NewStats: 3,264,145 , 8,182,762 topics. Date: Monday, 09 June 2025 at 08:54 PM 4h6542

Since the 23-year-old subject of this #NairaLife turned 18, her future has been sorted — thanks to investments and a $250k trust fund set up by her parents. Still, she rated her financial happiness a 6. Why?

Tell me about your earliest memory of money
I’ve always been surrounded by money. But the memory that strikes me the most is from when I was around eight or nine years old. I’d followed my dad to his office that day, and when I went to use the toilet, I noticed several ghana-must-go bags there. I was a curious child, so I peeked inside. You can guess what I found.

Money?
Loads of it. Later that day, some of his staff came to carry the bags out of the office, and I never saw them again. I asked my dad what the bags were for, and he said they were for work.

Now I want to know what the work was
[/b]My father is a politician. He and some of his siblings have been in politics for as long as I can . At the time of the money bag incident, he was a House of Reps member. I didn’t know then, but I can assume now that the money was probably to share with certain people or groups as part of the party’s campaign efforts.

[b]What was growing up in a political family like?
The early years were good. My dad wasn’t always around, so I spent more time with my mum — the first of my father’s two wives.

The second wife was the “public wife”, and she always went with him for his political engagements. On the other hand, my mum was busy with us and her business. Both wives lived in separate houses, and I only met my half-siblings during parties and holidays.

We didn’t lack anything, though. I was even supposed to go to secondary school in the UK. My dad suggested it, but my mum refused. She thought I was too young to stay with extended family over there, and she wasn’t ready to relocate.

I was upset about this, so what did I do? I took ₦30k cash to school on my first day of JSS 1 and blew it all during recess. I can’t even what I spent the money on because the school provided lunch for students.

But where did you get the money from?
My dad put me and my siblings on a ₦20k monthly allowance when we started secondary school, and we usually got gifts from people anytime we visited him. I had a piggy bank where I saved all my money, and I wasn’t supposed to spend from it without informing my mum.

I was grounded for a week when she found out, but I was like, “What’s the use of all this money if I can’t spend it?” I thought she was being unnecessarily frugal, but I soon figured out her reason.

What was it?
My father has this “grace” system. You’re in his good graces whenever you please him, and you automatically become his favourite person for the week, month, or however long your grace period lasts. During this time, he goes out of his way to ensure you have everything you want. But when you annoy him, he almost forgets you exist.

I experienced this for the first time on my 14th birthday in 2014. Birthdays are a big deal in my family, and even when my dad wasn’t around, he’d send money. He did none of that, and it was later I realised it was because I missed his calls multiple times the day before and forgot to call back.

My mum is quite familiar with his system, so she uses it to her advantage and to secure her children’s future. Since we turned 18, my siblings and I have had investments in our name, and they remit monthly payments. We also have trust funds that’ll mature when we’re 25. I don’t think I’ll ever come to a point where I absolutely need to work for money.

Does that mean you’ve never had a job?
Does charging for rent count? When I moved to the UK in 2017 for university, I was supposed to live in one of my dad’s apartments. But I wanted to enjoy uni life with other students and attend parties, so I rented another apartment with a couple of friends and gave out my dad’s apartment to some random people for £1,500 per month. In addition, I got roughly £2k/month allowance from my parents— which wasn’t set in stone because I could always call them if I needed more money.

I only rented for about a year. My mum found out and put a stop to it before my dad found out.

What were you typically spending money on?
My school expenses were on my parents, so my allowance was for me. But my ₦30k debacle should already tell you I’m a very anyhow spender. I spent most of my money on clothes and my friends.

My love language is gift-giving, so I love going all out for my friends to show them I care.

Beyond that, my recurring expenses were my car, other basic needs and random destination trips. In 2018, I sponsored eight friends to Jamaica to attend my half-brother’s birthday party because I didn’t want to travel alone.

Did your friends question your spending?
Most of the African students in my uni were the children of Nigerian public servants, and they spent lavishly too. So even though most of my friends were white, they knew most of the African students were from privileged backgrounds.

My time in school was a spending blur until I graduated in 2020.

What happened after uni?
I planned to return to Nigeria for NYSC, but COVID happened. So I stayed back in the UK till 2021 and did NYSC the following year.

I like to say I served on paper because I only visited the orientation camp once. My PPA was with one of my dad’s colleagues, so I didn’t need to show up. The only reason I didn’t return to the UK was because my mum wanted me to be around my dad.

Let me guess, to be in his good graces?
Exactly. He was going to contest for re-election in the 2023 general elections, and she wanted him to see I was valuable. Perhaps he’d reward me with a position in government or help me get better acquainted with his colleagues.

But do you want to be a public servant?
No, I don’t even like being in the public eye. I prefer not to be known as my father’s daughter in public. My stepmother is the political wife, so her children are a bit more well-known in our state compared to me and my siblings. And I like it that way because I don’t have the strength for trolls. I’ve never had personal experience with insults from random people on the internet, and I’d like to keep it that way.

I just helped with the campaign to put my marketing degree to use and please my mother.

Did you make any money from the campaigns?
I didn’t have official duties, so I was just lowkey participating in party campaigns. I got a few monetary gifts here and there, though — about ₦950k in total. My primary income was from the monthly remittance I mentioned earlier, and I’ve been getting it since I was 18.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-politician-trust-fund-kid/

If you asked the 27-year-old subject of this #NairaLife why she got into virtual assistance, she’d tell you, “Lagos traffic”. But within one year, she’s tripled her ₦210k comms specialist income juggling her job and three clients.
Now, she’s planning to leave her stable 9-5 for the unstable world of full-time virtual assistance.

What’s your earliest memory of money?
When I was in primary school, my mum would give me money to buy snacks. It wasn’t regular, though. I took homemade food to school most of the time — which I hated because all my friends had money to buy food at school. Now, I appreciate that she took the time to cook for me in the morning, but then, I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just give me money.

I was in primary school between 2001 to 2006, and pupils who brought ₦50 to school were considered the rich kids. At the time, ₦10 rice, ₦10 spaghetti and ₦5 meat was the peak of enjoyment. But when my mum did give me money — usually ₦50 too — I didn’t spend it on actual food. I typically spent it on silly stuff like telephone juice and goody goody.

So, you were a rich kid too
We were pretty comfortable. Not like “silver-spoon” comfortable, but there was a spoon. I growing up in a house my dad bought. We lived in a rented apartment when I was a baby, but I have no memories of living in a home we didn’t own.

What did your parents do for money?
My dad was a lawyer, and he was the typical Nigerian father. Once he paid school fees, he was done. My mum was a housewife and was really involved with me and my younger brother. She’d take us to school and back, check our homework and make sure we had good results.

Did your dad get more involved at any point?
He did; by trying to force me to study law at the university. I didn’t want to study law because I knew I was creative —I’d been a voracious reader and writer since Primary One, and I wanted to study Mass Communication. This was in 2012.

We fought about it, but I had my mum’s . She knew what I wanted and encouraged me to stick to it and not be a pushover. She was like, if I let someone else decide what I studied in school, at what point would I be independent?

To show my dad I was serious, I decided I’d rather write JAMB again the following year than go to school for law. At that point, he gave up and let me study what I wanted.

I got into a private university for Mass Communication and graduated in 2017. The waiting period between graduation and NYSC call-up was when I started my natural skincare business.

Was that the first thing you did for money?
Yes. Making money wasn’t the initial plan, though. Growing up, I didn’t care about what I put on my face, so I didn’t have a skincare routine. Even when I started having breakouts as a teenager, I didn’t care. All I did was bathe with Imperial Leather and rub cream. My mum was always on my case like, “Don’t you know young girls need to take care of their faces so they don’t break out and have good skin?”

That period at home after university was when I decided to research and pay attention to my skin. There was nothing else to do with the free time. I watched a lot of YouTube and found several DIY options. Then YouTubers used to recommend the most ridiculous things, like asking you to rub lemon on your face. I tried some but eventually realised that I needed more knowledge. So I paid for classes with skincare professionals — which cost about ₦17,500 in total — and found what worked. That’s where I also learned to make products properly.

In October 2017, I started posting about the business on my WhatsApp status, and my first customers were my friends and family. I did the entire production with a mortar and pestle at home. The soap was ₦1,500 when I started, and the profit was around 30% on each one I sold. But I got called up for NYSC about three weeks later.

Did you continue the business?
I literally carried it with me. I stayed in the Nigerian Christian Corpers Fellowship (NCCF) house for the entire one-year period. I couldn’t take my big mortar with me, but my mum sent a small mortar and some of the needed raw materials, and I stored them under my bed.

My business was basically marketed by word of mouth. I also started using Instagram, but it was still a work in progress. I usually had one or two orders in a month.

I also wasn’t getting an allowance from home anymore. From the moment I left for NYSC, it was, “You’re earning money now, so good luck.”

It’s a good thing you had allawee, at least
Luckily, I didn’t get posted to a school. I served with a government parastatal and was the highest-earning Corps member in the NCCF house. My stipend was ₦25k when I started the job. Three months later, they reviewed salaries, and I started earning ₦40k. There was also the NYSC ₦19,800 stipend, bringing my monthly income to ₦59,800. That’s minus the small change I got from my business once in a while.

Staying at the NCCF house meant I could save a lot of money because I didn’t pay rent. At the end of service, I’d saved ₦400k.

Nice. What did you use the money for?
I just left it in a savings . The money is still untouched, and I don’t even have access to it.

Come again?
My mum created the on my behalf when I was little, and she’s the signatory. I let her keep it that way even though I’m grown now — it helps me not to spend my savings anyhow. If I ever need anything, she can help me withdraw it.

Interesting. So, what did you do after NYSC?
I finished service in 2018 and came back home to Lagos. My business also started to scale up. I started getting orders from Instagram because I had more time to push what I did on social media. I went for my Masters in Marketing Communications shortly after in 2019.

What did that mean for your business?
Like during NYSC, I moved with it too. My parents paid my school and hostel fees, so I was responsible for feeding myself.

Now, I was averaging between ₦30k and ₦50k in sales from my business and paying myself a salary of ₦10k. I had to increase the price of the soap to ₦2,000 because of an increase in the price of raw materials. I also sold body scrubs, body butter and lotion, but none exceeded ₦3,500.

What were you spending on?
Mostly provisions. I also only spent one semester in school because of the pandemic in 2020. Subsequently, I finished my Masters at home and graduated in December 2020.

The job market must’ve been waiting
It stressed me for seven months. I didn’t get a job till July 2021, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten it without the help of my mum’s friend who had connections at an energy company. Although she helped me get a leg in, I still had to the interview. That’s how I ed the corporate communications team.

Nice. What was the pay like?
₦206k gross. ₦170k after deductions.

Not bad for a first salary
My master’s degree helped since they couldn’t put me on the same scale as a first-degree holder.

So you had 9-5 and a business. What was that like?
I started having less time for my business because of the hours I spent on the road daily. I live in Ajah, and my office is at Marina. Just imagine going through that Lekki-Epe traffic every day. I drive, and it takes me about an hour and thirty minutes to get to work on a good day. On a bad day, it starts at two hours and can be infinite.

So, about a year into my job, I stopped my business. I just couldn’t continue.

That’s tough
I lost an income source, but I live with my parents and have minimal financial responsibilities. My money is basically for me. Then, I tried to save at least ₦50k monthly in that I don’t have access to. The only other things I spent money on were fuel — which cost me about ₦11k weekly and about ₦20k on data monthly. The rest of my money went into hanging out with friends and eating out.

How was it going at work?
I got a raise around the same time I stopped my business in 2022. A new MD came in, increased salaries, and I started earning approximately ₦210k net. That’s my current salary because I still work there. For the next couple of weeks, at least.

You’re leaving?
I’ve wanted to leave for the longest time. It’s not the money, because I know my salary isn’t bad. But the traffic and the recent increase in fuel prices mean it’s time for me to go. Before fuel subsidy removal, I budgeted ₦40k monthly for fuel. Now, it’s ₦140k.

I’m not leaving my job to be jobless, though. I’m also a virtual assistant, and I currently have three stable clients.

Wait. How did you become a virtual assistant?
This was also in 2022. I really wanted something that’d allow me to make money from home, so I went to YouTube to look for options. I saw options like marketing, which I tried for a bit and stopped after making about ₦18k in commissions within two weeks. Of the ₦18k, ₦10k was the commission from selling a course, while the 8k was from another site that paid ₦1,600 for every referral. It wasn’t sustainable.

I eventually took an interest in virtual assistance. The job description seemed simple enough: helping people with tasks, booking flights, and responding to emails and comments.

Those are things I already do at my 9-5. If I could do this from home and still earn money, why suffer myself?

I found and applied for the ALX Virtual Assistant course in May 2022. It’s discontinued now, but it was an eight-week intensive course that provided me with all I needed. The course was worth $750, but it was sponsored, so it was free for participants. I graduated at the end of July and officially launched out as a virtual assistant in August.

Did you get clients immediately?
It took me eight months to get my first client. Before then, what I did was put the word out on my social media. I let people know I was open to virtual assistant gigs, and I built my portfolio using the tasks I did during the ALX course. I expected clients to see my content and reach out to me, but it didn’t happen that way. I saw things.

Pray tell
I almost got scammed on LinkedIn once. I applied for a job on the site via the “easy apply” option and sent my CV. These people didn’t interview me. One day, I just got a random message on WhatsApp: an offer letter in a PDF file. My first thought was, “What’s going on here?”

First, the offer letter was badly written with multiple grammatical errors, and I wasn’t even sure who was hiring me. Second, there was no salary. They wanted me to “recruit” candidates for jobs, and I’d be paid based on every candidate I sourced. I just replied and said I wasn’t interested.

Another time, I found a “client” who wanted a social media manager and offered to pay ₦40k. It was low, but I thought the extra income wouldn’t hurt. I signed a contract, and we were supposed to start work, but they ghosted me for like two weeks. I had no access to the social media pages they hired me to manage, and they hardly responded to my messages. After a while, I got tired and stopped.

The ghetto. Let’s talk about your first client
I got them in March 2023 via Twitter. Someone had tweeted about her friend needing a virtual assistant, so people tagged me under the tweet. I reached out to confirm the service needed and also shared my CV and portfolio. My portfolio includes a link to a discovery call with potential clients, so we got on a call and agreed on the deliverables.

I work 15 hours a week, and she pays me ₦150k per month. She’s based in Ghana, and at first, she paid in naira through different payment channels, but we kept having conversion issues, so now she just pays in dollars, which is better for me. I take my payments biweekly, so it’s $159 every two weeks, making $318 at the end of the month. In naira, it’s about ₦222k now.

I guess the naira devaluation has…advantages
LOL. I got two more clients in June, and one of them also pays in dollars. It’s funny how I got no virtual assistance gigs for so long and then got three in quick succession. In fact, the way the third gig came was funny.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-comms-specialist-with-three-va-gigs/

The 34-year-old in this #NairaLife set out to escape a life of poverty in Mushin, but a decision to follow God meant abandoning a ₦150k/month offer and a promising civil engineering career for ₦5k/month to volunteer at a Christian mission in 2015.
Now, he can hardly boast of a monthly income, but he’s sure of one thing: he’ll never be stranded.

What’s your earliest memory of money?
My mother paid me my first-ever salary. When I was in Primary Four, I started going to her tailoring shop every day after school with my elder brother. Our job was to handle the weaving machine. After she was done sewing a piece of cloth, I’d use the machine to trim and enclose the seams at the edge of the fabric so they don’t loosen. She paid me and my brother ₦1 coin for every cloth we weaved. This was in the late 90s.

Her customers even started requesting me specifically to weave their clothes because I always did it neatly. It didn’t mean I was swimming in money, though. I had to use my “salary” to make up for how little we had to buy food or snacks in school.

So, no allowance?
What does allowance mean? My parents, my three brothers and I lived in a one-room apartment in Mushin, and things were tough. My dad had an electronics shop, so while my brother and I helped my mum, my other two brothers had to help my dad. But I stopped going to my mum’s shop when I entered secondary school.

Why?
I had to make more money to take the burden off my parents a little. I got a job serving food at parties during the weekends. All that involved was wearing my one white shirt and black tros and entering any party to ask them if they needed extra servers. This typically paid ₦600 and a plate of food. That was also when I started spending less time at home.

Did something happen at home?
Not really. In Mushin, it was an unwritten rule that children — especially boys — started hustling when they’re a bit older. Plus, I realised from a young age that we were really poor, and I was focused on being independent and doing something different with my life.

When I wasn’t at school, I did one odd job or another. I once worked at a cloth printing shop that paid ₦800 weekly. That money meant my parents didn’t have to worry about what my younger siblings and I ate during the day because I always bought something for them, no matter how small.

Sometimes, I’d sleep at friends’ who lived close to the shop to save transport costs or stay over in church.

How often did you sleep at the church?
Quite often. My family attended a white garment church, and anyone familiar with how these churches run knows that there’s almost always a programme happening at any given time. I was also really prayerful, so I felt right at home. At that stage in my life, I knew God had to come through if I hoped to change the cycle of poverty I was born into. Throughout secondary school, my life was a church-school-hustle cycle. It was even in church I met the person who almost made me his bus conductor.

Why almost?
I’d just finished secondary school and was in the middle of applying to universities. I needed money, and I noticed that one of the elders in church had recently bought a danfo, so I went to him and offered to be his conductor. He agreed, and I was supposed to start the following week when I got itted to the university.

What year was this?
2007. I didn’t take the ission, though.

Why not?
The school fees. It was a university in one of the western states that the governor had just founded. I was even meant to be part of the pioneer computer science students. But when I heard the fee was ₦200k, I had to give myself sense. Luckily, I had another offer to study civil engineering from a federal university, and tuition was ₦10k. I could afford that, so I took it.

It sounds like you were pretty much responsible for yourself at this point.
Yes. I’m good at mathematics, so I found a way into tutoring gigs. My first client was a classmate’s mum whom I met when I visited him at home — they lived close to the university. I noticed his 13-year-old brother was struggling with his maths homework, so I helped him.

His mum said I was good with explanations and asked if I used to teach. I didn’t, but I said yes. On the spot, she offered me ₦5k a month to tutor him thrice weekly for an hour. The first time I received my pay, I bought sardine bread to celebrate.

That’s double what you were earning at the printing shop. How did that feel?
You can’t understand the feeling. It felt like the easiest money I’d made because I made it doing something I liked to do.

Do you know I was the first person in my family to attend university? My elder brother was still battling JAMB when I got itted. I honestly believe prayer was what allowed me to break through to university, so I found a campus fellowship right from 100 level and became active there. I stopped attending my white garment church because I felt more at home in fellowship and became more grounded in scripture. It turns out it was God placing me there.

How do you know?
During a t fellowship conference when I was in 200 level, I heard God tell me he was calling me to a life of service. I assumed that meant serving in the fellowship as an executive. So, when I was elected into an executive position a few weeks later, I wasn’t surprised.

However, serving as an executive meant I’d have less free time and more responsibilities. By this time, I had three steady clients for my tutoring gig that fetched me ₦25k/month in total. That was my entire income source. It was difficult, but I had to stop two out of the three gigs, so I’d have time to serve.

But how did you manage?
Honestly, I don’t even know. I went from ₦25k to ₦8k, and things didn’t look too good. I’d grown up with this hustle mindset, but God was teaching me total dependence on Him. I trekked on some days and did wash and wear a lot, but God came through for me. I never delayed my fees throughout my days at university.

In fact, it was in uni I learnt generosity. I’d give people all the money in my pocket, knowing fully well I’d have to trek to my off-campus hostel. Uni was a teaching period.

So, what happened after?
I got an internship at a construction firm that paid me ₦90k per month immediately after graduation in 2013. My first salary was paid in cash, and I entered the market immediately to get some work outfits.

I had enough to take care of myself and send money home sometimes. When NYSC came along six months later, I was posted to a neighbouring state, but since I wasn’t too far, I’d visit the firm during the weekends to do some work on the site. They paid me ₦15k every weekend I came around. My PPA paid ₦20k, and NYSC paid ₦19,800. Most of the time, I ended the month with almost ₦100k. I was a proper big boy.

But then?
After NYSC, the construction firm offered me a full-time position for ₦150k per month. I was so excited and said yes on the spot. But I resigned after two weeks.

What happened?
God told me that wasn’t where he wanted me. He’d actually been reminding me towards the end of my NYSC year of the word he’d given me about being called into a life of service. But I struggled. I felt I’d sacrificed in university, and it was now time for me to make money. After all, I’d be in a better position to serve if I had money.

So, I stubbornly took the construction job, but I had to leave soon after because I wasn’t at peace. I went back to the mission in charge of my former campus fellowship and started volunteering there.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/christian-missionary-on-49k/

The 34-year-old in this #NairaLife set out to escape a life of poverty in Mushin, but a decision to follow God meant abandoning a ₦150k/month offer and a promising civil engineering career for ₦5k/month to volunteer at a Christian mission in 2015.
Now, he can hardly boast of a monthly income, but he’s sure of one thing: he’ll never be stranded.

What’s your earliest memory of money?
My mother paid me my first-ever salary. When I was in Primary Four, I started going to her tailoring shop every day after school with my elder brother. Our job was to handle the weaving machine. After she was done sewing a piece of cloth, I’d use the machine to trim and enclose the seams at the edge of the fabric so they don’t loosen. She paid me and my brother ₦1 coin for every cloth we weaved. This was in the late 90s.

Her customers even started requesting me specifically to weave their clothes because I always did it neatly. It didn’t mean I was swimming in money, though. I had to use my “salary” to make up for how little we had to buy food or snacks in school.

So, no allowance?
What does allowance mean? My parents, my three brothers and I lived in a one-room apartment in Mushin, and things were tough. My dad had an electronics shop, so while my brother and I helped my mum, my other two brothers had to help my dad. But I stopped going to my mum’s shop when I entered secondary school.

Why?
I had to make more money to take the burden off my parents a little. I got a job serving food at parties during the weekends. All that involved was wearing my one white shirt and black tros and entering any party to ask them if they needed extra servers. This typically paid ₦600 and a plate of food. That was also when I started spending less time at home.

Did something happen at home?
Not really. In Mushin, it was an unwritten rule that children — especially boys — started hustling when they’re a bit older. Plus, I realised from a young age that we were really poor, and I was focused on being independent and doing something different with my life.

