The Nigerian watch-lover lost in time

His father would travel all over West Africa for six months at a time - from Senegal to Sierra Leone - fixing timepieces.

At one stage Baba Bala was based in the capital, Abuja, where many of the country's elite live - and he made a good living tending to the watches of the wealthy.

He reckons his best customers were top officials of the state-owned oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

Some had Rolexes - these can vary wildly in price but an average one costs around $10,000 (£8,000).

He says they are beautiful - and encapsulate his love for all watches from Switzerland. He himself owns a Longines, another prestigious Swiss brand, which he only removes when he sleeps.

"If I step out of my house and I forgot it, I have to go back for it. I will not be without it - that is how important it is to me."

At his shop, he keeps a beautiful big framed photo of his father, Abdullahi Bala Isah, taken as he looked up from his work bench a few years before his death in 1988.

Isah was a renowned horologist and his contacts in Freetown and Dakar would call him to take a trip when they had enough watches for him to tend to.

He would also make regular visits to Ibadan, a metropolis in the south-west of Nigeria - a literary hub and home to the country's first university.

Baba Bala says no-one in the family knows where his father learnt his expertise - but it would have been at the time of British colonial rule.

He himself was born four years before Nigeria's independence in 1960.

"My father was a popular wristwatch repairer and his skill took him to many places. He taught me when I was young and I am proud to have followed his footsteps."

Baba Bala started taking a close interest in understanding the intricacies of what the wheels and levers inside a watch do when he was 10 - and was delighted to discover that as he got older it became a good source of pocket money.

"When my fellow students were broke in secondary school, I had money to spend at the time because I was already repairing wristwatches."

He remembers his skill even impressed one of his teachers: "He had issues with some of his wristwatches and had taken them to several places and they couldn't do them. When he was told about me I was able to fix all three of the watches by next day."

At one point, watches were seen as important as clothes in Nigeria and many people felt lost without one.