable has rarely been out of the news, whether for the founding of his Zeh Nation label, his running feuds, brushes with the police, or his recent celebrity boxing loss to Carter Efe in Lagos in May. A return to the lecture hall, if it happens, would be one of his gentler headlines.