When I wasn’t at school, I did one odd job or another. I once worked at a cloth printing shop that paid ₦800 weekly. That money meant my parents didn’t have to worry about what my younger siblings and I ate during the day because I always bought something for them, no matter how small.

Sometimes, I’d sleep at friends’ who lived close to the shop to save transport costs or stay over in church.

How often did you sleep at the church?
Quite often. My family attended a white garment church, and anyone familiar with how these churches run knows that there’s almost always a programme happening at any given time. I was also really prayerful, so I felt right at home. At that stage in my life, I knew God had to come through if I hoped to change the cycle of poverty I was born into. Throughout secondary school, my life was a church-school-hustle cycle. It was even in church I met the person who almost made me his bus conductor.

Why almost?
I’d just finished secondary school and was in the middle of applying to universities. I needed money, and I noticed that one of the elders in church had recently bought a danfo, so I went to him and offered to be his conductor. He agreed, and I was supposed to start the following week when I got itted to the university.

What year was this?
2007. I didn’t take the ission, though.

Why not?
The school fees. It was a university in one of the western states that the governor had just founded. I was even meant to be part of the pioneer computer science students. But when I heard the fee was ₦200k, I had to give myself sense. Luckily, I had another offer to study civil engineering from a federal university, and tuition was ₦10k. I could afford that, so I took it.

It sounds like you were pretty much responsible for yourself at this point.
Yes. I’m good at mathematics, so I found a way into tutoring gigs. My first client was a classmate’s mum whom I met when I visited him at home — they lived close to the university. I noticed his 13-year-old brother was struggling with his maths homework, so I helped him.

His mum said I was good with explanations and asked if I used to teach. I didn’t, but I said yes. On the spot, she offered me ₦5k a month to tutor him thrice weekly for an hour. The first time I received my pay, I bought sardine bread to celebrate.

That’s double what you were earning at the printing shop. How did that feel?
You can’t understand the feeling. It felt like the easiest money I’d made because I made it doing something I liked to do.

Do you know I was the first person in my family to attend university? My elder brother was still battling JAMB when I got itted. I honestly believe prayer was what allowed me to break through to university, so I found a campus fellowship right from 100 level and became active there. I stopped attending my white garment church because I felt more at home in fellowship and became more grounded in scripture. It turns out it was God placing me there.

How do you know?
During a t fellowship conference when I was in 200 level, I heard God tell me he was calling me to a life of service. I assumed that meant serving in the fellowship as an executive. So, when I was elected into an executive position a few weeks later, I wasn’t surprised.

However, serving as an executive meant I’d have less free time and more responsibilities. By this time, I had three steady clients for my tutoring gig that fetched me ₦25k/month in total. That was my entire income source. It was difficult, but I had to stop two out of the three gigs, so I’d have time to serve.

But how did you manage?
Honestly, I don’t even know. I went from ₦25k to ₦8k, and things didn’t look too good. I’d grown up with this hustle mindset, but God was teaching me total dependence on Him. I trekked on some days and did wash and wear a lot, but God came through for me. I never delayed my fees throughout my days at university.

In fact, it was in uni I learnt generosity. I’d give people all the money in my pocket, knowing fully well I’d have to trek to my off-campus hostel. Uni was a teaching period.

So, what happened after?
I got an internship at a construction firm that paid me ₦90k per month immediately after graduation in 2013. My first salary was paid in cash, and I entered the market immediately to get some work outfits.

I had enough to take care of myself and send money home sometimes. When NYSC came along six months later, I was posted to a neighbouring state, but since I wasn’t too far, I’d visit the firm during the weekends to do some work on the site. They paid me ₦15k every weekend I came around. My PPA paid ₦20k, and NYSC paid ₦19,800. Most of the time, I ended the month with almost ₦100k. I was a proper big boy.

But then?
After NYSC, the construction firm offered me a full-time position for ₦150k per month. I was so excited and said yes on the spot. But I resigned after two weeks.

What happened?
God told me that wasn’t where he wanted me. He’d actually been reminding me towards the end of my NYSC year of the word he’d given me about being called into a life of service. But I struggled. I felt I’d sacrificed in university, and it was now time for me to make money. After all, I’d be in a better position to serve if I had money.

So, I stubbornly took the construction job, but I had to leave soon after because I wasn’t at peace. I went back to the mission in charge of my former campus fellowship and started volunteering there.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/christian-missionary-on-49k/

What’s your earliest memory of each other?
Tonye: I actually can’t . We were friends of friends for the longest time. He was a childhood friend of my closest male friend from secondary school. As we became adults, we found ourselves in the same friendship circle.

I think the only reason why we weren’t close at first was because his family relocated to Jordan when he was in secondary school, so he’d only come back to Naija with the IJGB crowd in December. Between 2013 and 2018, you could just tell he loved the whole Detty December Lagos vibe and never missed it.

We got to know each other better with each of his visits because we’d find ourselves at the same holiday events at least once or twice each year.

Peter: But I exactly when we met for the first time. It was at a mutual friend’s beach hangout in December 2011. We said hi to each other once, and that was it. The second time was when I came for summer the next year. We met briefly when your best friend came to pick up something from you on the way to a party you refused to attend.

Tonye: Oh yes. That day. I keep forgetting.

And I didn’t refuse to attend. You guys just threw the invitation at me last-minute and expected me to drop everything.

Peter: You need to embrace spontaneity more. That’s one of your weaknesses.

Deep. So when did you realise you liked each other?
Tonye: I always found him attractive, but just as a thought. By 2014, when I’d gotten used to hanging out with him. I noticed that I thought about him for a long time after we had any interaction.

In December 2015, I was seriously looking forward to seeing him even though we weren’t really friends. He has this carefree, “sure of himself”, clever attitude that just drew me in. Before he came, I found myself asking his friend about his relationship history. That one told me he hardly ever dates or doesn’t date for long, so I told myself to calm down.

Peter: But when I came that year, we only saw once. And it’s not like she tried to reach out or even give me a clue that she liked me.

On the other hand, I was a stupid boy back then. My head wasn’t really in the space for committed relationships.

I see
Peter: It wasn’t until around March 2016, when we had this long-ass, out-of-the-blue FaceTime call that we really connected.

We’d had a conversation on the TL about something that went viral on Twitter, and that’s when I found out she’s one of those fierce feminists. So I popped into her iMessage and asked if she wanted to FaceTime about it. I don’t even know why I asked. I found feminists curious back then, so I made it a point to have these obnoxious conversations with all my female friends who were feminists.

Tonye: Oh God.

Peter: Well, when we FaceTimed, I loved that she looked so good in her natural state. Her hair was messy, her face looked fresh, and even her bedroom voice was everything.

And I realised she wasn’t really hardcore with her feminism. She was so cool and chill, and we went on to talk about our other interests. That’s when I considered the idea of dating her for the first time.

Tonye: But first, he just wanted to sleep with me.

Ah
Tonye: Yes. He was pretty vocal about it. But one ocean kept us apart, so nothing happened. We just kept up a long-distance friendship and got to know each other more. It was around this time in 2016 that he confided in me that he had a temper he was working on.

He mentioned this while he was talking about an altercation he’d had at work in the US, where he’d moved to in 2010. He got so angry that his whole body hurt just from the anger. I didn’t understand it; he explained that his anger takes over his whole body sometimes, and he feels so helpless about it. I’d never heard about something like that before, so I just told him to try to see a therapist.

Peter: I was more excited than ever to come to Naij that December, and that’s when it really sank in that I might like her.

Tonye: I was nervous because I still believed he only wanted sex. At first, I told myself I didn’t mind that, but when I saw him the week before Christmas at someone’s get-together, I changed my mind. I knew I couldn’t handle just sex with him, and I told him there and then.

Peter: We both laughed and then went on to enjoy the event with our other friends. We didn’t see each other again. When it was time for me to leave in January 2017, I called her on a whim to ask if she wanted to come with me and a bunch of my friends to the airport. As usual, she claimed last-minute and refused.

As soon as I landed in Dallas, I started missing her. Although I got back into the flow of work, my friends and relationships there, at the most unexpected moments, I’d just her smile or smell. It was crazy.

Please, tell me you started dating soon after
Tonye: Nope.

Not until December 2018 when we met up at his friend’s lounge. That’s when he asked me out. I told him it wasn’t possible because we lived different lives in different continents and only saw each other once a year. He said he’d move to Nigeria to make it work. I thought he was crazy.

Peter: I wasn’t, as you can see. I honestly didn’t see it as a big deal at the time. I’d spent the first 14 years of my life in Nigeria. I still had some family and friends here, so it wasn’t that crazy of an idea to me.

Tonye: I told him to do it first. In my mind, that was it. I thought he’d never talk about it again.

We met up twice more on some outings with friends, then I invited him to my apartment warming just before he travelled back in January 2019. I’d just moved into my very first place after living with my parents all my life.

That was where and when we had our first kiss — a short and warm kiss that happened after he followed me into my bedroom without me noticing. We just kissed, laughed and left the room again.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life/love-life-i-relocated-back-to-nigeria-for-her/

What’s your earliest memory of money?
When I was eight, I was involved with my mum’s soft drink business. I was always in the shop with a salesgirl, so I knew how the business worked. It was also my first significant introduction to money — I learned how to count money and balance the books.

I liked the control handling money gave me, so it wasn’t a surprise that I started exploring ways to make money for myself, too.

Do you the first thing you did for money?
In JSS one, I mended shoes for my classmates. I was a very curious kid, and every time a shoemaker mended my shoes, I paid attention to how they did it. One day, I went to the market, bought the needle and thread and started practising on my own. That was it.

I charged my classmates ₦50 for every shoe I worked on, and it happened until I got bored after a few months. This was 2006.

Fascinating
The next thing that caught my attention was computers and the internet. When I was 14 years old and was in SS two. My mum gave me a phone that had internet access. Somehow, I stumbled on how to build basic websites with HTML and XML. I’d pay people to build a demo website, study the code and try to implement it myself.

There wasn’t a plan to make money from this at the time, but I knew it could be a source of income later.

It appears you started thinking about money early
My parents drove that awareness. For example, my dad’s parents didn’t leave anything for him, and he had to find his way as a mechanical engineer. My mum’s father was better off, but she didn’t bring any of his wealth into our home. She was raised as a Muslim, and when she decided to marry my Christian dad, she had to forfeit almost everything and start over.

It’s probably why my mum made sure that I was involved in her business for as long as I could.

By the time I finished secondary school in 2012, my mum’s business had grown into a food canteen. I was awaiting ission, so I managed the business. I wasn’t being paid, but I could take money out of the business if I needed anything. On the side, I was also learning how to build websites.

The good thing about this was that, when I got into the university in 2013, I knew how businesses worked, and I also had some tech skills. I leveraged this to make some money for myself in my first year.

Tell me about this
I studied my university community and found out that there were lots of Christian fellowships that needed bulk SMS services. I got to work and built a bulk SMS website and put the word out. I was buying an SMS unit for 90 kobo and selling it for ₦1.50. From this, I was making an average of ₦3k/week.

I wasn’t even doing this full-time — I had a weekly allowance of ₦5k, even though I went home every weekend. Selling SMS was just a side hustle, so it was easy to leave it altogether when it got frustrating.

What happened?
The service provider I bought the unit from increased the unit price from ₦0.90k to ₦1.20. It made sense to raise my prices, but I didn’t think my customers would appreciate it. Ultimately, I decided to end the business. It was the end of my first year and school was closing for the session anyway.

What happened after?
My immediate elder sister was studying for her Master’s Degree at a university in the southwest, and I spent the session break with her. While I was with her, she randomly asked me if I was interested in learning about photography. When I told her I was, she took me to a photography studio at her uni and paid the owner ₦10k to teach me the basics.

I hardly learned anything about photography the whole time I was there.

Haha. Why not?
The guy who owned the studio was busy, and the boys who worked for him weren’t the best teachers. Luckily, the studio also had a cyber cafe, and my computer skills were useful there, so I paid more attention to that part of the business. I was helping people do stuff there and making some small changes — about ₦1k – ₦2k/day. I thought that was a fair trade-off since I always had money in my wallet.

Fair enough
After about three months, I returned to school for the new session. My allowance was now ₦10k/week, and I didn’t do anything else for money during the year. I just focused on school and website development.

But my interest in photography was growing, and I was looking for opportunities to learn. This came when I was in 2015 when I was 300 level.

How?
I found a guy — a studio and wedding photographer — on Instagram and liked his work. He worked in the town, so I approached him and offered to work for him for free. That’s how I started interning with him.

Man, he used me, but I learned everything I know about photography during the year I worked for him.

Were you being paid, though?
₦1k transport stipend every time I went out to work for him. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t even at the job, I didn’t get paid beyond that. I was pretty much paid in “experience”.

Haha. We’ve all been there
After working with him for a year, I had enough confidence in my skills to start looking for my gigs, so I left him. But we were still in and occasionally worked together. Now he was paying me between ₦5k-10k every time I worked with him.

The first job I got for myself was to shoot a wedding. I was paid ₦3k.

Sir?
Haha. I rented the camera I used from a classmate, and I gave him ₦1500. So really, I got ₦1500 from the job.

Subsequently, I got jobs that paid me between ₦5k and ₦10k. But the downside was that I didn’t have my camera, and I’d usually part with half of my earnings to rent a camera. I didn’t mind this very much because I still had my allowance. That said, I started thinking about getting my camera. It was the only sustainable way.

I agree. What was the plan?
The camera I wanted cost $2k, and a dollar was trading for ₦300 at the time.

You needed to raise ₦600k
Yes. I turned to my family for help. My mum gave me ₦300k and two of my siblings gave me ₦100k. Luckily, I got a big wedding gig that paid me ₦200k, and my profit from the whole thing was about ₦150k. I had the money I needed.

I paid for the camera in July 2018 and got it in August.

Here’s where it got interesting.

I’m listening
I grew up in a state in the north-central. It so happens that the governor of my state in 2018 used to be our neighbour. His wife — the first lady — was my Sunday School teacher at one point. On a whim, I ed her on Facebook and offered to photograph her. Two weeks later, she replied with a number to call. I called the number and her P. A invited me to the governor’s office.

Coincidentally, the first lady and her photographer had just stopped working together, so the role was open. The first time we worked together, we went out for an event. I didn’t get paid for that event, but she promised to call me back.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-nairalife-of-the-documentary-photographer-with-tech-founder-dreams/

The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 66-year-old Nigerian woman who had a late marriage at 37 because her pastor ordained it.
It lasted less than a year, and she hasn’t remarried since. But her only regret is not having children of her own.

Please, tell me everything that led to your pastor arranging your marriage
It was in 1993. I was a committed worker in a popular church that was a haven for people looking for miracles during the late 80s/early 90s when revivals were extremely popular in Nigeria.

At 37, I was doing well for myself. I was a senior manager at a bank, my two younger brothers lived with me, and I comfortably provided for all of us. The only thing was I was unmarried. While I wasn’t particularly unhappy, especially at that stage in my life, people around me took it up as a prayer point.

And because I was really active in church for many years, my pastor kept promising I’d marry soon.

How did he make this happen?
It was during one of our special services on June 13, 1993. I’ll never forget it because it was the day after we went out in our numbers to vote for Abiola. My pastor was leading a prayer session, after which he called out to the congregation for all the single people to stand up. After some more prayer, he started picking those who stood up in twos — a man, a woman, a man, a woman, like that — and telling them, “That’s your husband. That’s your wife”.

He got to me and paired me with someone, one of those men who didn’t always come to church but often donated large sums. He was a typical Lagos society man from one of the elite Yoruba families. Our pastor prophesied that God had anointed us to be man and wife, and all that remained was for us to wed.

And just like that, you married the man?
Yes.

The wedding happened in November of that same year. We tried to court while meeting each other’s families and planning the wedding, but we hardly had time to breathe between work and social activities. He was a widower who already had two kids around age ten. But I wasn’t too concerned about taking care of them because I knew I could afford hired help even if he wasn’t willing to.

There was a bit of friction between families because I’m Igbo. But my pastor was well-known and loved then. So it was a thing of joy and honour that he’d personally anointed our wedding, and everyone did their best to behave.

How was the wedding?
It was a huge society wedding; the talk of town. I look back on it now with both longing and disgust because it was big and beautiful yet we barely knew each other. How were we able to go through with it? Why did anyone allow it to happen? My parents were late at the time, otherwise, I’m sure my mother would’ve never allowed it.

What happened after the wedding?
Around a month in, I knew we weren’t compatible because he expected me to be this domestic wife and was ive-aggressive about me quitting my job. But I kept going because I believed it was the will of God for us to be together.


Why do I feel like you stopped believing this soon after?
He stopped attending our church in the third month of our marriage, and I found out he was really a Muslim. He only went to a few of my pastor’s services because of his popular ministry which drew a large crowd. It was more of a political move; my ex-husband is an active member of a well-known political party.

He was completely uninterested in Christianity and often made fun of it, using my eagerness to marry him because my pastor said so as a reason. He told me he’d just wanted someone submissive to stay home and take care of his children.

What was it like after hearing his true thoughts and intentions?
For a while, it was just disappointing.

During our courtship, he gave me the impression that he was excited to marry me. He’d tell me how beautiful I was, how he ired the way I’d preserved my beauty and also built a respectable career. He’d even compare me to his mum who was a formidable woman in society then. She was a well-known fabric merchant, an enterprising woman who raised her four children alone after her husband died early. Everyone knew her story, and I always felt good that he held me in the same esteem.

Hearing his true thoughts months into our marriage shattered that impression and even confused me. But what really made me angry was how he started interfering with my work and undermining my career.

What was the last straw for you in that regard?
I was up for a huge promotion that would’ve made me jump from general manager to acting senior general manager because the sitting SGM left suddenly. It wasn’t official yet, but I got to know about it and made the mistake of sharing the news with him.

This man then spoke to one of the executive directors of the bank, who was one of his drinking partners. The gossip that came back to me was that my husband didn’t think I was ready for the role since I was just getting used to my new role as his wife, and I wasn’t even focusing enough on the children.

No!
Those were the kind of ridiculous statements men could boldly make in those days and actually be taken seriously. That’s how I was byed, and the role was given to a guy who’d just become general manager some months before. Less than a year later, they confirmed him as senior general manager.

I’d started second-guessing myself because of the sudden change of management’s mind, but because things don’t stay secret within a bank for long, I got to know that the order came from my husband, who wasn’t even involved in the bank professionally. After that, we had our first real fight where he got physical. This was about five months in.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-i-married-the-man-my-pastor-chose-and-it-failed/

Daniel (31) and Somi (28) met when he started dating her twin sister in 2019. Their connection made Daniel believe he was happy with her twin, until she broke off their engagement and Somi helped him recover from the heartbreak.

How did you meet each other?
Daniel: I was dating her twin sister, Mina, for almost two years between 2019 and 2021. I met Somi sometime during that period. She had her own boyfriend at the time. And all four of us were quite friendly. We used to go out together a lot.

Somi: Yes, we were all good friends. But then, I broke up with my boyfriend towards the end of 2021, while Daniel proposed to Mina about a month after.

Wait, he was going to marry your twin sister?
Daniel: I thought I loved her, but the truth is, we were incompatible in a lot of ways. We had very different personalities. She was the kind of person to always be out and about, attending everyone’s party. She was generally loud and jovial. I’m a lot more reserved. But I ired her and loved being her person.

Somi: We started bonding after I became single and he drew closer to the family as Mina’s fiance. We could both relate to being in her shadow. So when she was on one of her energy bursts, initiating ideas none of us could relate to, Daniel and I would exchange glances and knowing smiles.

When did you realise you liked each other?
Daniel: When I realised I was lowkey spending more time with Somi, and I was beginning to feel guilty about it, I knew something was up.

Somi: We’d have these long deep conversations in the living room — while Mina was somewhere else doing something else — and I started to realise he got me. I’ve always been the quiet sister between Mina and me. But Daniel is even more quiet than me.

When she first started dating him after they met at work, I was so sure they’d break up in no time because Mina had a type, and it wasn’t Daniel. I was shocked when he even proposed to her. Then, I started thinking Mina was lucky she got such a good, unproblematic person.

When that changed to feelings of jealousy, I started avoiding him. We both still lived with our parents, so anytime I knew she was coming to the house with him, I’d just go out.

How did things progress from there?
Somi: They started getting busy with their wedding plans. Mina was her usual energetic self about the whole thing, drawing me in with talks of the bridal train as expected. I had to be involved in preparations for the traditional side of things as well, and the whole thing made me so uncomfortable.

I kept thinking they wouldn’t be happy together. But at the same time, I felt like a bad sister to think that. It’s not like I knew for sure that I liked him or he liked me back. I just liked him as a friend and person. And I felt his personality would clash with my sister’s in the long run. But he was love-struck.

Daniel: I agree I was love-struck. But I now realise it’s different from being in love with someone. I loved the idea of Mina and the idea of being with someone that ionate about everything. But our relationship was missing that connection I always felt with Somi.

I’m curious how you guys crossed the line over to love and a relationship
Somi: First, Mina suddenly called off the wedding the day of her bridal shower, a few weeks before the wedding. She called me crying, as the rest of the bridal party was preparing for the shower and told me she’d broken it off with Daniel. She confided in me that she no longer felt excited about the prospects of marrying him, and she’d felt that way for a while but didn’t want to it it. But now, everything in her was saying no.

My first thought was, “How’s Daniel taking this news?” I wanted to comfort Mina, but at the same time, I wanted to be sure Daniel was okay. And to be honest, my longing for Daniel was stronger at that moment.

Daniel: I didn’t take it well at all. I actually cried when Mina broke things off. On one side, I didn’t think I deserved her. On the other, I was already determined to give her my all. In retrospect, I know it was unhealthy to be with someone who unknowingly made me feel less than.

After the whole thing settled and I made peace with the fact that I was no longer getting married, I obviously stayed away from their house and business. But then, Somi reached out to me about a week later, asking how I was. She sounded so sincere and comforting when she said she hoped I was fine. And I realised I’d missed her and our frequent bantering.

I see
Somi: We started talking over the phone from time to time after that first call. We’d always been close on IG, so we started really responding to each other’s content again and exchanging memes.

Daniel: She didn’t know how much her messages and memes helped me get through the day. Having her come back into my life after I stopped being anything to her, really made me feel a lot less lonely.

One day, I decided to ask her if she wanted to hang out, and we did. We attended my co-worker’s birthday party together. Thankfully, Mina and Somi are completely unidentical, so there was no mistaking them for each other and wondering if I’d gotten back together with Mina.

Somi: LOL. After that outing, I knew I really liked him. And I knew I had to have a potentially difficult conversation with Mina. Luckily, she said she was fine with me getting close to him.

Daniel: I asked her out officially a week after we attended the birthday party in 2021.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life/love-life-we-married-a-year-after-he-almost-married-my-twin/

It’s not every time someone makes 100x their old salary in less than three years, but that’s what the 25-year-old data engineer in this story did. What made all the difference and set him on this path was a bet he took in 2014.

This is his #NairaLife.

Let’s take it back. What’s the first thing you did for money?
From JSS 3 to SS 2, I wrote notes for my classmates who didn’t want to do it themselves and charged ₦500 to ‎₦1k for it. On average, I made ₦4k-₦5k per month.

What were you doing with 5k in JSS?
I paid a school prefect ₦2k, so they’d tell the other senior students to leave me alone.

But the rest was still a lot of money. My favourite meal was ₦50 bread and ₦40 akara. Imagine how many I could buy from what I made.

A lot. Was there a reason you stopped writing the notes in SS 2?
I had an easier way to make extra money — my friends paid me to sit beside them during exams or do their assignments or projects for them.

Was bread and akara the only reason you were hustling for money?

I don’t know why I started, but I suspect the state of my parent’s finances was a key factor. My dad repaired and sold computers and my mum worked in the civil service. My dad’s business had its on-and-off seasons, so we had to rely on my mum’s civil service and occasional loans during the off months.

So, while they sent me ₦1500 to ₦2000/month, I could tell it was a struggle to do it. And I had three siblings they needed to worry about, too.

Nothing much else happened until I got into university in 2014 to study systems engineering — I always knew I wanted to do something related to computers.

Where did the interest in computers come from?
My dad. I grew up watching him repair and sell computers, and I started playing with them when I was about four years old. However, I wanted to do higher-level stuff than my dad ever, and studying a computer course was the first step toward that.

But one thing temporarily stood in the way.

What was it?
Again, my dad. He had a stint in the military and wanted me to go to the Nigerian Defence Academy to study engineering. Luckily, I knew something he didn’t about the application process and used it to my advantage.

If you wanted to go to the NDA, you needed to buy a JAMB form and a separate NDA application form. My dad thought I only needed the JAMB form, and I didn’t correct his assumption. Of course, I couldn’t proceed with my application or write the NDA entrance exam.

With that out of the way, I changed my institution of choice on the JAMB form and chose systems engineering.

Bruh. Did he ever find out?
Yes. But it didn’t matter because only had to pay my school fees for the first year.

Because I was on a first class at the end of my first year, I got a few scholarships that ran into ₦400k/year. The only term was that I had to maintain my first-class grades. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about money until I left uni.

What else happened in uni?
In 2016, I learned C-sharp as part of my school work and Java, thanks to a government-funded program. Before I got to my third year, I’d gotten good at it and a learning organisation hired me as a training instructor. My salary was ₦50k.

I worked there for a year before I left for my IT in 2018 where I worked as an Android developer.

Was it a paid gig?
A ₦5k/month stipend. It’s interesting because it was a cool startup and everyone thought they paid well. I had the scholarship money, so I didn’t mind.

I was more concerned about not enjoying Android development the way I thought I would. I needed to find and explore other options.

About three months into my IT, a friend dragged me to a conference organised by a non-profit organisation. To be honest, I went for the food. But I heard about data science for the first time, and I was curious. Something ing data to drive value and artificial intelligence sounded interesting.

What steps did you take after that?
I went to a few boot camps and participated in hackathons. In December 2018, my team of four won a hackathon organised by a bank and the NGO that introduced me to data science. The prize money was ₦1m. Also, I got ₦150k in monetary rewards for winning in some other categories.

Best in everything
The hackathon lasted for three days, and I made ₦400k at the end of it. From that moment up until I graduated, I was balancing side jobs with school and living on the random ₦50k-₦100k that came by and my scholarship money.

How were you moving money?
I wasn’t spending money on myself: I was squatting with a friend and using the school internet. But I was big on sending money home. For the most part, half of what I made in a month went home. I was also heavily involved in the tech communities I was in. If there was a community event, the organisers could count on me to drop ₦30k – ₦50k.

I went for another edition of the hackathon at the end of 2019, and my team won the ₦1m prize money again. When I graduated a few months later in 2020, I had ₦756k in my savings — my share of the hackathon’s prize money and the projects I worked on during the previous months. The most interesting thing, however, was that three companies were interested in hiring me.

A flex
Haha. After praying about it, I had this conviction to go for whatever offer I got first. When the first offer came, I saw that I’d be a graduate intern and get paid ₦30k/month if I accepted it. My first reaction was, “Which one is this again?”

But I decided to trust my gut and accepted the role. However, my plan was to leave if the other companies reached out with better offers.

Did they?
They reached out but they also offered me internships and salaries of ₦50k. I decided to stay for the experience and optimise for growth.

What did growth look like for you?
The company had the most interesting clients and projects. Because of this, data engineering entered the mix and became something I was interested in.

Why?
I wanted something that was close to software engineering and wasn’t as popular in Nigeria at the time. Besides, data engineers are big players and their job is to provide the right data for the data scientists.

So I started figuring out how to transition into data engineering.

The best path forward was to enrol in a data engineering certification course. The one I wanted cost ₦350k, which I couldn’t afford on my salary, even though it’d been increased to ₦40k. So I spoke to the company to pay for the course and deduct ₦15k from my salary every month.

Now you had ₦25k/month
My internet was ₦20k and my tithe was ₦4k, so I was left with ₦1k. I lived on my savings from school, which was running out fast because I gave my parents ₦20k/month and also ed them with ₦400k to pay the rent.

I’m curious. Were you applying for other jobs?
I was. My salary expectation was ₦250k-₦300k, but no employer wanted to pay up because I hadn’t done NYSC.

In the short term, I started working on side projects again, which brought in between ₦50k-₦100k/month.

When did you go for NYSC?
I couldn’t go until December 2020 because of Covid. After returning from camp, I didn’t get a chance to speak to my boss about a possible raise until January 2021 — I’d written and ed my data engineering course, so I thought it’d give me more bargaining power.

How did that go?
The company offered me ₦50k, and my boss asked me to take it because the federal government was going to pay me ₦33k. I walked out of his office and never returned.

Man, what was the plan now?
I interviewed with a new company almost every day in January 2021. The highest offer I got was ₦50k, and they all gave the same reason for lowballing me.

Let me guess: NYSC?
Yes! I finally found a company willing to do ₦100k in February, and I worked with them for six months.

What happened after?
In July 2021, a company I applied to in 2020 reached out. After the conversations, they made me an offer.

How much?
₦500k. But I didn’t accept it immediately — I was hoping that the company I was working for would make me a better offer because I was due for confirmation. Also, I was working on a major project.

When I saw my new offer of ₦125k, I bounced and accepted the job offer waiting for me.

One month into the job, the management of the company switched to paying in dollars because of the price fluctuations between both currencies, and my salary was adjusted to $1200. After converting to naira on the black market, my net salary was between ₦650k – ₦680.

Nothing major happened until November 2021. A client sent me a link to apply to a freelance platform, which I did and got a consulting gig there. I was charging them $20/hour and making about $3200 a month.

Now, I was earning about ₦2.3m/month from my main and side gigs.

Sweet. That must mean a lot.
Man, it did. It gave me the freedom to start something I’d always wanted to do — clear my parents’ debt, which was about ₦2m. I started paying it off in December.

It was in the same month I started interviewing with a big tech company. I was big on working with this company and even had a job alert created for them. The moment I saw a role I was suited for, I applied for it immediately.

Fast forward to May 2022, I got the job.

The salary was ₦1.6m/month after tax. But the company had a policy: their employees couldn’t work on consulting or freelancing gigs that’d affect their jobs. My side gig at the time demanded that I worked eight hours a day — it was almost like another full-time job.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-data-engineer-salary-in-nigeria/

Tunde and Tumi (both 31) have been married for four years after knowing each other for three months. They were neither friends nor partners during that period. No, the wedding happened thanks to their mothers’ heavy matchmaking.

They tell us about it in this week’s Love Life.

How did you meet?
Tunde: Our mums hooked us up.

Tumi: They’re childhood best friends, but his mum moved to the US in the 90s. I’d always known about him vaguely.

Tunde: My mum showed me photos of her once or twice. But we finally met when I came to Nigeria for the first time in October 2018. My brother was getting married, and his babe’s family was in Nigeria. I met Tumi at this wedding.

Tumi: During the weeks leading up to his arrival, my mum kept telling me how I had to meet him, and we’d be so good together. She even told me that when she and her friend gave birth to us around the same time, they promised each other we’d get married. Of course, I rolled my eyes.

Tunde: My mum didn’t go that far, but she definitely wanted us to get together. When I finally met Tumi, I was so over the pressure from my mum that I didn’t really try to get to know her.

Tumi: Three months later, we were married.

Please, tell us what magic occurred
Tunde: I ended up staying in Nigeria longer than the one month my family had planned because of some personal issues. We stayed in my father’s family house, and it was this big, comfortable estate, so Tumi’s mum would come over a lot. She practically lived with us during that time.

Tumi: My dad had recently died, and I was their only child, so my mum really leaned on her old friend for emotional . That meant I was almost always in their house too when I wasn’t at work or staying over with my friends. He was always out and about, which meant we practically lived together but never actually saw. Meanwhile, our mums were each planting seeds of us being together in our heads.

Tunde: That’s an accurate way to put it, “planting seeds”. I just realised one day that I wasn’t opposed to the idea anymore. It’d been said to me enough times that it started to seem like my idea. So I started watching Tumi from afar and realised she was actually a good catch.

Tumi: Besides the regular pleasantries when we saw, we weren’t really friends, but our mothers’ almost sisterhood was so infectious it gave us a kind of bond, I think.

When did you realise you liked or even loved each other?
Tunde: About a month in, I started really seeing her and realised I could’ve been attracted to her without this pressure from our mums.

Watching her in our living room as I ed by, or as we crossed paths in the front yard, her personality always made me smile. She can be hotheaded, but she’s adorable when she’s angry. You can’t cheat or disrespect Tumi. She won’t take it even for a second; she’ll change it for you immediately and in an intelligent way. I really like that about her.

Tumi: I think around that time, I noticed he was getting less aloof around me. We still only did pleasantries but he was noticeably warmer. I ired how reserved he was though.

I’ve always liked a man who isn’t necessarily arrogant but also doesn’t talk too much. Our mothers aside, he was a good spec based on all the things I liked in a man. Well, the superficial things. We didn’t really get to know each other until much later.

Before or after the sharp wedding?
Tumi: LOL. Both.

Tunde: We’re still getting to know each other right now. It’s not something that has to happen at a specific period. But sometime in the second month, November, I decided I wanted to marry. I wanted it, and I knew it would make my mum happy.


Sounds like a huge thing to just decide like that
Tunde: I know. But I didn’t really want to deep it. I kinda liked this girl and both our parents wanted us to get married, so why not? I was young, but I was doing pretty well as a remote coder for a tech company in Cali. I couldn’t really think why not? It wasn’t like I’d been in any serious relationships ever, and I couldn’t be bothered to date.

Tumi: I’d had one serious boyfriend before we married. We dated for four years and it ended terribly, so I was sore from that. I hadn’t dated in several months before Tunde came into my life, and I was meeting many frogs at the time.

When he jokingly asked me, “What if we just get married?” one day in his mum’s kitchen, I thought he was crazy, but I didn’t hate the idea at the same time.

But you barely knew him
Tumi: I know it sounds crazy. But I dated my ex for four years. Still, after our breakup, I felt like I never really knew him.

Tunde: I can’t really explain it, but it felt like we’d known each other forever because of our mums. She felt so familiar, and as we warmed up to each other, it started to feel like home when I was around her.

At some point, when I stepped outside my room after a long virtual work day or got back home from whatever elongated trip I went on with relatives I was getting to know, I’d immediately want her to be around just to feel her presence. Anytime, I discovered she wasn’t there with her mum, I’d feel a little sad.

Tumi: I was completely ignorant of this because he never actually asked about me. He’d just use his eyes to look for me. If he sees me, he’d greet me and ask how I was.

So what happened in the kitchen that day?
Tumi: Our mums had gone out. For the first time, I had to stay back at their place without my mum. It was a Saturday, but I had some urgent work to do on my laptop and didn’t want to waste time on transit getting home before doing it. And surprise surprise, he actually came down from his domain to see what the mere mortals were up to. That was the first time we had a proper conversation after almost two months of meeting.

Tunde: I needed a break from my screen to stretch my legs and eyes, so I came downstairs and froze when I saw her in the living room. No one was home. My siblings had gone back to the US by then. I only stayed back to keep my mum company and enjoy Lagos during the famous Detty December because I worked remotely. Everywhere was quiet and she looked so pretty from behind, focused on work, I knew I had to talk to her.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life/love-life-we-got-married-without-ever-dating/

First, let’s talk about religion
I was born in the church. When I was about four, my father donated his compound for a friend to use when he was starting a church, so you can say I lived in church growing up. I was immersed in the culture around church, religion and spirituality, and I loved it so much.

My childhood friends were children of ministers and workers who were also always in church — my home. I wasn’t as close to my primary school friends because I was always excited to get back home and hang with the church kids all evening. I was also excited about Sunday School and all the Bible stories and lessons we were taught.

The church had all these activities for the kids: drama, dance, singing and competitions. I used to win all the Bible-related competitions like Bible sword, reciting memory verses, etc.

Sounds so nostalgic
Yes. My favourite things about that period were the beautiful Christian picture books I owned, with vivid illustrations of the creation story, the nativity. I especially loved the depictions of Egypt — the stories of Moses and Joseph.

I’m a digital artist today because I fell in love with art while replicating those picture book scenes with my paper and crayons, and later, watercolours. I’d paste my replicas all over the walls of my room. I found art through Jesus.

I grew to love Jesus because He was so good, kind and caring. I still love the idea of being connected to and loved by such a divine figure. I had such a beautiful, happy childhood. I didn’t really notice anything missing until I entered secondary school.

What was missing?
I discovered what it meant to be poor or rich, pretty or ugly, lonely or popular.

I always felt my parents were comfortable because they’d give stuff away and help people with money when they were in need. But they weren’t really; we were just getting by. Before secondary school, everyone hung out with everyone because the concept of being popular wasn’t a thing. But my church friends made new friends at their own schools and didn’t attend church as much. A lot of them even japa’d with their families or went to boarding school, or just weren’t as outgoing as we were when we were younger.

And how did you navigate all that?
I found singing, again, through Jesus.

While my school was secular, the owner was a devoted Christian, so there was strict assembly and devotion every morning with at least 30 minutes of praise and worship. In JSS 2, I volunteered to lead those. I did so well the first time that I was selected to lead the morning assembly once every week. I eventually became chapel prefect in SS 3.

Having that, and of course, studying to get good grades, gave me purpose, but I still struggled with loneliness.

Why?
Things happening at home made me terribly sad.

My parents were constantly fighting abusive and violent fights at this point. They’d leave me and my siblings alone at home until nighttime. And as the middle child of three, I felt scared and neglected. During this period, I wanted to kill myself all the time. I’d lie in bed, seriously considering it because I didn’t have anything to look forward to. I wasn’t happy anymore.

But Jesus, and the thought of continuing my suffering in hell, stopped me from doing that.

Did adulthood help these feelings?
Adulthood comes with its own struggles — from family drama to work pressure to money wahala. There’s also the depression that comes with not achieving your dreams or goals. I find that I’m always struggling to find joy in the little things just to get by. And then, finding that I wasn’t straight didn’t help matters.

How did that happen?
In secondary school, I crushed on up to ten different guys, especially in SS. I felt I was really attracted to these guys. I’d stare at them and some ended up being my friends.

But I only dated one guy towards the end of SS 2. We broke up in SS 3 first term because I didn’t know how to commit. I “liked” this guy, but I didn’t really want him in my personal space. I didn’t want to always hang out with him, which makes sense because I was 16 then. I think back to my classmates now and wonder how they could be so committed to their boyfriends at that age.

That’s a good question
Exactly. But then for university, I went to a Christian private school, so it was more church culture, and I immersed myself in it. It was my comfort zone, after all. I ed the choir and was generally at peace until I realised I didn’t like any of the guys. It’s not like I was caught up in dating, but you know at that stage in life, it’s a huge focus for most.

At one point, I thought I was a misandrist, but I didn’t have a problem being friends with guys. In fact, I get along with guys a lot. Most of my friends are guys today. But once they try to get romantic or remotely sexual, I get turned off. I’d just literally switch off and freeze up before I even notice.

How did your church preach about sex? Do you think that affected your perception of it?
I don’t think so.

My alma mater was strict regarding sex and relationships: if you were caught alone with a guy or even holding hands walking down the streets, you could get anything from a warning to suspension from school. But that didn’t stop anyone; those were just rules. And at that time, I’d moved to a youth church back home, so sermons weren’t repressive. They were just point-blank about no pre-marital sexual activity as stated in the Bible. Yet I know people in the church who obeyed it and people who didn’t.

I wouldn’t say my church affected my perception of sex, but maybe my Christianity as a whole and personal relationship with God.

Got it
Towards the end of 100 level, someone told me I behaved like a lesbian, and I was so confused. Until that point, I thought lesbians had to be tomboys. I’m quite feminine in my dressing and behaviour. Well, actually, I’m in between. I’m quite sporty and tend to be assertive, things people wrongly associate with being manly. But other than that, I wouldn’t consider myself a tomboy.

In 200 level, I realised I had a crush on my roommate. We were roommates for three years, and we’re still friends today, but she still doesn’t know I like her. In school, I wondered how boys weren’t falling over themselves to date her because she was so attractive.

So you’re not attracted to men at all?
No. I can’t stand them romantically, TBH.

How they talk once they’ve decided they want to date you or get in your pants? It’s off-putting to me. They aren’t all like that, of course. Some are actually serious about liking you and being committed, but on a fundamental level, I don’t really connect to how men think or process things.

Even their build and essence turn me off. When I think back now, all the guys I ever crushed on — secondary schoolmates, celebrities — were all almost effeminate. I know my friends would never be able to wrap their heads around this, but it really just feels natural.

Got it. And how’s it been since you discovered your sexuality?
Uneventful. I haven’t had the nerve to approach women sexually or even search for communities where I’ll be welcome. I’m still very much in the closet. No one knows. Not one single person I know knows I’m gay.

Not even your family?
My mother and siblings know I’m a pride ally and speak up against homophobia and for gay rights, but that’s it. I’ve tried to hint it to my mother because we’re like besties, and I’ve noticed she’s been much more respectful of the gay community, but she just zones out anytime I try to connect myself directly to it.

One time, while we were having a conversation, I told her I sometimes understand lesbians because I can’t stand men romantically, and it was like I didn’t even say anything. She just went on with what she was saying beforehand.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-i-love-jesus-but-im-a-closet-lesbian/

What’s your most memorable date?
Christabel: Our second date. We went to a park to have a picnic and had the best time with each other. We talked, walked around and even did small PDA.

Henry: Mine was our getaway weekend in December 2021 — we used to have those once every few months when we were dating. For this one, we. stayed at a fancy hotel for three nights, went on a date at a restaurant, and even did a photoshoot.

Christabel: Ah, sorry. That’s my favourite date, too. He had a car pick us up and take us wherever we went. I was convinced he would propose that weekend because of how extra everything seemed.

But he didn’t?
Christabel: No, he didn’t.

Henry: I just wanted to make you feel special.

How long was your relationship at the time?
Henry: It was about nine months.

Back to the getaway. How much did it cost?
Henry: I can’t everything but the hotel was ₦100k per night. Our photoshoot was about ₦40k, and the dinner date cost ₦30k.

Christabel: Ah, ₦30k? On top of small burgers and chicken wings? He didn’t tell me how expensive this thing was, I’d have freaked out.

Henry: Clearly. But it wasn’t expensive because we had lamb chops and wine too.

Do I need to ask who is better with money?
Christabel: It’s definitely me. He likes to go all out for dates, but after we started dating, I made him put a ₦10k rule on every date. We’d only go on dates that would cost ₦10k per person, except on special occasions. He won’t it it, but I know it helped.

Henry: You know what? I agree. She wasn’t a financial advisor for nothing.

Oh? Financial advisor?
Christabel: He was the president of the social group, and I was the financial advisor. That’s how we officially became friends, even though we knew each other in university.

Tell me about that
Christabel: He was a year ahead of me, and we attended the same fellowship. But I never liked him. He was one of those brothers in fellowship that girls used to flock to after service.

Henry: Haha. We met after we had both graduated, at a summit in 2018, exchanged pleasantries and went on our way. In 2019, we saw at another event, and later in the same year, we met at our reunion.

Christabel: He was voted in as the president, and I was the financial advisor. This time I asked for his number.

Finally!
Christabel: We got close during the pandemic in 2020. But when I asked him out in July, he turned me down and said he wasn’t ready for a relationship. I took my L, but we remained friends. I’d call him whenever I needed help with some design or Excel.

In 2021, this oga sent me a cake with the inscription, “I love you”. When I called to ask him, he said it was platonic. I was talking to someone then, but that one didn’t send any gifts, so my family already assumed Henry and I were dating.

When did the relationship move past platonic?
Henry: I invited her to my family house in 2021. I had promised to cook, but we ended up buying food at a restaurant instead. And when we got to the house to eat, I asked her if she’d like to be in a relationship with me.

What of the other guy?
Christabel: It wasn’t working out. And looking back, Henry had always stayed consistent in trying to know how things were between me and the guy. The whole time I didn’t know he was trying to displace him.

Fair. But what was it like working with your partner?
Christabel: For a whole year, nobody knew we were dating. Most people knew when we announced we were getting married in August 2022.

Was there a proposal?
Christabel: Yes! It happened in March 2022. We were supposed to go out, but his mum called me and asked me to come over. The plan was to go to her’s first then return home to change. If I knew what they’d planned, I’d have dressed hot — church girl with a pinch of Cardi B.

Hahaha, I feel you
Henry: The house was candlelit, and there was a screen with pictures of us from over the years.

Christabel: I tried to run, but he sat me down on the same couch we sat when he asked me out. This time, his question was if I’d marry him. I said yes. Then we had a small house party with our friends there.

Wedding plans kicked off almost immediately, and we got married in August 2022.

How was the wedding?
Christabel: There’s nothing like a small wedding. He had to tell me to cut down on some costs because the budget was already close to ₦6m- ₦7m. I’m usually the more frugal one, but I got carried away with the whole wedding. I was willing to pay ₦150k for my makeup for a white and traditional wedding each. But after I spoke to him, I realised it wasn’t just about me or that day, so I found an alternative that cost just ₦75k for both events.

Henry: We had a spreadsheet where we documented the different expenses and costs, so that helped us stay on track. In the end, we spent about ₦3.5m- ₦3.8m.

Christabel: It was our responsibility, but he handled most of the expenses. I contributed about ₦1.5m or so.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/love-currency-of-an-abuja-married-couple/

How did you first realise the importance of money?
It was from making it. I was born and raised in a village in Kwara State. We were farmers in my family and planted crops like cassava, corn, and potato. On Saturdays, my friends and I went to the market to sell what we could and split the money among ourselves. My share was usually around ₦‎1k, and I usually gave it to my grandmother to use for the house and keep the rest for me.

What about your parents?
My father left the village to work as a driver in Lagos in 1993. But in 2000, he asked me to go live with his mother. He wanted someone to be with her.

So I was working on her farm and going to school. But I stopped school after primary school.

Did you want to?
I don’t even know. My father had two wives and six children. We were just managing, so going to school wasn’t what anyone talked about like that. Everyone just worked on the farms. Even when I left the village for Lagos, it was to go and work.

When did you leave?
2003. My father said I should come, and he helped me find a place to live and a job with one of his friends who sold fabric and clothes at a market. I was a salesgirl for the woman, and she paid me ₦10k/month.

I left the place after a year.

Why?
In 2004, I found out I was pregnant. The father of the child and I agreed to move in together. We didn’t do much. He just met my parents, and we did a little introduction before moving into his once.

What did he do for money?
Police work. And because he had a job and was earning money, he didn’t want me to work. When I asked for a reason, he said he didn’t want me to work for anyone. He promised to open a shop for me, and I believed him. So I stayed at home without a job for two years.

I was getting some money from him. Before he went out every morning, he’d give me ₦500 – ₦1k to cook something.

I don’t know how much he was earning because he never told me, so I’m not sure if he could have done more. But he was leaving money for feeding and paying our house rent.

Did you have arguments about money?
Sometimes. If we fought, we settled it. Thank God we didn’t have too many responsibilities, so it was easy to manage the money he left.

What about the child you were pregnant with?
I lost the pregnancy.

Eish. I’m sorry
Thank you. But I got pregnant again and gave birth to my first child in 2006. There was one more person to worry about; I decided to find a job since my husband still didn’t set up the shop he promised.

I got a job as a cleaner in a school. By fire, force and plenty of begging, my husband reluctantly agreed to allow me to do the job. I told him I couldn’t just sit at home anymore.

How much did the job pay?
₦5k. I don’t know why my husband didn’t want me to work because the money I started earning at the job was used to him and the house. One person cannot do everything.

Now that I had a job, he didn’t have to give me money every day anymore. But I left the job in 2008 when I was pregnant with my second child.

How were you managing when you left?
I was back to living on whatever the children’s father gave us. Nothing after that. He was still saying that he’d open the shop for me, but he did everything by mouth. It never happened.

About the time I started thinking about finding another job, I found out that I was pregnant again. This was in 2010, and I was at home for another two years before I found another cleaning job in 2012.

How did you find that job?
I started telling everyone around that I was looking for work and someone introduced me to a family. I’ve been with them since. When I started, I was going there to clean the house and wash their clothes once a week, and they were paying me ₦10k/month.

I was also working for other people during the week. After calculating everything, I was making up to ₦40k/month.

Was this enough to take care of the house and the kids?
We weren’t paying school fees because the kids were in public schools. But I was paying for their feeding, school books and uniform. My husband was taking care of the rent. On months when we didn’t have a lot to spend money on, I saved ₦10k. However, there were always reasons to touch the money and it never grew.

As the years ed, we were managing and the kids were growing older. Everything was fine until my husband started misbehaving and picking fights with me.

Why? What happened?
He never wanted me to have a job, even though he saw what the money did for us. When I didn’t stop, he decided that I was having affairs and seeing other men. I think he was just jealous because where was the time to do that?

He’d been fighting me for years, but it got worse in 2020. Every day, he’d listen to my calls to see who I was speaking to. Most times, these people just wanted to give me work. Then he started checking my phone at night when I was sleeping. To him, everybody that called me was my “boyfriend”.

Omo
There was a time he sent me and the kids out in the middle of the night, but we had no place to go at that time. When it was morning, I took my kids to my father’s house, and we stayed there for two weeks.

Where did you go from there?
Back to his house. Our families settled the fight, but it didn’t end there. Sometimes, he’d wake me up in the middle of the night and force me to swear that I wasn’t cheating on him. At some point, he even accused me of blocking his destiny because of my affairs.

That’s a lot
It was. When he told me to leave his house again in 2021, I knew I wasn’t going back. Even his parents said I should leave the house for him because they were tired of his wahala. I carried my load, my three children and left.

I’m sorry. But where did you go?
We stayed with one of my sisters for a few weeks. But she also started doing somehow, so the children and I had to leave. I had only one option left.

Read full story: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-nairalife-of-a-low-income-cleaner-nanny/

Let’s start with the obvious question. Was working in tech always the goal?
It wasn’t. I didn’t even consider it for years, which is funny because I studied computer engineering and my closest friends work in tech. You’d think the peer pressure would have gotten to me sooner. But I was fine working in the media after graduating from uni.

Now you have to tell me how you started working in the media industry
While studying for my computer engineering degree, my best friend, Odun and I discovered our love for writing. We wrote fiction and published the stories on a little blog we owned.

In 2015, Seyi Taylor reached out to us and pitched a media publication he was launching. He said the core audience was young people, and he thought we’d be a great fit because we were “funny and smart.” That publication was Zikoko.

Heh. The name sounds familiar
Odun and I sat down and thought about what we wanted Zikoko to look like. I’ll be honest — we didn’t have a clear idea of what we were doing, but we were obsessed with Buzzfeed and Youtube. That was a good start, so we experienced and threw things at the wall. It took about two months after we started before we created the first viral article that did hundreds of thousands of views.

What did the experimentation phase look like?
The biggest part was content consumption. Part of being a creator is consuming a lot of content. Every time I saw something I liked, I’d try to figure out why I liked it. Then I’d borrow those elements and apply them to whatever I was working on.

Also, I was doing a lot of listening. A tweet, a joke or a meme was an opportunity for fresh content. At the very least, they were signs of what people were interested in.

This process taught me how to mould my voice to fit the audience — another thing content creators and marketers should optimise for. Creating content in a way your audience wants or likes, even if it doesn’t particularly appeal to you, is a great way of getting through to them.

I’m curious about how you balanced creating the content you wanted vs what the audience wanted
The balance, for me, was making sure that I didn’t hate anything I wrote. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t something I’d have chosen to write, I pulled it off in a way that felt honest.

If I was writing about something I didn’t know much about, the trick was to research and reach out to people who could talk about their experiences. This was particularly useful for listicles because they had to be relatable to reach the audience. Ultimately, if the output felt solid to me, I was good.

The more I took these early learnings and applied them, the more comfortable I was with content creation and settling into it as a career.

Lit. What was the next significant event?
I spent a little over a year at Zikoko before I went to Konbini, another media company. It was another vital experience; I was there for about three years and became the Editor-in-Chief during that period.

But Konbini had to leave Nigeria, and I returned to Zikoko in 2019. The publication was doing a lot more interesting things, especially around long-form storytelling. This opportunity played a role in creating series like Sex Life and Love Life. Also, I became the Editor-in-Chief.

Was there anything you learned during this time that still proves particularly useful?
Building processes. Working with the Managing Editor at the time, Ope Adedeji, was a valuable lesson in the importance of reporting and documenting processes.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but we were writing go-to-market strategies for every series and project we launched. A good part of this was figuring out the audience, distribution, competitors and success metrics.

Building and documenting processes force creators to think about execution, which increases the chances of success. Although I left the media industry in 2021, this is still immensely useful to me.

A segue. After working in media for so long, why did you transition into another industry?
It was a combination of different things. I found the tech industry interesting, thanks to the conversations I‘d been having with my friends over the years. Whenever they talked about their companies, I always had ideas about how to make their products better. Naturally, I started thinking that it wouldn’t hurt if this became my day job. It also helped that I had easily-transferrable skills.

Besides, I thought I’d done my fair share of work in the media.

Fair enough. What steps did you take when you decided to transition?
First, I quit my job, although I didn’t have another one lined up — a career first. Then I tweeted that I was looking for a marketing role in tech. I didn’t know what I thought the tweet was going to accomplish, but some cool founders reached out to me. I’m still amazed by the quality of people who wanted to work with me.

In the end, I ed PiggyVest as Head of Content and Content Strategy. The conversation had been happening before my transition because I had friends there. When I ed the company, the job to be done was figuring out how to leverage content to convert potential customers into s.

What does everyone need to know about the difference between tech content marketing and content creation?
The major difference is that in media, the content itself is the product. However, content is an add-on to push a product in the tech industry. It doesn’t matter what I’m writing or producing these days, I’m thinking about how the content sells the brand and its products. I’m also asking questions about what sets of consumer behaviour I’m looking to influence or change. Whatever the answer is, every piece of content ends with a CTA that directly promotes the product. The end goal is conversion — the number of people who take an action you want them to.

I should mention that my role at PiggyVest has evolved and isn’t just limited to content marketing anymore. In the past two years, I’ve led projects around digital and product marketing.

Interesting. Tell me more about that
Once the content marketing bit was sorted and our output was hitting its conversion goals, I felt like I needed to take on more projects. I started thinking about other ways to push the product, so I offered to lead or partake in digital marketing campaigns. The scope wasn’t just content marketing anymore, but it also included product marketing. When I figured this out, I did the next best thing.

What?
I took some courses. My favourite was an intense 33-hour Product Marketing course on CXL — it was incredibly rewarding, and I felt smarter at the end of it. The next thing was applying the learnings and experimenting with new and exciting ways to market the product.

Wait. What’s the difference between content marketing and product marketing?
Content marketing is top-of-the-funnel — it’s your early interactions with prospective s. In practice, it means creating useful and relatable content to win them over. For example, if you’re selling a savings product, you create content around how people manage money or make smart money decisions. While at it, you’re also thinking of ways to position the product so it’s top of mind for the s.

Product marketing is more focused on selling the product’s specific features. To do this effectively, you need to understand three things — the customer, the product, and the market. While working out a product marketing plan, you’re highlighting your competitors, product fit and what makes it stand out, and how to sell it to your customers.

Content marketing is a part of product marketing, it’s just a different part of the funnel.

Read the full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustleprint-tech-product-marketer-in-nigeria/

The subjects of this week’s #LoveLife, Rachael (22) and Israel (23), have been together for about five years. They talk about meeting in university, questioning their individual beliefs, briefly breaking up over religious differences and bonding over atheism.

So tell me, how did you both meet?
Rachael: Did we really meet? We were coursemates at university, so there was no particular standout moment like, “This was when I met him”. It was just like, here’s this cute guy I always see in class.

Israel: [/b]Well, I noticed her right from our first year in school. That was around 2016. I think she was trying to to her laptop for something. I was behind her, and I noticed her picture was the wallpaper. Very narcissistic, but you know…

[b]Rachael: Wow.

Israel: LOL. I was like, “Is this person in my department?” I asked one of my friends and found out she was in a relationship at the time. Interestingly, his name was Israel as well, so I just closed my mind from that direction.

What made you re-open your mind to the direction?
Rachael: In second year, our friendship circles began to intertwine and found ourselves always sitting beside each other in class.

Israel: Our surnames even followed each other in the school , so we were constantly thrown together for group projects, labs, etc. Around that time, I also got to know she was single again. So, even while we were friends, I knew I liked this babe and wouldn’t mind if we started something. I tried to drop one or two hints here and there.

Did you take the hint, Rachael?
Rachael: Honestly, I was about to enter my hoe phase. You know, trying to get out there, but then I was also feeling him. I thought he was hot, so even though I was dodging his hints left and right, we’d still find ourselves randomly flirting.

One day — and this day is burned in my mind — we were together at one slightly deserted spot in class. I was chewing gum, and he asked for one, and I was like, “Come and take it”. It was obviously in my mouth, so just imagine the heavy innuendo.

I said that then I walked up the stairs, and he followed me. We didn’t kiss immediately. We just stood at that point and talked for about an hour. I still don’t know how we didn’t get tired. We stood so close together, and at a point, it was like I’d basically merged into his body. In my mind, I went, “It’s about to happen.”

Is it getting hot in here?
Israel: I asked if I could kiss her — because, consent — She said yes, and we did. That’s basically how we started dating.

Awww. So what were the first few days like?
Israel: Interestingly, our relationship also coincided with the period I first started questioning my faith. This was towards the end of 2017. In fact, just before we became official, I told her I was now an agnostic.

Wait. Rewind. Were you both religious before?
Israel: Well, we used to pray together sometimes and go to our school’s chapel, but it’s not like we were very spiritual like that in our relationship. Rachael was from an Anglican background, and I was Pentecostal.

Rachael: Both his parents are pastors.

Israel: Yeah. I had a lot of interaction with the church setting growing up. I could — and still can — quote scriptures off the top of my head. I had a very good relationship with the Bible. But from my second year in university, I started questioning my faith. I’d read some books that made me ask myself questions I’d never asked before, and I didn’t know how to phrase what was happening. I wanted to allow myself the space and time to think through the questions properly, so I told everyone, including Rachael, that I was now agnostic.

My friends laughed and called it a phase. Some of my friendships experienced a lot of friction at the time.

How did it affect your new relationship?
Rachael: It wasn’t really a big deal to me. I’d always been something like a distant, lukewarm Christian. He was more of the firebrand church boy. So, his decision to be agnostic wasn’t something that bothered me. It’s not like I dismissed it, though. We discussed it as best as we could, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.

Israel: But then I returned to Christianity shortly after, at the beginning of 2018.

That was short
Israel: I concluded it wasn’t worth losing my friends, so I went back into the fold and threw myself into it. Almost like I was trying to make up for leaving in the first place.

Rachael: Again, it didn’t really change much for me. It was just like, “Welcome back”, and we went on as usual. Then in 2019, I became an atheist.

I feel like I’ve missed some steps
Rachael: It was our fourth year in school, and I was just turning 19. A lot was going on with me. My grades weren’t bad, but everything just felt overwhelming. We studied engineering, and the workload at that point was heavy. It was hard balancing all that. Plus, I was at an age where I was trying to be responsible and learn how to navigate the world, but it was just a lot.

I started getting closer to God. You know how they say, seek Jesus so something would happen. It wasn’t really doing it for me. Nothing was happening.

I’m a very introspective person, so I tried to figure out what the problem was. I decided to learn more about myself. And after reading a lot of feminist books, I fully identified as a feminist for the first time. I’ve always had feminist ideals, but I think that period triggered it.

Soon enough, the Bible started to conflict with my feminism. There were a lot of things jumping out, and I started to realise, “The Christian God doesn’t like me as a woman. Do I really belong here?” Even before I decided I didn’t believe in God, I already disliked him. I decided I didn’t like this character, even if he was real. I started to read books for and against the Bible. I’d read materials by Christian apologetics and atheist books alike.

I concluded: I’m an atheist. I didn’t tell Israel immediately because school was on break, and we were home in different states. It didn’t seem like something I could say over the phone.

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So, what happened next?
Rachael: There was a Twitter argument about Christians, and we were on opposite sides. He was on the side of the Christians, and at a point, I was just like, “I can’t keep pretending again.”

Israel: She said she didn’t think she believed in God anymore. It was a heated conversation, and in the end, we decided to break up till we got back to school so we’d decide if we were still compatible. She’ll claim now that I called two days later, asking for us to get back together.

Rachael: That’s exactly what happened. He said the break-up wasn’t necessary, and we could figure things out together, but as a solid babe, I stood my ground and insisted we stick to the break.

Guess what? I broke down and asked him out again myself, like three weeks later, in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2020.

Scrimming
Israel: We still intended to talk about the faith thing when we saw. So, I spent time gathering information from Christian apologetics like Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig so I could convince her about God. I watched debates between apologetics and atheists to get material. To be honest, I was also trying to convince myself, but I ended up with more questions.

I crying one night because my entire belief system was falling apart right before me. I eventually got to the point where I decided I was irreligious.

What happened next?
Rachael: We didn’t have the compatibility issue again, so we continued our relationship. I’ve always been aloof, with some pretty contrarian views, so people weren’t surprised when I opened up about my atheism. But it was different for Israel. He’s quite open, so friends directed all their questions and complaints to him. Since I became an atheist first, there was this notion that I’d turned him away from God and pulled him into the devil’s den, not minding that he’d done his research and decided on his own. And this was one of the reasons I refused his attempt to reconcile us then, so it wouldn’t be like I influenced him.

Israel: It was a difficult time. I’d told a couple of friends about my decision because I didn’t want anyone to interfere, and the news somehow spread to even people outside our friendship circles. There were rumours like, “Oh, Rachael pulled him just like that”, and “Israel has gone to follow Rachael”. It was quite insulting.

It felt like people were trying to create a different story because they didn’t like the outcome of a personal decision, and it was hurtful because it was coming from people that were really close to me. Most of them didn’t come to actually sit me down to have a conversation, save for a female friend who did and was really nice and ive about it.

Many of my friendship dynamics changed during that period. Of course, some also thought I’d just backslid and would come back. They were wrong.

Did ditching religion affect your relationship?
Rachael: I battled depression for a year after becoming an atheist. With religion, you have a sense of security that someone in the sky can do things for you. Losing that suddenly was hard. I had nowhere to go when I was anxious about something. I’m not that close with my parents, and I couldn’t go to friends because they’d want to “pray for me”. But having my partner beside me helped greatly.

Israel was my system. We went through everything together, sharing YouTube videos, books and answering each other’s questions. Sharing knowledge and bouncing ideas off each other really helped strengthen our new beliefs.

It’d have been much more difficult if I didn’t have him by my side, and I’m really grateful for that.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/friends-believe-im-the-reason-he-stopped-believing-in-god/

Boma* (28) and John* (27) have been dating since their final year in university seven years ago. They’ve cohabited thrice in that time but always go back to living apart.

Let’s start from the top. What was day one like for you two?
Boma: We were university mates in the same level, but he was studying computer science, while I was in architecture. We knew each other because our school was rather close-knit. But we became friends in 300 level, when we ed the technical (TC) unit of our school’s chapel.

When we came back for our final year in 2015, he asked me out.

John: I was surprised she said yes because our fellow unit member had asked her out in 300 level, and she said no. He told me not to bother since she wasn’t looking to enter a relationship until after graduation. Turns out, she just used scope to tell him off.

I thought she was really cool. Quiet but not too much because she also had lots of friends. The first thing we connected on was cartoons. Not even all these cool new animations; we’d talk about old cartoons we loved when we were kids. She had episodes of Kids Next Door and Ed, Edd n Eddy on her laptop. I giving her my hard drive and begging her to share them with me.

Boma: Yeah. That was fun. The good times, before adulthood came calling.

Hot tears. So what happened after the relationship kicked off?
John: We started hanging out more, outside of TC activities. My department was in the same building as hers, just a floor beneath.

Boma: As you know, final year is hectic, so it was good to have someone to share the burden with me, to run thesis research and attend the many general lectures our school forced on us. We always made plans to eat, study, attend and stab classes together.

But when we got home, we barely saw, even though we lived in the same PH. We spoke over the phone when we could, sent each other plenty memes and skits, and that was it.

I’m now curious how y’all have lasted seven years together
John: When we resumed school for the final semester, we got much closer. Especially during final exams. We’d stay in class till like 9:30 p.m. — so we could make it to our dorms by 10 (we weren’t trying to get expelled at the 11th hour) — studying together and making out in between. We weren’t really talking about our commitments post-uni, so there was the bittersweet feeling that this could be the end.

But when we met each other’s parents during our convocation ceremony, I knew I wanted our relationship to last beyond that day. She had such a positive, loveable vibe, and her family is so nice. Our families bonded really well. It was beautiful to see.

Boma: So we kept in touch. We texted and DMed for months after convocation. I was talking to other people too, but nothing was clicking.

Then, in November 2016, we decided to meet up before NYSC, for what felt a lot like a first date. We went to a nice bistro, had sandwiches and fries and talked forever. After that, we started going to events and parties together, and sometimes, I’d stay over at his when he was at his brother’s flat.

When did love enter the equation?
John: Right after our “first date”.

I got posted to Enugu for NYSC, but she got Rivers and stayed in PH. So I had someone cover for me in exchange for all my government allowance, while I moved back to town after the orientation camp.

Boma: I loved the idea that he moved back because of me. I also liked the way I felt when I knew I was about to hang out with him. He’s good vibes all through. We can chat for days and make out for days too. Plus, he’s really kind and respectful.

John: Wow. My head dey swell.

What do you talk about? Simulate your average day-long conversation right here, right now
John: Our gist always starts with whatever is happening at that moment. Like, we could be talking about the food at a restaurant, but somehow, music or cartoon must enter the gist. We still watch a lot of animations, and she’s ionate about music, so she must bring up one of her faves. Someone from Hillsong, Beyonce, Mercy Chinwo, you name it.

Boma: Then he’ll somehow bring in football or more food or clothes. He loves fashion die. He’ll find a way to stroke Queen Bey’s latest performance outfit and still compare her to some random footballer. DFKM.

Interesting. So how has your relationship evolved since the beginning?
Boma: We’re definitely more grown now, so a lot of our deeper set personalities have come to light. I mean, we’ve moved in with each other three times now, but each time, the co-habiting thing fails.

The first time was when we both moved to Lagos for work. It made sense to move in together as a way to save rent money, and of course, be closer. But NGL, the “always seeing ourselves” thing came on too strong for us. There was constant friction; we tried to laugh it off until we couldn’t.

That’s when he found out I was a grumpy morning person and prone to mood swings.

John: And the sleeping in the same bed thing. It was good for easy sex. But then, I snore, and you’re a light sleeper. LOL.

that first time I got a cold and fever? She couldn’t sleep the whole night because of my constant sniffing, coughing and sneezing. Meanwhile, me, I somehow managed to sleep. We decided we’d sleep separately if one of us was sick. But there was only one room, so someone had to sleep on the couch for like a week.

We lived together for a total of two months before I went and found a room in my cousin’s house to avoid destroying our small romance.

You didn’t take that as a sign to break up?
John: Nope. We still loved and love each other. We’re just maybe not ready to be that committed yet?

Boma: Yeah. I mean, we’re so compatible in a lot of other things. It’s just the little things that haven’t gelled yet. I think that’s normal.

John: Yeah, because the second time we moved in together, we were reckless about it. I got this nice fully-furnished Lekki apartment at a stupid price by pure luck. This place was fine fine. When she visited one day, she literally came back with some boxes and refused to leave again.

Boma: But we tried to set some ground rules, so I wouldn’t say we were reckless.

First and foremost, we took separate rooms. Another thing he didn’t mention earlier was that I like sleeping in the cold, and he loves to be all warm and toasty under all the duvet in the world. O wrong nau. We only got into the same bed when we wanted sex or cuddles.

John: She moved out weeks before the one year even elapsed. I don’t even know when she moved out exactly. I just realised she was sleeping more and more at her own place.

But you guys still tried again?
John: It was the love o. All our other friends were slowly moving in with their partners, so I guess it was also peer pressure. A side of us wanted that extra physical closeness because it’s seen as the natural next step when you really love someone.

Boma: So when we both moved to Abuja in September 2021, we tried what we’d tried with our move to Lagos again. We got a place together. This one was a spacier three-bedroom apartment that cost us most of our salary at the time. But it was such a nice space, and I loved it.

John: In that place, we learnt a lot of lessons that have benefited our relationship. We learnt to form our own rules and expectations separate from what we’d grown up to believe had to happen in relationships.

Like what?
John: We don’t share things just because we’re “supposed” to. It’s important for us to keep everything separate to avoid any of that confusion and resentment that comes with one person’s likes and needs getting lost in the other person’s.

Boma: For example, we made sure to use products we liked and buy our groceries separately. We like different types of food and different brands of basic things like pasta, toothpaste, air freshener, even milk. We don’t make it a big deal; we just buy what we want.

John: Neither of us has to eat a meal that one of us cooked. She can cook what she feels like eating and eat, while I might want something else, so I’ll go and fix it for myself too.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life-we-love-each-other-but-cant-live-together/

Let’s start from the beginning. What’s your earliest introduction to money?
When I was in primary school, my dad would give me money every morning to give to my mum. That was the family’s money for that day’s basic expenses. I’m the eldest of five children, so I get why he always sent me this errand. But I never understood why he didn’t just give my mum the money himself.

I didn’t know the true value of money at the time, but this daily ritual was reassuring — it meant that as long as my dad did this, we’d have food to eat every day.

Did you always have food to eat?
Until my dad died, yes. I grew up with a silver spoon. In the early 2000s, my dad ran a clearing and forwarding business for motorcycle spare parts, and he also had a shop where he sold them. The business did well, and I knew this because I took interest in it. I’d look at the sales book in the evenings to see what the numbers were that day, and sales were usually between ₦‎300k – ₦1m worth of goods.

We had a car, lived in a 3-bedroom flat and were the first family to own a generator in our neighbourhood.

But the business started struggling— I don’t know why — shortly before my dad died in 2008. I was 15 years old and in SS 1. A lot of things changed after these events.

I’m sorry about your dad
Thank you. Before my dad’s death, my mum was the stay-at-home parent, but she did many things on the side over the years. From selling zobo and kunu to ice-blocks and a couple of other quick small businesses that showed up. She eventually settled for baking and catering for events. But we didn’t have to depend on her earnings.

Following my dad’s death, my mum became the breadwinner, even though she didn’t have a stable source of income. The sudden switch was hard on us, going from a comfortable middle-class family to a low-income household. I times when my mum’s friend brought us food and bowls of soup so that we could have something to eat.

Man. How did the family navigate this period?
My mum made some changes to her catering business. Instead of waiting for contracts, she started selling cooked food. Her friends raised money for her to get a shop, and we were in business. But sales were slow because the foot traffic wasn’t significant in the location, so she found another stall in the market.

Then she put me in charge of the first shop. It’s fair to say this was the first thing I did for money.

After school, I’d open the shop and sell until 6:30 p.m. before my mum would me from the other stall in the market. We’d be there until 9 pm. Also when my mum was away, it was my job to cook and keep the business open for the day. Before I left secondary school, I could cook for as many as 100 people at a time.

Do you how much was coming in from this?
Between ₦20k and ₦50k – ₦ 60k, depending on how good the day’s sales were. The profit margin wasn’t that great, though. Or maybe the money just wasn’t enough to cater for a family of six with no other source of income.

Two of my brothers dropped out of school because of this. And I didn’t go to the university until 2015, even though I graduated from secondary school in 2010.

That’s hard. Did you do anything in the five years that ed before uni?
I was always involved in my mum’s food business. I also tried a couple of other things — a diploma in desktop publishing, learned hairdressing and tried to get another diploma in education, but I had to drop out because my mum couldn’t complete the school fees.

I eventually got into a federal university in 2015 — tuition was ₦20k/year and accommodation in the school hostel was ₦3,600.

How did uni go?
I didn’t do anything for the first two years because I wanted to face schoolwork. During this time, I made do with the foodstuff I brought from home and the occasional ₦2k that came. After sorting groceries, I usually had about ₦300 to ₦500 left to last me through the month.

But it became unsustainable by my third year because the money wasn’t forthcoming — my mum had four other siblings that needed to be taken care of.

So I started baking cakes, which I learned from my mum. People in my campus fellowship and my class were my first sets of customers, and I’d make between ₦500 and ₦2k on every order. An ex bought me an electric oven, which was a huge help.

I also got contracts to cook for student and fellowship events, and I’d make ₦2k-₦5k. At some point, I was hiring other students to help with the orders, and I’d give them food and pay them ₦1k after we were done.

I was also saving money when I could. When I graduated from university in 2019, I had about ₦12k saved up.

Nice. What came after?
A few weeks after submitting my project, I travelled to Lagos to live with a family member and look for HR internships.

Why HR?
I was a people person and led teams in church and associations in uni, so it felt like the thing for me. Also, I got active on LinkedIn in uni and followed many HR thought leaders to grow my knowledge in Human Resources.

An acquaintance from the university gave me a lead at their company’s HR outsourcing company, and I applied for the role and got it.

My monthly stipend was ₦20k. It’s funny because I mentioned that I was willing to work for free in my application email. I had no idea how much it’d cost to live in Lagos.

Haha
Two weeks into the job, I realised that my stipend was only enough to cover my transportation expenses. Thankfully, I was a hard worker. Two months into the job, my stipend was increased to ₦40k. Subsequently, ₦25k went into transportation, ₦10k into lunch and ₦5k for plus snacks when I was in traffic.

I was living from stipend to stipend, but it was something. Then I had to leave the job after four months.

Why?
NYSC. I was mobilised out of Lagos and didn’t have the money to redeploy back. So I had to leave the ₦40k job. My PPA was a media house, and the benefits were ₦15k monthly stipend and accommodation. The federal government also paid ₦19,800.

My primary station was the newsroom, but I still wanted to do something related to HR. However, my workplace didn’t have an HR department — just an ant who handled payroll. Two months into the job, the ant resigned. I saw an opportunity there and pitched myself to the Assistant General Manager, showing proof of my knowledge of payroll management from my internship at the recruiting company. He bought it and let me take up payroll responsibilities.

Do you know why he agreed to it?
I was the cheaper option. The last ant earned ₦50k while they paid me ₦15k. The new responsibilities didn’t reflect in my pay, but I didn’t mind. I did it for the experience.

How did NYSC go?
I became the AGM’s right-hand person and learned every possible istrative task from him. Before my service year ended, I was handling five other sister companies’ payrolls and filling the tax returns.

Everything was going well until I was nine months into NYSC and Covid struck. The company stopped paying, so I was left with the government allowance, which had just been increased to ₦33k. Since everything was shut down at work, I went back home to my family and stayed there until my service year ended.

Before I left for home, I was saving ₦15k/month. But when I was at home, I increased my monthly savings to ₦30k. When my service year ended in June, I had saved up ₦150k.

From my savings, I took ₦78k to buy a new phone because I had started building content and social media skills because of an NGO I was volunteering for.

Now NYSC was over
And I needed to find a new job. I returned to Lagos in July 2020, but it was the wrong time to hunt for jobs. Covid had slowed things down and no one was hiring. I applied for full-time roles and internships but none were forthcoming. Not until October when I found a job as an executive assistant at an investment management company, and my salary was ₦50k.

Only three people worked at this company, so I was punching above my weight. I was handling business operations and also doing brand communications — content and social media. In January 2021, I got a raise to ₦80k.

Sadly, I lost my job in the same H1. The company ran out of money.

Damn
Again, I had been saving — ₦15k/month when my salary was ₦50k and ₦30k when it increased to ₦80k, which mitigated the impact of losing my job. It took me six months before I found another full-time job.

What happened during those months?
I kept looking for a job, but I couldn’t find one. Then a friend gave me a lifeline in June 2021. He owned a consulting company and brought me on as a contract staff on a project he was working on. My role here was as a business development officer — another pivot because I hadn’t done that professionally. But I came from a family of business people and had managed and grown businesses. The first contract work I did paid me ₦120k.

While this was happening, the tech buzz was also getting stronger. I’ve always been a fan of innovation and technology, so I started looking for ways to find myself in the tech industry. I attended a couple of industry events to find work. But ultimately, I shot my shot at a company on Twitter. Things aligned here because I was operating in a business development capacity at my contract job and they had an open biz-dev role.

I took the job to help them drive sales on a monthly salary of ₦133k. I was there for nine months before I ed my current company.


I’m curious how you got the job
I’m very active on Linkedin, and this was the tool I used. During the japa wave of 2022, I started applying for several jobs abroad, hoping one of them would sponsor my relocation. Instead, I got a ton of rejections. They mostly said the same thing — they liked my experience but were not willing to sponsor my relocation.

I was scrolling through Linkedin one day when I saw an ad for a remote business and partnerships manager role. Not the job that’d open a path to relocation that I was looking for, but I decided to start from here. I applied and sent my CV. They reached out to me and after a couple of interviews, I got the mail.

Welcome to the team.

Congratulations. How much?
$2500. It’s about ₦1.5m when you convert it to Naira. One job change and I’m earning my one-year salary in one month.

Wild
See, when I received my first salary, I thought it was a joke. I was just jumping and shouting up and down. It was almost unbelievable.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-bizdev-exec-money-anxiety-in-nigeria/

Pius (89) and Clementine (76) got married by proxy in 1966. He was studying to be a town planner in Hungary; she was a trainee teacher in Owerri.

Arranged marriages were commonplace at the time, but navigating a war while pregnant in their second year of marriage wasn’t. On this week’s Love Life, the subjects share how they made it work.

How did you meet?
Pius: Our first meeting was brief. In 1965, I’d come back to town for a two-week Christmas break from Budapest, where I was studying town planning. My father and uncles said they’d narrowed my potential wife down to two women from our village in Emekuku. I was to meet them so a final decision could be made.

Clementine: My father really wanted him to choose me because his father was the village head and I was the oldest of six girls. Our marriage would bolster my sisters’ chances greatly. He even put my immediate younger sister as an option too. But she didn’t make the shortlist.

At the time, I was more focused on getting my teachers training. I was just about 18 years old when these conversations were had.

Pius, how did you make your decision?
Pius: The two final women were both city girls. I met with each of them in their father’s houses, but I clicked with Clemen more. She was beautiful, modern, and you could tell she had a mind of her own. I ired that about her. Back then, people used to call her “Oyibo” because she was tall, slim and had fair skin. She was also fashionable, putting on her English skirt suits and fine jewelry.

My family agreed with my choice, and I travelled back to school in January 1966 as scheduled — just before the famous coup. After they did the traditional marriage, they sent her on a plane to meet me at my university in Hungary.

Clementine: We both still keep in touch with the other woman, who married a good friend of his.

What was a proxy wedding like, especially during the heat of political unrest?
Clementine: The wedding took place in the village, early in April. It was just as big and exciting as any wedding would’ve been. His youngest uncle acted on his behalf during the rites. Then we ate, danced and laughed till nightfall. By the time I left Nigeria, I don’t think the northern killings had started coming to light yet.

Pius: The common Igbo man was still in blissful ignorance till well into May/June.

How long before you got on that plane to Europe?
Clementine: Not up to a month. Both families had to put money together for the trip. In the meantime, I stayed in his father’s house, where they treated me very well, and went to work in the state school every day from there.

I longed to finally reunite with him, but I distracted myself with work and social activities, so I don’t ever feeling down. I left that same April.

Pius: When the telegram of her arrival got to me days ahead, I was excited. I couldn’t wait to meet my new wife properly.

But how could you accommodate a wife as a student in another country?
Pius: We managed in my studio apartment. It was just for about ten months till the end of my program. I got stipends from the government as part of the scholarship I was under. Our family sent us an allowance as regularly as they could, and I worked part-time too. The naira was still a strong currency then.

Clementine: Those were some of the happiest days of our marriage. We were young, independent and happy to manage resources together. I don’t think I wanted anything and didn’t get it, and that’s how it’s been throughout our marriage.

Would you say you fell in love at that point?
Clementine: Love? It wasn’t something we really thought about. Were we in love? I don’t think it was one of the parameters that existed when evaluating one’s marriage. But we were happy, committed and felt very responsible for each other’s welfare. I also didn’t mind spending time with him… when his head wasn’t buried in a site plan or book.

Pius: I cared for her deeply then and always. But I fell in love when I saw her black and white portrait and met her for the first time way back in ‘65. I was glad the community chose someone as pleasant as her for me. And being alone in a foreign land together drew us closer. We learnt to lean on each other a lot.

Clementine: But alas, I had to return to Nigeria to set up our home, as he was wrapping things up for graduation.

I found out I was pregnant with our first child a week after I arrived back in Owerri in March 1967. I also found out about the mass killings and unrest, but the East was still mostly safe at the time.

When did things change?
Pius: As soon as Jack declared war on the East.

I returned to Nigeria in April and went straight to the Lagos state bursary for some paperwork concerning my just concluded university programme. The hostility against me was clear even there in the government office. An official told me I should’ve remained in the safety of Europe. But his meaning didn’t sink in until I got to Owerri some days later.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t have stayed abroad even if I wanted to. My programme was done, and my permit had expired.

Clementine: In Owerri, people celebrated the May announcement of a sovereign state. It was like a grand unending festival in all the major streets. You could see that Biafran flag flying everywhere. It was this fanfare that welcomed my Big Darling back into his city after so long in a foreign land.

I still the potent joy and relief we all felt as a people. People were sharing food anyhow. You could be by yourself in your verandah and someone from down the street would come to you with a pot of soup and large pieces of meat.

Pius: But when we went to our village in Emekuku, none of that mattered. They didn’t know or care about the city politics there. All they knew was that their children had been butchered in their thousands for a long time now. They’d seen some of the dead bodies and were satisfied to hear that would no longer happen. That was it.

They would never have imagined what was coming.

Did you settle back in the city or village, and what was that like?
Pius: I was often in the village, as the firstborn son of the village head. But we stayed in Owerri town.

As soon as I got in, I reported to the Eastern State Ministry of Lands and got my posting into the civil service. We got a flat in the government estate and a substantial transport allowance separate from my wages. Everything was all well and good. Then, the war started four months later.

Clementine: My only brother was forcefully enlisted and never returned. But thankfully, Big Darling’s position in the ministry kept him from having to engage in combat.

Before the war started, something happened. Soldiers were usually shuffled across the different regions such that southern soldiers were mostly in the north, and northern soldiers were posted in the south. So the soldiers around Owerri at that time were mostly northerners and some Yorubas.

One day, an army van hit Big Darling’s car, but they still pulled him out and arrested him. When he came home the next day, he was so badly wounded he fell sick for a long time. That period was very trying for me, especially after the simple happiness of our brief stay in Hungary. I was nursing a first-time pregnancy and a convalescent husband, while the talk of war was getting louder.

Pius: By the end of 1967, when Jack’s army started gaining ground, I had to move Clemen to Umuahia, closer to the seat of Ojukwu’s power. I returned to Owerri for some months but went back to meet her when the situation got even worse. When Clemen gave birth to our first child, we named her Mercy because she was such a peaceful baby who didn’t give us much stress as we struggled for our lives.

We eventually had to move into a bunker for several months, and it became impossible for me to travel back and forth.

What was it like nursing a baby in a bunker?
Clementine: She was an easygoing baby. The good thing was we didn’t have to worry about food since there was breast milk. I breastfed her exclusively for almost a year, but not by choice. The labour was hard, but I was fortunate to have had access to a hospital before things got really bad.

Every morning, Big Darling would leave the bunker with the other men in search of food. And the women would start praying and singing praises to God so we’d get to see our husbands again, and if He was extra merciful, they’d have food with them. At night, we once prayed for Ojukwu’s victory, but it soon turned to desperate cries for an end to the war.

Pius: We were starving, and Ojukwu wasn’t intervening. At some point in 1969, he hardly even addressed us. Going out in search of food while our so-called messiah seemed more and more out of reach made me feel shortchanged, like our people had been deeply betrayed by all involved.

We’d spend the whole day queuing for the limited supply of basic food from foreign charities, or searching empty farmlands for even an inkling of crops, or even hunting wild animals. All the while, I’d my father’s large farmland in the village, and how we took eating store-bought food for granted.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life/love-life-our-families-arranged-us-then-the-civil-war-started/

What’s your oldest memory of money?
I my aunt coming to our house on weekends and bringing gifts with her every time. She was a badass tailor, and everyone said she was rich. Her frequent visits to the house meant I could ask her for anything and she’d get it done. My most expensive request was a bicycle. I was about six years old.

I’d asked my parents for the bicycle, but they dribbled their way out of it. They were raising four children on their civil service salaries, so they didn’t prioritise things like that. However, we were very comfortable.

Growing up, everyone in my family — from my parents to my aunt — was some of the most hardworking people I knew. And from watching them, I knew that if you worked hard, you’d make money and live a soft life. Also, my older sister became a millionaire at 19. All of this exposed me to the concept of money relatively young.

Did this push you to go look for money yourself?
All I did was face my book. The thought of making money didn’t kick in until university. My allowance was ₦‎20k/month, which was great. But everyone in my family was fiercely independent, so I started thinking about things I could do to make money. Between my second year and third year, I started three businesses in school.

Tell me about them
At first, I was making hair for students, charging between ₦1500 and ₦2000 per job. In a good month, I could make up to ₦15k. I stopped this in the second semester because it was so much effort for little pay. I wanted to raise my prices and nobody wanted to pay.

Then I started making Ankara journals and selling them for ₦1k. Again, people complained about prices, and I wasn’t going to bring the price down. I shut that down too.

When I got into 300 level in 2017, I settled on soap making. I’d learned saponification in secondary school chemistry class and knew what to do. I worked on a formula during the session break before returning to school.

Interesting. How did this work out?
A bottle cost ₦300, and I was selling an average of two bottles per day. Then a cousin advised me to pitch my services to hotels in town. I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously because I was 17 years old. But I landed two hotels and the deal was to supply each hotel with 50 litres of soap every month.

A 25-litre jerrycan was ₦10k and I was making ₦20k from each hotel. That’s ₦40k a month from soap making, and I still had my ₦20k monthly allowance.

Sweet.
This lasted for a few months before both hotels ghosted me — I think they found a cheaper option. None of them even bothered to send me a breakup text. I was back to living on my monthly allowance. I didn’t bother to start anything else though. My attention had drifted to something else.

What was that?
An internship at a radio station. I was studying zoology at the university, but I loved the arts. Also, I’ve always loved doing accents, and everyone said I had a nice voice. When the opportunity to intern at the radio station came, I took it. This led me to my next job.

How?
In 2017, another radio station was working on a jingle and wanted a fresh voice for the voiceover. A friend recommended me for the job because he thought I had a way with words. I went in and did what they needed me to. They paid me ₦7k for it. Thing is, I would have done it for free.

Haha
They also thought I was a natural at it. Subsequently, they called me back for other projects. These were mostly unpaid, save for the “transport money” — ₦500 here, ₦1k there. But when they paid me, I’d go home with ₦5k.

Years later, I’d find out that the going rate for what I was doing for them was ₦20k. I don’t feel like they exploited me; I learned a lot about voice acting working with them. Besides, I was doing it mostly for fun.

What happened after?
In my final year, I decided that voice acting was an option I’d like to explore. But I put everything on the back seat to face my books again. I graduated from uni in 2019 and applied to serve in a media house for my NYSC. My primary job role was as a front-desk representative, but I was also an audio intern. This meant jumping at voice-over tasks whenever the opportunity came.

Were you being paid at the job?
I was. My combined income during NYSC was ₦55,500 — my salary at the job was ₦22500 and the federal government paid ₦33k. Sometimes, I’d get occasional radio jingle voice-over work on the side and get paid ₦5k. But those weren’t consistent: I got about four of those the whole year.

How were you moving money out?
I was saving ₦20k/month in an ajo scheme of 10 people I was in. We took turns collecting ₦200k every month.

I’d been robbed on my way to a job interview and developed a fear of public transportation. So

I made an arrangement with a driver to pick me up from home and back every day and paid ₦20k/month.

Thankfully, I was living with my parents, so accommodation and feeding were sorted.

When Covid came in 2020, my place of work stopped paying my salary, reducing my monthly income to ₦33k. Once I took ₦20k out to save, I was left with ₦13k.

Phew
In April or May 2020, it was my turn to collect ₦200k from the ajo. The first thing I did was to take ₦150k out to buy a 2012 Macbook Pro. It was a necessary purchase because I wasn’t going to work anymore. Yet I needed to practice my audio production and record my voiceovers. In addition, someone gifted me a microphone and a sound card.

I spent the rest of the lockdown and 2020 practising and learning everything I could. I was constantly broke because there was always something voice-acting related I needed to spend on, mostly self-development.

But I came out of the learning phase sharpened and confident in my skills. So I started putting myself out there and got my first regular gig in October 2020.

How did that happen?
I opened an Upwork when I was at uni in 2017. I even did two $5 jobs before I abandoned it. When I returned to it in 2020, I was vigorously sending proposals and pitches. Then I landed the first client who wanted a voice actor for their audiobook projects. The pay was $50 per finished hour.

What’s a finished hour?
It’s how payments are decided in the voice-acting industry. Typically, you’re paid for each hour of the actual recording output.

Gotcha
This was a recurring gig, and I was making $500/month: each book I narrated was about five hours long, and I’d do two books in a month. It gave me a sense of stability and a bit of financial wiggle room. For example, my earnings from this gig were the reason I could attend a voiceover course I’d always wanted to take in February 2021. The fee was ₦100k.

How did that go?
It was great. I came back with so much ginger, equipped with how to navigate the business parts of voice acting.

I also realised that I wasn’t cut out for radio jingles and commercials. I wanted to do animation voiceovers and audiobook narrations. There weren’t a lot of local opportunities for these, so I set my sights on foreign audio production companies.

I’d go on Instagram, find audiobook publishing companies, find the email addresses of whoever was in charge of recruiting talent and send them an email introducing myself and attaching demos of my work.

Did it work?
I got tons of rejections, man. I call that period a dry season, and it lasted for the first half of 2021. I lived on my savings from previous projects and whatever I made from the local projects that occasionally came in. For those, I was now charging ₦15k-20k for a minute ad.

When did your pitches start yielding leads?
I landed my first project in June 2021; an audio drama series. I was supplying them with five to eight hours of audio every month.

How much were you charging per finished hour?
$100. This project brought in between $500 and $800 every month for the three months it ran for. After that, I got another audiobook project that paid me $1300. For the rest of the year, I got a few more gigs here and there. I was a little busy.

Do you know how much you made in the second half of 2021?
Over ₦1m. But I was also in debt. ₦800k. Most of what I made in the year went into paying it off.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-voice-acting-jobs-in-nigeria/

Her first husband called her “The most beautiful girl in Nigeria”, love-bombing her before making her his third wife then only interacting with her for sex. She was 19; he was 39. By 22, she had two children she couldn’t tell her second husband about.

First things first, marrying at 19 seems like a Gen X thing to do—
I was in love. Or I thought I was. It turned out to be toxic, and people now say he “groomed” me. It’s so upsetting to hear it, but maybe it’s true.

Why do people say so?
I was 19, and he was 39. Also, he already had two wives living in separate houses, but he was open about being married to them. He didn’t hide one wife or anything. He’s a popular big man in Ilorin.

Your parents allowed this to happen?
No shade at my parents, but they saw the money. I also insisted that I loved him and didn’t mind being a third wife. He was very caring and gave me everything I asked for. I know people will say I also saw the money, but honestly, he used to talk to me like I was a person. He’d make me feel smart and special, unlike other adults who naturally talk down on younger people and treat them like they don’t know anything. I could really be myself around him.

How did you meet him?
At a big family get-together to mark the 20th anniversary of my late grandfather’s death in 2012. He came to honour the invitation of my uncle who was his childhood friend. I was introduced to him the way they always introduce the young people in the family — someone called me to come and kneel and greet an important guest. I’d just turned 18 then.

I when he saw me, he called me “The most beautiful girl in Nigeria”. He called me that till we separated years later.

And how did the relationship start?
He must’ve collected my number from a family member because he called me later in the evening. He told me he’d love us to get to know each other, so I should save his number. Then he started sending me expensive gifts: he changed my Nokia to the latest Blackberry and bought me a MacBook when I said I was about to start school.

The relationship really started when I got into Unilorin later in 2012. He’d visit me on campus every week, bringing foodstuff and toiletries in bulk. At the end of my first year, he bought me a Toyota RAV4 because I had a first-class result.

Did you know he had two wives at this point?
Yes. I also met his first wife at the event I met him; she was very nice to me. At some point during the first year we met and started talking, he informed me about his second wife. He said they couldn’t wait to meet me.

At what point did he mention that he wanted to marry you too?
The first time he came to visit me in school. He told me, “I don’t date for fun. I want you to be my wife whenever you’re ready. If you don’t want that, tell me now and I’ll leave you alone.”

He even said once I gave him permission, he’d let my father know his intentions. At that age, I found his interest exciting and romantic, to be approached by someone so sure of what he wanted. He made me feel comfortable and secure.

I told him I was ready to marry him when I entered my second year, so we had a traditional wedding after the first semester.

It was a great thing we didn’t do a court or white wedding.

Why?
It was easier to get a divorce three years later.

Ah
Yes o. Married life was too chaotic for me. I always had to be available whenever he wanted — for sex, to accompany him to events, to travel. I had to relate with his other wives and extended family, who all always wanted one thing or the other from me: my time, food, a room in my house, the list was long.

I was in school for most of the marriage, but I moved into his main house after the wedding, and it became almost impossible to balance being his wife with my studies. One day, I realised I barely had a life. I no longer had time for myself, talk less of book. I was lucky to have graduated with a 2:1.

Was he still ive, at least?
By 2015, the second year of our marriage, he was suddenly never there for me except when he wanted sex. He never touched me before we got married, but as soon as I moved in, sex was all he wanted. I had my first child with him in the same year I’d just turned 21.

Now, he was too busy with his business to have time for me. He even told me that I was a wife and mother and shouldn’t be expecting his attention every time like he was still toasting me. Somehow, I took that as a challenge to behave more maturely and becoming of a married woman. But mehn, I was so lonely.

If you’d like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid, click here to tell me why

What about your friends?
My friends gave me gap. They were still friendly and especially liked when I could fund our girls’ trips now and then. But they also said I was no longer fun to hang out with or willing to do the exciting things young girls do, like attending parties. I always had to consider my husband and baby. Soon, they became busy with their own lives; most ended up moving to Lagos.

My family were the same. I was a married woman now, so I couldn’t just be showing up at my father’s house to gist with my siblings. I was miserable in my big house with so many responsibilities. Then I had my second child — a son — five months after the first.

When did you decide on a divorce?
After my son’s first birthday in 2017. My husband was hardly ever home. He just came and spent less than an hour at our son’s birthday celebration — you won’t even see him in any of the pictures we took that day.

He’d moved to Abuja without me, and I didn’t know whether he was courting a new wife. He ended up marrying again sometime in 2018. He has five wives now.

Around that time, I used to just sit in bed and cry a lot. All the initial euphoria had faded, and I was a mother of two, living with house staff in a big house and nothing to do. My young mind couldn’t understand why my husband no longer wanted to stay home or spend time with me. I didn’t even have the motivation to start job hunting. My mum would laugh at me about complaining despite not lacking anything.

How did the divorce idea come up?
By chance, I started confiding in one of my older family friends who was a marriage counsellor, and he advised me that my husband’s absence was one of the major concrete grounds for divorce in Nigeria. He thought I needed it because I was exhibiting signs of depression.

My parents were against it because he was sending me money every month and paying all the bills. They also thought that if he died, I’d have a right to his assets. Of course, that wasn’t true since the man was smart enough not to marry any of his wives in court.

Sigh. If you didn’t marry in court, why then did you need a divorce?
I still needed a customary divorce, so I wouldn’t have any issues when I wanted to remarry. And I’m glad I did that because I’ve heard some husbands will take all kinds of contentions to a customary court when they find out their wives want to marry another man.

Because I didn’t need to do a statutory divorce like for my second marriage, it took three months to finalise the whole thing. My ex-husband’s only term was keeping his son. When I agreed to that, he signed everything. I never even had to meet or talk to him directly. But he also wasn’t obligated to give me any more money or pay for child .

Wow. You mentioned a second marriage and divorce?
Yes, you would think I learnt from the first one and thought twice before jumping into another marriage and doing a court wedding. Ah. The second divorce was bloody.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said/what-she-said-i-was-twice-divorced-at-28-and-happier-than-ever/

Her first husband called her “The most beautiful girl in Nigeria”, love-bombing her before making her his third wife then only interacting with her for sex. She was 19; he was 39. By 22, she had two children she couldn’t tell her second husband about.

First things first, marrying at 19 seems like a Gen X thing to do—
I was in love. Or I thought I was. It turned out to be toxic, and people now say he “groomed” me. It’s so upsetting to hear it, but maybe it’s true.

Why do people say so?
I was 19, and he was 39. Also, he already had two wives living in separate houses, but he was open about being married to them. He didn’t hide one wife or anything. He’s a popular big man in Ilorin.

Your parents allowed this to happen?
No shade at my parents, but they saw the money. I also insisted that I loved him and didn’t mind being a third wife. He was very caring and gave me everything I asked for. I know people will say I also saw the money, but honestly, he used to talk to me like I was a person. He’d make me feel smart and special, unlike other adults who naturally talk down on younger people and treat them like they don’t know anything. I could really be myself around him.

How did you meet him?
At a big family get-together to mark the 20th anniversary of my late grandfather’s death in 2012. He came to honour the invitation of my uncle who was his childhood friend. I was introduced to him the way they always introduce the young people in the family — someone called me to come and kneel and greet an important guest. I’d just turned 18 then.

I when he saw me, he called me “The most beautiful girl in Nigeria”. He called me that till we separated years later.

And how did the relationship start?
He must’ve collected my number from a family member because he called me later in the evening. He told me he’d love us to get to know each other, so I should save his number. Then he started sending me expensive gifts: he changed my Nokia to the latest Blackberry and bought me a MacBook when I said I was about to start school.

The relationship really started when I got into Unilorin later in 2012. He’d visit me on campus every week, bringing foodstuff and toiletries in bulk. At the end of my first year, he bought me a Toyota RAV4 because I had a first-class result.

Did you know he had two wives at this point?
Yes. I also met his first wife at the event I met him; she was very nice to me. At some point during the first year we met and started talking, he informed me about his second wife. He said they couldn’t wait to meet me.

At what point did he mention that he wanted to marry you too?
The first time he came to visit me in school. He told me, “I don’t date for fun. I want you to be my wife whenever you’re ready. If you don’t want that, tell me now and I’ll leave you alone.”

He even said once I gave him permission, he’d let my father know his intentions. At that age, I found his interest exciting and romantic, to be approached by someone so sure of what he wanted. He made me feel comfortable and secure.

I told him I was ready to marry him when I entered my second year, so we had a traditional wedding after the first semester.

It was a great thing we didn’t do a court or white wedding.

Why?
It was easier to get a divorce three years later.

Ah
Yes o. Married life was too chaotic for me. I always had to be available whenever he wanted — for sex, to accompany him to events, to travel. I had to relate with his other wives and extended family, who all always wanted one thing or the other from me: my time, food, a room in my house, the list was long.

I was in school for most of the marriage, but I moved into his main house after the wedding, and it became almost impossible to balance being his wife with my studies. One day, I realised I barely had a life. I no longer had time for myself, talk less of book. I was lucky to have graduated with a 2:1.

Was he still ive, at least?
By 2015, the second year of our marriage, he was suddenly never there for me except when he wanted sex. He never touched me before we got married, but as soon as I moved in, sex was all he wanted. I had my first child with him in the same year I’d just turned 21.

Now, he was too busy with his business to have time for me. He even told me that I was a wife and mother and shouldn’t be expecting his attention every time like he was still toasting me. Somehow, I took that as a challenge to behave more maturely and becoming of a married woman. But mehn, I was so lonely.

If you’d like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid, click here to tell me why

What about your friends?
My friends gave me gap. They were still friendly and especially liked when I could fund our girls’ trips now and then. But they also said I was no longer fun to hang out with or willing to do the exciting things young girls do, like attending parties. I always had to consider my husband and baby. Soon, they became busy with their own lives; most ended up moving to Lagos.

My family were the same. I was a married woman now, so I couldn’t just be showing up at my father’s house to gist with my siblings. I was miserable in my big house with so many responsibilities. Then I had my second child — a son — five months after the first.

When did you decide on a divorce?
After my son’s first birthday in 2017. My husband was hardly ever home. He just came and spent less than an hour at our son’s birthday celebration — you won’t even see him in any of the pictures we took that day.

He’d moved to Abuja without me, and I didn’t know whether he was courting a new wife. He ended up marrying again sometime in 2018. He has five wives now.

Around that time, I used to just sit in bed and cry a lot. All the initial euphoria had faded, and I was a mother of two, living with house staff in a big house and nothing to do. My young mind couldn’t understand why my husband no longer wanted to stay home or spend time with me. I didn’t even have the motivation to start job hunting. My mum would laugh at me about complaining despite not lacking anything.

How did the divorce idea come up?
By chance, I started confiding in one of my older family friends who was a marriage counsellor, and he advised me that my husband’s absence was one of the major concrete grounds for divorce in Nigeria. He thought I needed it because I was exhibiting signs of depression.

My parents were against it because he was sending me money every month and paying all the bills. They also thought that if he died, I’d have a right to his assets. Of course, that wasn’t true since the man was smart enough not to marry any of his wives in court.

Sigh. If you didn’t marry in court, why then did you need a divorce?
I still needed a customary divorce, so I wouldn’t have any issues when I wanted to remarry. And I’m glad I did that because I’ve heard some husbands will take all kinds of contentions to a customary court when they find out their wives want to marry another man.

Because I didn’t need to do a statutory divorce like for my second marriage, it took three months to finalise the whole thing. My ex-husband’s only term was keeping his son. When I agreed to that, he signed everything. I never even had to meet or talk to him directly. But he also wasn’t obligated to give me any more money or pay for child .

Wow. You mentioned a second marriage and divorce?
Yes, you would think I learnt from the first one and thought twice before jumping into another marriage and doing a court wedding. Ah. The second divorce was bloody.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said/what-she-said-i-was-twice-divorced-at-28-and-happier-than-ever/

Dinma* (27) met her husband Nnamdi* (34) for the first time a few days before their court wedding in 2021. In this article, she tells us about Nnamdi asking her to marry him four months after they started talking, planning their wedding together online and how they manage the distance and time difference in their marriage now.

Occupation and location
Medical doctor living in Enugu

Average monthly income
I earn ₦210k as a junior staff working at the hospital.

Relationship expenses
Valentine gift: ₦50k

Foodstuff: ₦20k

Perfume: ₦33k

Christmas gift: ₦50k

How did you meet your husband?
In 2020, I had an online store while I was in med school. Sometime in December, I received a DM from a guy who wanted to get a wristwatch. He kept negotiating, trying to bring the price down, and I sent him a voice note to ask him why he was pricing so much when he wasn’t even living in Nigeria. I knew this because I had checked his page. After nearly an hour of back-and-forth banter, we settled for ₦20k.

When I reached out to him the following day to ask for his delivery details, he told me to take the watch as my Christmas gift. We spoke briefly, and he asked some questions about me and what I did.

From there to love?
Oh no. The guy that texted me was the elder brother of the man that’d later become my husband. My husband texted the week after and said he’d gotten my handle from his brother. When I reached out to the brother, he confirmed it and said I didn’t have to continue the conversation if I wasn’t comfortable with it. But it wasn’t a big deal, so we started texting, gisting about life and making jokes — we really hit it off.

So you knew the brother was matchmaking you?
I’m an online vendor, so I try to be nice to people. It wasn’t the first time a customer had gifted me something, so I didn’t think much of it.

After texting for a couple of days, the trail went cold, and we didn’t talk for a week. The next time he reached out in January, it was to wish me a happy birthday. His birthday was two weeks after mine, but I forgot to text him. So he texted me again, and I felt bad for missing his birthday. After that, we decided to move to WhatsApp.

Did that help?
Definitely. We started talking frequently because we enjoyed each other’s company; the time difference wasn’t even a problem because of my sleeping schedule — I picked up a habit of sleeping in the evenings and waking up at 2 a.m. in med school.

In the space of four months, things had gotten serious. We’d realised how much we had in common, and I’d even told my mum about him. He was sure he wanted to marry me, but I didn’t want to think of marriage until I graduated from med school. So I tried to keep things light.

Very valid
In April, he became more serious about his intention to marry me. He wanted his father to meet my parents since they lived in Awka. Although I agreed to this, I made it clear that I still needed to think about it and hadn’t committed to marrying him. After a month of thinking about it, I agreed to marry him but on one condition.

What was it?
I was going to be fresh out of med school and unemployed. I didn’t have any money to assist with the financial burden of the wedding. I needed him to understand what he was getting into, but he assured me he was sure about his decision and didn’t mind funding the wedding.

You didn’t mind the long distance?
I’ve always been in long-distance relationships, so I honestly didn’t care about that. I knew he would visit, and I’d him eventually. But in the meantime, video calls would have to do.

Aww. How was the wedding preparation?
We did most of the planning over the internet, finding and vetting vendors together. My mum and sister did, the market runs. We spent about ₦6.5m on our wedding even though the initial budget was ₦4m.

It was an exhausting period because I was simultaneously planning for my final exams in November the whole time. My dad even called me one day to remind me I had never failed an exam before, so if I failed this, he’d know it was because of the wedding, and we’d cancel it.

Shame wouldn’t let me continue with the wedding if I failed because all my in-laws already called me “doctor”.

LOL. Let’s thank God then
We had the court wedding in December 2021, a day before my induction. The traditional wedding and white wedding came three days and one week later.

Very interesting lineup
I also met my husband for the first time in November 2021.

How did that go?
My mum called that day to ask me how I felt finally meeting him. If I needed her to come pick me up or if he was what I’d wanted because it wasn’t too late to call off the wedding.

Screaming
I told her he was everything I had imagined and more.

God when. How did you guys spend time together?
We didn’t spend alone time together because we needed to prepare for the big day. He also had to return to Canada by January 2022, so we didn’t have much time. There’s really nothing to do in the city — just hotels, bars and lounges. So for my birthday, we went out for drinks with his friends.

What about gifts?
He’s typically not someone who buys gifts. So I usually have to tell him what I want, and he’ll send the money for me to get it. Also, his dad had ed a few days before my birthday, so it wasn’t the time for celebrations.

Do you buy him gifts?
I try to get him something whenever I’m shipping things to him. One time I bought and added snails to the foodstuff we were sending. This cost ₦20k. Another time, I got him perfume, which was ₦33k.

For Valentine’s in 2022, I reached out to his friend in Canada, who helped me buy a sweatshirt, a pair of shoes, jeans and a card. I selected the things I wanted via video call at the store and also sent him the message to be written on the card. Everything cost a little over ₦50k. And for Christmas last year, I made him an engraved cufflink with his name and a customised Igbo traditional fan; they cost around ₦50k.

Read full story here: [url]https://www.zikoko.com/money/long-distance-marriage-%e2%82%a6210k-monthly-income/[/url]

When was the first time you understood what money meant?
As early as I could tell my right hand from my left. I come from almost nothing. Right from 2005 when I got into secondary school, I knew my family didn’t have money.

How?
My parents worked in the civil service; their salaries barely covered anything. However, they sent me to primary and secondary schools filled with kids whose parents were super comfortable. My parents could only afford the tuition because they had access to loans and other forms of credit from the cooperative societies they belonged to. They thought it’d shield me from our poverty, but you can’t hide things like that. Going to school every day was a reminder of how poor we were.

One time, in JSS 1, I went to a friend’s birthday party and the light tripped off while I was there. My friend casually said, “Up Daddy”, because her dad always changed their light to the inverter when NEPA did their usual.

This was in the mid-2000s. I didn’t know what an inverter was. Hell, we didn’t even have a small generator at home.

Bruh. What was it like switching between two worlds?
I always thought my friends didn’t deserve the money they had, but that was probably my inferiority complex. I also started thinking of making the best use of the situation. By SS 1, I’d realised that if you can provide value or service to people with money, you’d be their best friend.

What did you do?
My friends were in boarding school. My parents couldn’t afford the fees, so I was coming from home every day. Most of my friends wanted devices — Blackberry phones and PSPs were huge at the time — but phones were not allowed in school, so they couldn’t ask their parents.

I followed an uncle to the market to buy devices a few times and knew my way around, so I decided to help my friends get these things, hike the prices and pocket the margin.

The first time I did this, I made enough to buy my own phone.

Mad
I did other things for them. One time, I was cooking a plate of noodles and eggs at home and selling them to whoever showed interest. Another time, I was smuggling alcohol into school for them. Once they got bored of something, I’d think of something else to help them with.

All that ended when we left secondary school in 2012.

What was the next thing you did for money?
I didn’t start thinking of making money again until 2015. I was in my third year of uni when my dad retired from service. My mum became the only one earning money, and I had two younger sisters, so things went from bad to worse. I only got allowances whenever it was available, and the max I ever got at a time was ₦3k.

Everyone in school was jumping on the photography trend. So I became friends with student photographers, borrowed their cameras and found students willing to pay me money to photograph them. I earned an average of ₦3k to ₦5k per shoot once or twice a month.

Did you have any experience?
Nope. But I had access to cameras, free internet in school, and my mum had just bought me a laptop for my birthday — her cooperative financed it. I’d tutorials and put whatever I learnt into use. I had everything I needed to wing it.

The occasional ₦3k – ₦5k meant I could afford meals and cab fares. Later in 2015, I got a social media management job at a restaurant in school that paid me three meals a week.

By my final year, nothing was coming from home anymore.

I had two DJ friends who helped me get a job as an in-house photographer at the club where they worked. The deal was to work two nights a week and earn ₦20k/month.

When I started handling the club’s social media page, my salary increased to ₦30k/month. The job got me through the rest of uni. I quit when I went for NYSC in June 2017.

Where did you serve?
In the South-South. An older cousin lived there, so accommodation was sorted. When I started thinking about how to make money, they also showed me where to look.

The locals loved adire clothes, so I found someone who made them in the South-West. They’d deliver batches to my mum who’d send them to me. I sold them mostly to people from my cousin’s office with a profit margin of between ₦2500 and ₦3k per piece. In a month, I sold up to ten pieces.

I’d started shooting corps member friends, making ₦10k – ₦15k, which I used as capital for the adire business.

What about your NYSC allowance?
I was a ghost corper. I struck a deal with the principal of the school I was posted to; they’d take my allowance every month and clear me, so I didn’t have to show up to work.

I was interning with a photographer in town. It wasn’t a paid job, and I had access to their cameras and studio for my own gigs. Before my service year ended in 2018, I almost made my first big money.

But you didn’t?
Hmm. My cousin told me about ethereum, and I put $100 into it. Within a month or two, $2500 was in my wallet. I kept putting my entire returns back into the investment. In my mind, I was saving money.

Then I woke up one morning to a market crash. That money was the only thing that gave me a sense of purpose; it was what I planned to use to open up a photography studio when I finished NYSC. I almost ran mad.

I’m sorry, man
I had to figure out what to do after my service year ended. The adire pieces weren’t selling as quickly anymore. I wasn’t making money from photography either because the corps I knew had now left town.

And then I was robbed twice in one month, so I decided it was time to return to the South-West.

Did you have a plan?
Na-da. For a few months in 2019, I had nothing to do. I tried to get back to club jobs, but everyone who could fix me in one had moved away. The club I worked at before NYSC had changed management. My mum got me interviews for a few government and bank jobs, but I didn’t show up for the interviews — I didn’t think I was built for a 9-5 job.

I –
Before the year ended, I got a studio manager job with a photographer, and the pay was ₦30k. The job was another lesson about privilege. The guy I was working for couldn’t photograph for shit; his dad owned the space he converted into a studio, and he had the money to buy the gear. But I was the one running the place.

This wasn’t even my problem, but he wouldn’t pay my salary until the 15th of the following month. His excuse was we weren’t making enough money, but that was a lie. I ran every aspect of the business and knew about every single naira that came in. After my fifth month, we had a big fight that almost got physical. I left and never went back.

Wild
I left with most of the studio’s customers. But the gigs still weren’t consistent.

As if I wasn’t dealing with enough, I had a fight with my dad, and my mum advised me to leave the house to reduce the tension. But I had no money or savings.

One of my friends managed a boys quarter block in his grandmother’s house, and he had no problem renting a room out to me. We negotiated a 100k/year rent, split into two payment plans. I borrowed ₦50k from a friend and moved in with a box of clothes and a rug. I paid the balance and my debt four months later, from the money I made from photography gigs — about ₦30k/month.

It was almost like I was wasting away. I needed to leave that town. The next best place was where everyone looking for opportunities moved to.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-naira-of-a-nigerian-photographer-gig-economy/

Jide (37) and Cynthia (35) are two asexuals with the intellectual connection of a lifetime. In this week’s Love Life, they share why they only have sex on New Year’s, decided to adopt their two kids and the one thing missing in their relationship.

What’s your earliest memory of each other?
Cynthia: We met in 2015 when I was doing my third master’s in Unilag.

Jide: That caught my attention right off the bat. Why is someone doing three master’s, for God’s sake?

Cynthia: I did two in the UK just because I wanted to extend my stay. But Theresa May struck with her new immigration policy sometime in 2012, when she was Home Secretary. I had to finally return to Naij. To be honest, it was a relief.

Jide: This Nigeria?

Cynthia:[/b]Yes o. It was getting tiring to live in a country that didn’t want me. Anyway, I was living off campus around Yaba. And my roommate was his younger sister. We met for the first time when he came to drop off a gas cylinder he had just bought for her.

[b]Jide: But then, we found out we went to the same secondary school.

Cynthia: And the same university in the UK for our first degree.

Jide: She’s obviously been stalking me forever. But strangely, we never met until that day in my sister’s apartment. I was too far ahead of her in school.

Sounds like the universe had decided your fate. When did you realise you liked each other?
Jide: My sister introduced us, and the three of us talked for a bit, until she got tired and left Cynthia and me together in their little sitting room. Like I said, I was amazed she had two master’s already, both in the medical field. Then I found out she was getting an MA in English because she was transitioning into creative writing and loved the same writers I loved.

Cynthia: I sent him a couple of my short stories and one unfinished manuscript—

Jide: Which she still hasn’t finished, by the way—

Cynthia: Shhh. I shared them with him, and he read two of the stories there and then. My stories tend to be esoteric because I like to read speculative and literary fiction, but he got everything I was going for. He even gave me some very sensible pointers to improve the character development. It was refreshing to have someone understand my mind like that with little effort.

Jide: I found out she knew and read Murakami, and it was all over for me. I was gone.

Cynthia: I still don’t like Chimamanda sha.

Jide: Hmm. We’ll forgive you for that one… for now.

And when did it turn to love?
Cynthia: I couldn’t stop thinking about him after he left that night. I tossed and turned in bed for hours, dissecting our hours-long conversation and revelling in it. He was really cute, and I was already imagining a love affair between us, but only within the confines of my imagination as a writer.

I really didn’t think anything serious would happen. I’d had too many experiences of long, drawn-out conversations with guys, mostly over the phone. But the conversations always fizzled out after a day or two; as if the person just ran out of things they were interested in talking to me about and didn’t think it was worth it to explore other angles. ittedly, none of those people got me as much as he seemed to from the beginning. But I thought this one was too good to be true and would still follow that pattern, last last.

Jide: I was completely hooked. I hadn’t had such a good conversation with someone — about all the things I loved best —in years, possibly forever. People don’t talk enough about how amazing and rare it is to meet people who love enough of the things you love, especially the things you may be too ashamed to mention. On the first evening, I shared a few things with her I would normally never share with a stranger. I may not have put a name to it right away, but I was in love with her from that day.

I got her number from my sister and returned the next day to give her my original Kill Bill box set. She’d mentioned it was her favourite Hollywood movie, and all I could think of was getting home and getting back to give it to her. I dropped it off and went straight to work.

Cynthia: I was so happy. I didn’t even know how to react, but he had to rush off to work. So I was off the hook for the time being.

I’m guessing that’s how y’all started dating?
Jide: We never made it official, and I take responsibility for that. But we started seeing each other every other day. We would be at each other’s, discussing work, school, books and our life ideologies. We’re both very deep thinkers, and we enjoyed sound boarding our ideas off of each other. I run my father’s engineering business, so we’d talk about diversifying the company’s investment portfolio and she’d refer me to all her many IJGB friends running one business or the other.

A month after we met, you were more likely to find her in my house in Surulere than in Yaba, probably playing FIFA for hours on end. The only thing is she never slept over.

Cynthia: I didn’t want the awkward situation where I’d have to explain to a grown man why I didn’t want sex at 27.

Jide: If only she knew I would’ve completely understood. But I know she still wouldn’t have trusted me enough to take that chance at the time. I really didn’t mind her sleeping in her own place every night. I’ve never been a big sex person, and I’m a stickler for everyone respecting each other’s space and boundaries, so it worked for me.

Do you what your first major fight was about?
Jide: Yep. She lost the Kill Bill set just two months after.

Cynthia: I kept it on the TV stand in the sitting room of my Yaba apartment, and it just disappeared one day. Till today, I can’t understand what happened to it.

Jide: [/b]It was a special edition that’s no longer in circulation. It had miniature collector’s items inside and bonus content. Giving it to her was a huge sacrifice I made only because I thought maybe she would appreciate it more than me, being her “favourite film of all time”.

When she told me she didn’t know where it was, I lost it. I was so crushed I didn’t speak to her for three days. I’m ashamed to say that now. A part of me didn’t like that she just kept it on her TV stand in the first place. I thought she would treasure it in her bedroom or something, like I did.

[b]Cynthia: I wanted to show it off. He was so angry, and I could tell he was hurt. I felt so bad, but I was also angry that he would react so deeply to a material thing.

Jide: I honestly got where you were coming from with that statement, but it made me regret giving it to you more. It made me realise I did value the box set more than you. And I saw it as a symbol of my willingness to sacrifice for you. We were obviously not on the same page about that. So I let it go.

That was just one con out of a thousand pros in your favour. I called her on the fourth day and apologised for keeping away. I wasn’t going to let you go because of that.

Cynthia: Ope o. LOL.

How has this relationship been different from past ones?
Cynthia: From the first month, we were so certain we were in this relationship for the long haul. We never even had to talk about our commitment directly; we just started making big decisions together. Like us not attending jumat anymore, or you starting your real estate business and me querying US literary agencies for representation.

Jide: And finally moving in together after you got your THIRD master’s a year later.

Cynthia: [/b]Yes. That. I’ve never had any of that in my previous relationships. Everything with us happens so organically. No one is playing some game or trying to have some upper hand. We genuinely care about each other being happy and comfortable at all times.

[b]Jide: Also, because our relationship was built on the foundation of mutual creative interests, we keep finding new things to love and share with each other. It’s so unique for me because we always always like the same things. So I’m almost never worried whether she’d enjoy something I want to share with her.

Cynthia: Like the time you were so obsessed with trying out recipes. First, you made kitchen “firewood” jollof with foil. Then it was ewa agoyin from scratch. That was lovely. I loved it because I used to dream about making things like bread and milkshakes from scratch in my kitchen, so I could make sure everything is clean and organic.

What’s the most unconventional thing about your relationship?
Jide: We’re mostly celibate.

Sorry?
Cynthia: Yes. We only have sex on New Year’s because we try to start each year reviewing whether we want to continue on with our resolutions from the year before. So it’s basically a celibacy review session, a chance for either of us to speak out that, “I’m not doing again. I miss sex.” But so far, we’ve always chosen to stick to celibacy.

This year’s review session was funny; we kept bursting into laughter when we made out. We didn’t even second base.

Jide: Why do you look so shocked? We’re both asexual. She doesn’t enjoy sex at all. And I’m indifferent about it. It’s an indulgence I’d been overstimulated with in my 20s, and now, I’m obsessed with the idea of complete purity.

Cynthia: It works perfectly for me because the idea of sex repulses me. In secondary school, I couldn’t understand why people kissed. Why would you want to exchange saliva with an almost stranger? I’m pretty sure my body is missing one or two sex hormones. Because I don’t feel a single pleasant sensation when I do it.

Jide: I feel the pleasant sensation, but not enough to make me miss it when I don’t have it.

I’m curious how the celibacy decision came about

Cynthia: When he asked me to marry him in 2018.

Jide: We’d been dating for over three years. We lived together. It was the natural progression of things.

Cynthia: But I said no, which confused him. He pestered me about it for days, and I didn’t know how to explain I didn’t want to have sex with him ever. I’d been scared about it up until that moment, and there it finally was, the point where I had to come clean or run. So one day, I came back from work early, packed all my stuff and moved out to my half-sister’s apartment.

Jide: I came back home and was so scared she had disappeared. She wasn’t picking up her calls either. She basically ghosted me for up to a week. The worst thing was I didn’t know the half-sibling she might have been with — she had at least four half-siblings in Lagos, all from different mothers. Her dad is dead, and her mum lives in another state. I had to work like a detective to track her down, grilling all her friends. I still couldn’t find her o.

Cynthia: I’m very secretive, so I didn’t even tell any of my friends I was leaving his house. It was the long emotional messages he kept sending me on all platforms that eventually got to me. I started feeling wicked for keeping him hanging like that. He sounded so earnest in his voice notes. We met up, and I explained to him how I never wanted to have sex with anyone ever.

Jide: Scratch my original answer to this question. How I knew I’d fallen in love with her is when I knew without a doubt that I’d give up sex to be with her forever. When I told her I accepted her decision, I was already contemplating life without sex and making peace with it mentally. I felt no panic or reservations whatsoever. I only wanted to make sure it wasn’t coming from a place of trauma. When she assured me it wasn’t, I gave in completely.

Cynthia: I was actually traumatised by walking in on my elder brother watching hardcore porn when I was 12. I didn’t want to ever be touched or have my body intruded in that manner, or any way at all. So I decided there and then that I would be a nun. When the nun thing didn’t work out, I chose celibacy.

How have the last five years been?

Cynthia: Our marriage has been an extension of the relationship before it, and it’s as beautiful. There are ups and downs, but we go through everything on the same side. Our beautiful conversations about every single thing make me feel alive. When we hug or cuddle, it’s after we’ve laughed so hard and bonded over books or music or a great new hobby, and I love every moment of that.

Jide: We now have two beautiful children we adopted in 2019 and 2021. We decided it would be cheaper than going the IVF or surrogate route. And we’re ionate about giving the children who already exist a home, rather than taking extreme measures to bring new life into this flawed and difficult world.

How would you rate your love life on a scale of 1 to 10?

Cynthia: 7. Every morning, I choose to love Jide again and again. He’s such a kind and giving soul. But there’s always lots of room for improvement, and I like to keep a very open mind for fresh blessings.

Jide: Hmm. 8. Only because I am always the more generous of the two of us, and I want to stay on brand. Cynthia motivates me to explore new things regularly, and I’m so grateful for that in my life. All we need now is a big dog.

https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life-were-married-but-celibate/

What’s your earliest memory of money?
In 2002, I was five years old, and it was the first time I was sent home for unpaid school fees. I my sister — who was in a senior class at the same school — and I had to go back home around 9 or 10 a.m. It’d be the first of many times I was sent home for that reason.

Can you paint a picture of what things were like at home?
We were good until my dad lost his ing job at an oil company and couldn’t find something else. Then my parents decided to invest everything they had into starting a school, which wasn’t profitable for years. They struggled to raise six kids – I’m the fourth – and we had to make lots of adjustments. We had to share resources — from pieces of meat during meals to clothes — because that was the only way they’d go around.

Thankfully, the money situation started to get better around 2009.

What changed?
My parents’ school became more popular, so more kids enrolled. And we gradually moved from the struggling middle class to the comfortable middle class. When I got into university in 2012, my parents could conveniently send me ₦5k/month, and they increased my allowance every year. My final year monthly allowance was between ₦20k – ₦30k.

So how did uni go?
The financial struggles I grew up with did a number on my confidence, so I had a lot of insecurities about money. In uni, all I wanted was to be one of the cool kids, and my allowance took care of that. It started with the small things. In my first year, Blackberry was the popular phone, and almost everyone was on BBM. I made it a mission to get one, so I saved from my allowance for a semester to raise ₦12k, which was enough to buy a used Curve 2 from a classmate who wanted to buy a newer model.

As my allowance increased, so did my compulsion to do the seemingly cool things everyone was doing. Things took a turn in my second year.

How?
I made new friends who introduced me to the nightlife. The rest of my time in uni was fueled by food, parties and alcohol. I was living above my means; my allowance couldn’t match the lifestyle. So, on a regular month, my allowance only lasted a week or two.

It only worked because of my community of friends. Everyone chipped in, so when someone in the group was broke, the rest of the group covered them.

The downside to this was that I couldn’t build a savings culture, and I didn’t even realise it until I graduated in 2017. I left uni with zero naira to my name.

Inside life
The next step was NYSC. I served in the south-south. My parents cut me off, but the federal government paid ₦19800, and my PPA paid ₦10k and an additional ₦10k welfare allowance. All this brought my monthly income to ₦39,800.

In addition, my PPA provided accommodation and feeding for corps . 2018 was the most comfortable year of my life. I was balling, man.

By the end of my service year, I had saved about ₦100k and even bought a laptop. I returned home in October 2018 and started job hunting.

How did that go?
I got a job within three weeks. I was hired as an officer in a hospital, and my salary was ₦100k.

Sweet
In the first few months, I saved ₦30k out of my salary and lived on the rest. Then my employers started acting up.

What did they do?
The salary stopped coming on time. And when it came, it was never paid in full — they could pay 60% first and the remaining 40% days later.

I found it difficult to plan around their payment schedule and had to dip into my savings to survive each month. In the end, I figured that I had two options: find a way to live with the new arrangement or find a new job.

I’m guessing you started looking for a new job
I did. After 11 months at the hospital, I found another job as an ant in an entertainment company. In my excitement, I didn’t think to negotiate my salary. I accepted their first offer.

How much was it?
₦120k. I could have gotten up to ₦150k.

Anyway, I started the job in December 2019. My short-term goal was to rebuild my savings, so I put ₦40k aside each month. I lived with a member of my extended family and only had to worry about feeding and transportation expenses, which were about ₦1k every day.

Three months later, my plans hit another obstacle.

COVID?
Yes. When COVID hit in March 2020, the company said everyone would have to take a 33% pay cut. This brought my salary down to ₦80k, so I had to return home to my parents.

By August 2020, I had about ₦140k saved up and decided that it was time to invest in something.

What?
Forex trading. I had friends who put money in it and cashed it out. So I started thinking, “What could it hurt?” The entire point of saving was to make it work for you anyway.

₦360k was the minimum capital I could invest, and I had ₦140k. To raise the balance, I took a ₦220k loan from my bank and dumped all the money into the investment.

What were the of the investment?
15% Return on Investment (ROI) every month. I was expecting ₦54k from the scheme every month. But this happened once before the whole thing crashed, and the people in charge disappeared. I lost my capital, my entire savings, and I was in debt. I was paying the bank about ₦23k/month out of my ₦80k salary. I’m not sure how I’d have survived if I wasn’t living with my parents.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/the-nairalife-of-an-ant-lifestyle-creep/

This week’s #ZikokoWhatSheSaid subject is a 31-year-old Nigerian woman who has seen shege as a teacher trying to make a change. She talks about deciding to pursue the profession NYSC forced on her, being bullied by students in a private school and considering teaching in South Korea instead.

How long have you been a teacher?
Four years and a few months now. Although I studied history and international relations in uni, I thought I’d change the world by teaching the leaders of tomorrow.

What inspired this interest?
NYSC. In 2017, I was posted to a private school in Ogbomoso. To my surprise, it was just as run down as I would’ve expected a government school to be. The whole school had five teachers, and the 100+ children were learning nothing. The management was unserious, the classroom facilities were poor, there were barely any teaching aids or books, and there were no computers. The parents of the students were just getting by. They didn’t know how to hold the management able.

The state of the school made me so scared about the quality of people we were pushing out into society as the next generation. I was sad, angry, and I wanted to do something about it.

What did you do?
I decided I’d teach and gain enough skills, experience, and eventually, the funds to either start my own school or an education-focused NGO. At first, I thought I’d enter the civil service so I could help at a more universal level. But I discovered early the amount of politics it took to even get into the system. I also needed to earn enough to actually make a living.

Do private schools pay better?
Well, they’re easier to gain employment with. I got my first job easily because the school management was even surprised I’d want to work for them given my credentials — I graduated with a first class from a top private university. Even my friends and family were shocked; everyone thought I was making a big mistake. But I honestly couldn’t sleep well at night knowing most children were getting poor education even though they were attending school. I just felt so worked up about it; it’s not something I can readily explain.

What was your experience at this first job?
I was given a wake-up call very quickly.

It was a private secondary school in Yaba, and I was a teacher’s assistant — I didn’t have a teaching license or certifications. I also needed to have taught the curriculum for a year before I could be a full teacher. My NYSC experience didn’t count even though I performed the responsibilities of a full teacher during that time.

From the beginning, I was constantly shut down when suggesting ideas to management. I wanted to push for a more empathetic approach to dealing with the students. But in hindsight, I can see how having a newbie act like she knows it all in just over a year of being a teacher could be annoying.

How did they react?
One day, the school sat me down and said, “Look, we like how you’re trying to make everything nice and good-looking, but we didn’t hire you for rebranding work. There’s no room for that here. The parents are barely able to pay school fees, you’re talking of giving their children special treatment.” I was mum.

This was seven months in. I left the next month, but I grew up a little. I wasn’t going to make a change overnight. I’ll probably never even make a change.

Don’t say that. What kept you going then?
Everyone involved was so resistant to change. And the truth is I didn’t know what I was doing. What did I really have to offer? Just good intentions?

But stubbornness was what kept me going. I needed to prove myself and everyone wrong. Also, I truly cared about these students. I wanted them to get the type of education I got in this same Naija. It’s unfair that a greater majority of Nigerians don’t have access to a basic standard of education because of their parents’ financial circumstances.

If you’d like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid, click here to tell me why

True. So what happened next?
After staying home for about three months, I got a job at a better quality school. But believe me when I say the parents were paying a lot of money — not as much as popular elite schools, but it was a lot — for just fine wall painting and uniform. Their children were learning nothing. The teachers were nonchalant, using handwritten teaching guides that were at least a decade old.

If most parents knew how ill-prepared their children were to compete in the future world of works, they’d be shocked.

Were you at least able to make a difference there?
Yes and no. I stayed for about two and a half years, and I was able to get through to of management to some extent. I was moved into istration and operations six months in, only taking special classes in speaking and diction once or twice a week. As deputy , I was able to enforce annual review of the teachers’ notes to make sure they stay relevant. The teachers resented me for this.

To be honest, I didn’t feel like I was making real lasting change because I was sure they’d ignore all my policies as soon as I leave the school, and they filled the role with someone more laid back. However, the changes I may or may not have made weren’t the most memorable thing about my stay in the school.

What was?
The bullying. I’m sure you think I’m referring to student on student, but no. I mean, students bullying teachers. It was rampant.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-ive-given-up-on-teaching-in-nigeria/

When would you say you figured out the importance of money?
In 2006. It was the year I got into a private boarding secondary school. One of the first things I learnt was that there’s a set of people who have money and others who don’t. It was my first lesson in “social class”.

What was it about secondary school that brought this into full view?
The school had a fair population of rich kids and children from comfortable but not quite rich homes. There was a constant show of money — little things like the quality of provisions students brought to school and big things like the fancy places they travelled to for holidays.

I was in the “kid-from-a-comfortable-home” category. My parents ensured I got the nicest things, so I didn’t feel out of place. But by the time I graduated from secondary school in 2012, my biggest realisation was that I needed money to get nice things. While I could rely on my parents to provide for me, it was also top of mind that it’d be my job to make money and provide for myself at some point.

When was the first time you made money?
2013. I got into university in 2012, and ASUU went on strike barely a year after. Sometime during the strike, I worked as a lesson teacher and earned ₦5k/month. My first salary was my first fruit offering.

First what?
I was raised in a Christian home, so this was important to me. I believe that when you get a job or an increase in earnings, you should give out the first payment to someone who could use it or to the church.

I spent two more months at the job before the strike ended and I returned to school. Subsequently, I lived on my monthly allowance of ₦20k – ₦30k until I found another opportunity to make money in my second year. My motivation was having enough money to save up for a phone I wanted.

What job did you find?
My roommates had ushering gigs, so I started tagging along and working with them. I started with the small ones, usually at wedding ceremonies, which paid ₦5k. I got a two-week job advertising brewery products and got paid close to ₦30k. It completed the amount I needed for the phone — a Blackberry Z10.

I started working with an ushering agency where I was paid ₦15k for every job I did for them, an average of two events per month. I was with this agency until my third year in the university; it was a good place to work until it wasn’t. In 2015, I did one job for them, and they ghosted me. It was the last I heard from them.

Wild. How was money moving in and out at this point though?
My monthly income at that time — allowance and earnings — was ₦50k – ₦60k. My major day-to-day expenses were feeding and school bills. Once these were sorted, I saved whatever remained, about ₦10k/month. I always dipped into my savings to make big purchases — clothes, accessories, random gifts to my boyfriend.

When the ushering jobs stopped, I lived on my monthly allowance and occasional money gifts from my boyfriend — he had a business, so he had more money.

I didn’t bother to find another job until I graduated in September 2017. By this time, my savings were at zero. Whatever I managed to save, I ended up spending on a want.

A familiar struggle. What came after graduation?
My parents wanted me to return home, but I was determined not to. I was in Lagos; the job opportunities and my friends were here. So I struck a deal with my parents: they’d send my allowance for three more months, but if I didn’t find a job within that window, I’d return home.

I moved in with a friend and started job and internship hunting. I studied computer science, but I couldn’t code to save my life, which complicated my chances. Luckily, I found a job in December — a week before the three-month deadline my parents gave me.

Must’ve been a relief
It was. It was a telemarketer role at a startup, and my salary was ₦‎50k/month. About four or five months later, I was mobilised for NYSC. The plan was to continue working at the startup after I left camp, but they pulled an interesting move.

What did they do?
They wanted to slash my salary in half; something about how I was now a corps member and would be paid ₦‎19,800/month by the federal government. It didn’t make sense to me, so I quit. NYSC reposted me to a government agency, but there was nothing to do there. I was pretty much a ghost worker who only showed up once a week. The good thing about it was it gave me the time I needed to job hunt again. Multiple applications and rejections later, I got a job at a tech startup. My salary was ₦25k.

The universe said you must take a pay cut by force
They had the same argument — I was a corps member. But I took it because they seemed to have more structure than the previous startup.

Three months after I started working there, they increased my salary to ₦30k. For the rest of my service year, my combined income was ₦49,800, and I was saving ₦10k – ₦15k.

How long were you at the job?
Until 2020. After my service year ended in 2019, they retained me and increased my salary to ₦70k. My idea of a decent income for an entry-level role was ₦200k. Since I wasn’t earning that, I felt very insecure about my finances. I knew I wasn’t doing badly, but I thought I could be doing better. Another source of my discontent was the job itself; it was almost like I was stuck there.

Why?
I was doing business development — which I didn’t like very much. Sadly, I couldn’t quit because I didn’t have much to leave with. The plan was to transition into something I’d enjoy more, which was product management. However, I hadn’t built the skills, so I couldn’t apply for product management roles. I spent the next year taking courses.

How much did this cost you?
I took two paid courses. One on Udemy which cost $9.99, and the other was a ₦150k course on Product Dive. I also took any free course I could find.

Nice
On the work front, my salary was reduced to ₦50k when COVID hit in 2020. I knew I had to find another job. Thankfully, a friend came through and linked me up with a product management role in another company in August 2020.

Whew. How much did it pay?
₦180k. I probably would’ve earned more if I didn’t mess up during negotiations. I asked for ₦250k, but they asked what would be a fair amount if they couldn’t pay that, and I told them ₦180k. They sent me an offer letter almost immediately after.

It felt like the world had stopped because it was a bump from my previous salary. Then I started my new role and found out that my colleagues were earning about ₦270k. If I’d insisted on ₦250k, they would’ve paid it.

This plot!
While I felt cheated, I was still happy with my ₦180k. For starters, I could conveniently save ₦100k/month. However, the job was the absolute trenches. The work culture wasn’t great. There were lots of organisational issues and we were often running behind on projects. This took its toll on my mental health — there were lots of tears. But I was doing the job and money was entering my .

The experience boosted my technical skills and put me on a path to earning more. First, I got a raise to ₦220k in April 2021. Two months later, I got another job in an American startup I applied to earlier in the year.

*Drum roll*
The offer was ₦600k/month. I felt like I’d arrived. I called my family, and everyone I know, to let them know there was a new boss in town.

DFKM
See, I started the job with my shoulders up. Then I was laid off in my first week. My opps were working hard.

Wait, what?
That was my exact reaction. The company was closing down because the CEO had mismanaged investors’ money.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/nairalife-product-management-jobs-in-nigeria/

Bayo* is a digital marketer for an insurance company during the week and a photographer on weekends. In this article, he talks about his ₦1m target savings, starting an office romance with his superior at work, and why he’s convinced she’s the one he wants to spend the rest of his life.

Occupation and location
Digital marketer living in Lagos

Average monthly income
I get ₦100k from my day job, ₦500k monthly from photography gigs and about ₦200k from my photography studio.

Relationship expenses
First date: ₦84k

Subsequent dates: ₦60k per date

Sanitary pads: ₦8500 for a year

Valentine’s Day gift: ₦30k

Xmas weekend getaway: ₦200k. (₦70k for two nights at a hotel, ₦10k for food, ₦8k for smoking supplies, and the rest was for miscellaneous spending)

Hair and Nails: Occasional ₦10k – ₦20k

How did you meet your girlfriend?
We work in different teams in the insurance company. She leads the strategy team while I work in digital. In a sense, she’s my superior; I’d be reporting to her if we worked on the same team. I always thought she was proud because she had this stuck-up behaviour. If we bumped into each other at the elevator or in an office, she wouldn’t say hi or acknowledge my presence. I’d want to say something to her, but she just seemed so uninterested.

Then in September 2022, I had to photograph her at a work conference. During the session, she said she thought I hated her because I was never as pleasant with her as I was with others. I itted I felt she was rude, and we apologised to each other. The conference was a three-day event, so we spent the last two days getting to know each other. I enjoyed our conversations and the attention which came with her trying to get to know me. But when I asked for her number and she said no, I returned to not talking to her.

Omo
Two weeks later, we met at a team hang. I felt we bonded and wanted us to build a relationship outside work, so I asked for her number. Again, she said no.

Wahala
I decided not to ask anymore and focus on being coworkers. A week after the hangout, she came to my office asking me to take her friend’s port photograph. I planned to send her the pictures the following day, but she didn’t come to my office for them.

Later that week, she texted me to ask about the pictures because I was working from home. I pretended not to know who she was even after she introduced herself because I hadn’t given her my number. But after a few minutes of back and forth, I sent her the pictures and she paid me for the work.

How much?
₦2k. After she sent the money, I decided to send it back to her. She called back, curious how I got her number. I claimed I was a tech bro, so I knew how to pull technical information out of thin air.

Are you?
I don’t know anything oo. I use PalmPay, so when people send me money, they let me see the number.

When I went to work the following week, she showed up at my office. I didn’t pay her any attention because I was busy. Then she started tapping on my phone screen, which was annoying, so I shouted at her. She burst into tears, saying I was constantly being rude to her. I felt bad and apologised for my outburst.

I texted her on Google Teams after she left my office, telling her I liked her. I also mentioned that I didn’t know how to handle rejection, which was why I hadn’t told her earlier.

How did she react?
She seemed surprised but excited that I had confessed to having growing feelings for her. We moved the conversation to WhatsApp, but we didn’t talk frequently. Sometimes, I’d text her, and she wouldn’t reply until the following day.

It was clear that online communication wasn’t working, so I asked her out on a friendly date the next time I was at the office. I clarified that if I did anything she wasn’t comfortable with, she could handle it however she wanted.

We agreed on an activity date on the last Saturday of the month, and on the days leading up to the date, we started to talk a lot. We’d be very professional at the office, but once we got home, we’d get on a call till around 4 a.m.

And how did the date go?
It was so much fun. We played games, gisted and ate snacks. This cost ₦34k. Then we went to a restaurant nearby, where I got a bowl of pepper soup, and she got barbecued fish and chips. The food was so much, we ended up taking the leftovers home. Everything including drinks cost about ₦50k.

Spending!
I wanted to impress her. Because unlike her who grew up with luxury, I didn’t come from a rich background or have a lot of money. I wanted to show I’d go all out to care for the people I love. This was the start of our love life.

What has changed since then?
We’re both involved in each other’s lives. I tell her everything, and she does the same. I also try to spend as much time as I can with her, even if it means cancelling my weekend appointments so we can go out.

How much money goes into your relationship?
We prefer activity dates with food after, so my budget when we go out is ₦60k. But depending on the location, we go over budget sometimes.

In December, I wanted us to spend a weekend all to ourselves, so I budgeted ₦200k. We got a hotel and paid ₦70k for the two nights we stayed there. I ordered food twice from The Place (₦10k total), got smoke for ₦8k and still went to a supermarket to do some shopping.

Towards the end of 2022, I got her a pack of sanitary pads that’d last a year. I usually do this for any girl I’m dating. It cost about ₦8500, because I just got 12 of them. For Valentine, I got her a gift box of her favourite banana bread, wine, a card, lingerie, a bracelet and perfume for ₦30k.

Does she give you gifts?
For my birthday in January, she got me a Polo Ralph T-shirt, a wristwatch and a pair of Skechers sneakers I’d ired for a while.

I live in Mowe, which is far from most of the fun places, so she doesn’t visit. When we’re not going out, I spend the weekend at her place, and she takes care of me. For instance, the weekend after Valentine’s Day, she made fish sauce, yam, chips and chicken for me. She also spent ₦10k on a bottle of wine.

When she didn’t cook, she paid for the food we ordered. All I did that weekend was eat, smoke and have sex.

Read the full story here: [url]https://www.zikoko.com/money/dating-in-lagos-on-an-%E2%82%A6800k-monthly-digital-marketing-income/[/url]

Chisom Nwokwu is a 21-year-old software engineer at Microsoft. She realised in uni that there was more to life than good grades and started coding in her second year. But between years of learning, 30-50 daily applications and rounds of failed interviews, how did she eventually land a job at Microsoft?

Getting a job at Microsoft before graduating? Chisom, you have to show us the way
I promise it wasn’t a big deal. I was just aware that there’s a lot more to life than school.

What does that mean?
While I was invested in keeping my grades up, I realised as a computer scientist, it’s not all about books. In the real world, people want to know if you can code, programme or build something. As a student, I just focused on that.

Your degree didn’t prepare you for the real world?
Every computer science student knows we’re taught mainly theory. On some occasions, we’d use software, but on most, we learnt about coding on a whiteboard or paper.

Coding on paper?
No shade to Nigerian universities, but I didn’t make a lot out of what I learnt there. Still, it was an important experience for my journey.

How?
I met the guy who got me into coding in my second year. There was an innovation hub on campus and science students liked to hang out there. On one of the random days I stopped by, I met a tech bro deg an android application.

It wasn’t unusual to see people coding, but it looked like he was deg a mobile application on his laptop. I was intrigued and asked what he was up to. That was the first time I’d heard anyone talk about building apps on Google Play Store.

Two years in computer science and none of that came up in class?
All I’d done was code on paper and attempt to teach myself on a laptop. But that guy was developing real apps for phones. That was an upgrade I knew I needed, so I asked him to teach me.

Sweet. So the journey to tech sis, how did that go?
I had some programming knowledge from ing Aptech in Calabar in 2018, but it was still hard to keep up with the tools for building the apps. I got a hang of it eventually when I started taking tutorials online. The tutorial videos had practice projects at the end that made it possible for me to build a portfolio, which was instrumental to my transition to software engineering.

What’s the difference between being a computer scientist and a software engineer?
The difference is in the practical aspect. Software engineers design and ship products by the minute. While a computer scientist is more theoretical; it’s like a bigger umbrella.

What major thing helped you to prepare for the role?
The projects at the end of each tutorial. After a year, I wanted to apply for internships, but I didn’t have a resume. When I looked up samples, there were sections for work experience and personal projects. And I didn’t have anything relevant to include. That’s a big issue when there are a million other people trying to get the same job you want.

I get you. What was the first experience you got as a student?
Building my first phone application in 300 level. I wasn’t sure what to build initially. But it was easier to replicate a more culture-specific version of the programme I’d been taught. That’s how I made Igbò Amáká, a language-teaching app.

How well did Igbò Amáká do to be relevant enough against a million other people?
The most important aspect was getting the application to work. Companies want to know you can actually build the app. And I did. By the time I graduated, I’d built a second application designed to help visually-impaired people send emails. That was pretty impressive to talk about during job interviews.

When did you start applying?
Before the end of my final exams in early 2020. I wanted to get a software engineering job and start immediately after school. So I was submitting 30 to 50 applications a day — I literally flooded the internet with my resume, applying for jobs. But I was more interested in getting into the Big Tech companies — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft or Google.

You weren’t even thinking about Nigeria at all?
I was at first. While applying and going through interviews, I realised that junior and internship roles are like “mid-level” roles in Nigerian companies. They always asked if I had work experience. So I changed plans and focused on the big tech companies. My thinking was they have more capacity to train people with little experience.

Fair enough
But even with the projects I’d done, I wasn’t getting hired at any of the companies I actually wanted. They were looking for someone with more experience than I had.

The first interview I failed was Bloomberg’s. Then the aptitude tests for Google, Facebook and Microsoft followed. That’s how companies kept dropping me. It made me feel like it wasn’t a project problem anymore.

Then what was it?
I had the skills. But the recruiters needed more than me being able to build applications. Every entry-level engineer can code. The question was how well-grounded I was as a developer without any work experience.

Did I have any published articles? Any volunteer experience or a portfolio website to showcase? That’s the difference between startups and bigger companies like Google. They don’t just care about your work experience as a student. Skills that demonstrate being good at communication and problem-solving are what matter.

How about the aptitude tests you failed? What were you missing?
Everything around data structures and algorithms. When you combine them with strong soft skills like communication, problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, they can be the real access card to bigger organisations.

Interesting. What do data structures and algorithms mean?
It’s a course on its own. Data structures and algorithms test your knowledge of logic, coding and communication. You get to answer technical questions using your preferred coding language, and the tests can be complex. They’re the most common questions international organisations ask.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/this-nigerian-student-got-into-microsoft-with-zero-work-experience-how-she-do-am/

Obi* is a 28-year-old product manager living in Berlin while his wife is in Lagos. In this week’s Love Currency, he talks about landing a first date because she thought he was someone else, proposing while surrounded by their favourite foods and choosing to work in because of her.

Occupation and location
Product manager living in Berlin, .

Monthly income
My take-home salary is about $4k after tax.

Monthly and recurring relationship expenses
First date: ₦30k at a restaurant in VI

Her birthday (2021): ₦10 – 20k restaurant date and ₦200k cash gift

Her birthday (2022): $1k cash gift

Wedding ring: ₦500k

Business loans: Nothing over ₦1m

Miscellaneous: the occasional ₦100 – 200k

How did you meet your wife?
I was scrolling through Instagram in January 2021 when I came across a reel of her redeg a space; she’s an interior designer. I enjoyed watching videos of her work, and she was also pretty. So I followed her and started sending responses to her stories — a clapping emoji here, heart eyes there.

A few weeks later, I slid into her DMs to ask her name since it wasn’t on the page. She told me, I asked if we could grab lunch together, and we started discussing arrangements. At some point, she confessed that she only agreed because she’d mistaken my DM for someone else she’d been talking to on Instagram.

Did the date still happen?
Yes. We’d gone far into the planning, so why not? We agreed to have dinner at a restaurant in VI. We ended up talking through the night till the restaurant told us they wanted to close. Our food even ran cold. We’d ordered lamb, some seafood and drinks — everything cost around ₦30k.

I lived in Abuja at the time and was supposed to returnthe next day but postponed it because I wanted to see her again.

Did you?
Yes, a few days later, she told me about a meeting near my house, and I asked her to meet me at a restaurant afterwards. We talked and played the “36 questions to fall in love” game, which left us feeling emotionally vulnerable. It was late, and the restaurant was closing, so we decided to walk the short distance back to my place.

When we got there, she sat on my table because she didn’t like my couch. After trying unsuccessfully to get a ride, she decided to spend the night but insisted on staying in the living room. I brought out a mat I had, and she offered her for us to watch Netflix movies. At some point, I tried to cuddle and kiss her, but she quickly shot that down, and we went back to watching movies till we fell asleep. After she left, we started talking regularly on WhatsApp, and she even visited me in Abuja.

How did that happen?
Towards the end of March 2021, she said she wished I was in Lagos to celebrate my birthday in April together. So I got her a ticket to Abuja which cost ₦20k – 30k, but Lagos traffic happened, and she missed the flight. The only other available flight that day was about ₦70k, and we both agreed it was a lot of money. I gave up on seeing her, but later that day, she showed up at my door to surprise me. She’d paid the remaining ₦40k for the ticket. That was the best part of my birthday that year.

How was her stay in Abuja?
She stayed just over a week, and we went out two times; one was to a friend’s birthday party. The other times we left the house were when she accompanied me to the coffee shop I worked from or on our regular evening walks around my estate.

She prefers to cook her food or order online rather than eat out. She also doesn’t drink or enjoy the nightlife, so getting her to leave the house is always a struggle. I thought this was a good time to ask her to date me, but this babe said no.

Read full story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/a-berlin-to-lagos-long-distance-marriage-on-a-4k-monthly-income/

Do you the first thing you did for money?
When I was 12, I started helping my mum at her foodstuff stall in Imo state. Because I spent a lot of time there, my mum bought me a manual grinding machine to make some money for myself. When people bought egusi or ogbono seeds from my mum, I’d grind them for them. I made ₦‎20 – ₦30 for every cup I ground and ₦200 and ₦300 per day.

What did you use the money for?
Taking care of small-small expenses in secondary school. My dad died when I was six, leaving my mum with eight kids. It’d be a challenge to raise us, so the family decided to give my mum time to take care of herself and figure things out. For the first three or four years after my dad ed, my siblings and I lived with relatives.

When she started her business in the market, I moved back home. By this time, I knew enough to know that money had value and could solve problems. The easiest problem I could solve for myself was a few things I needed in school.

This was my life for five years until I finished secondary school in 2012. I was 18 years old.

Did you know what you wanted to do next?
The plan was to continue my education, but money was a problem. I needed to find something else. My mum knew the principal of a school and helped me find a teaching job there. The pay was ₦10k, and I started work during the holiday, but I didn’t last a month there.

Ah! Why?
I had a short temper and was teaching the nursery 2 class. It was stressful dealing with the children, so I couldn’t sustain my interest in the job. One day, in the middle of an argument with my mum, I told her that I wasn’t going there anymore, and that was it. The school paid me my salary for the month, though.

But I quickly realised that it wasn’t easy to get a job, and I needed one to save to attend a higher institution. I apologised to my mum and asked if she could help me talk to the school to take me back.

How did your mum take this?
As well as I’d hoped. She talked to the school, but the position had been filled. Fortunately, there was another option – the school had a branch in Anambra state, and they needed a security guard. The pay was ₦‎11k plus free accommodation. I took it and moved to Onitsha. By the time I left a year after, my salary had increased to about ₦‎14k.

Your first structured salary
Yes. It was an eye-opener for me. It became clear that the actual value of my salary wasn’t as much as I thought it’d be.

I wasn’t extravagant, but almost all my salary went into feeding. I struggled to save ₦3k/month, and I wasn’t even consistent with it. If my salary was delayed for one day, I’d probably go to bed hungry that night.

Tough. Was this the reason you left the job?
It was. I needed to make more money. I left the job and the town and moved to Lagos. One of my brothers was in Lagos, and he told me some companies in the city paid better. He offered to let me stay with him and take care of my feeding while I found my feet.

In December 2013, I moved to Lagos. In 2014, I found work as a machine operator in a company that produced plastic products. My pay was ₦7k every two weeks.

So, ₦14k/month?
I was making extra money for meeting the production targets, which brought my salary to about ₦17k – ₦18k/ month.

I won’t lie, it was hard to meet these targets, but I took the job like it was my own. My production manager noticed this and put me in the quality control department.

Fascinating. How did this affect your pay?
It didn’t. The management didn’t sign off on it, so I didn’t get a raise. Nobody also told me why. What I knew was that I had more responsibilities in doing quality control for three different departments.

The more work and lesser pay finally got to me, and I left the factory.

Phew. We move
The good thing was that I built a savings structure while I was on the job. I was living with my brother and his wife and didn’t have to worry about feeding. My major expense was transportation, which was almost 50% of my salary. Other miscellaneous expenses took about 20%, and I saved 30%. Still not enough to go back to school.

What was your next job after you left the factory?
I worked at the loading bay of another factory that produced detergents. My experience was better here. The pay was about ₦108/hour, and the normal working hours were 8 am to 3 pm. But I also worked overtime until about 7 pm. At the end of most days, I made between ₦1200 – ₦1500. All of this put my salary between ₦33k and ₦35k/month.

I ed a contribution group, where I saved ₦10k per month. I was also sending some stipends to two of my siblings studying at the university.

Things were stable for a while. Sadly, my mum ed away in 2015, and her children — all eight of us had to chip in for her funeral. 90%of my savings went into this.

I’m sorry about your mum. How much did you have in savings?
About ₦100k. After we buried my mum, it was like I had to start all over again. But it was also time to try returning to school.

In 2016, I quit my job and moved to Delta state to stay with a relative. I had saved just enough to attend tutorials, write JAMB and apply to the university. I couldn’t combine preparing for the exams with my job in Lagos. Unfortunately, I wasn’t offered ission into the university I applied for, even though I did well in the exams.

Now, I needed another job. I called my old boss at the factory, and he offered me a space that had just opened up. When I moved back to Lagos, my job was still waiting for me.

Must have been a relief.
It was. Later that year, I moved out of my brother’s house in Lagos and started living with a friend. Our rent was ₦2k/month, which my friend took care of. On my part, I sorted some of the bills in the house.

How was it going at work?
In 2017, I was promoted to a supervisor at the warehouse, and my hourly pay increased to ₦115/hour, which ran into a little over ₦40k/month. When this happened, I increased my monthly savings to ₦15k – ₦20k.

But I also started feeling dissatisfied at work.

Did you know why?
I looked at people who had been in the factory for years, and there was a big difference between the life they could afford and the years they’d spent at the factory. I also noticed that the factory dropped workers when they felt like they no longer needed them. I just told myself that my future or the life I wanted to live wasn’t there.

When you pictured the life you wanted, what came to mind?
A life where I didn’t need to work long hours almost every day to make money. This is why I quit the job for good in 2018, returned home to the east, ed for JAMB, and applied to a university. I didn’t get the course I wanted, but they offered me another course. I decided to take it.

Sweet
I was hoping my older siblings who were already working would come in and sort out things like school fees. But the family called a meeting to tell me there was no money. I’d waited six years to return to school and ed my siblings who were in school during this time, so this was demoralizing.

However, one of my sisters called me aside and promised to make it happen the following year. In the meantime, she wanted me to follow her home to Abia state, where she lived with her husband, and find some work before it was time to write JAMB again.

I took her offer. But in my mind, I wasn’t going to build my plans around what anyone promised anymore.

Did you find another job?
Yes. I started working in a distillery as a forklift operator, where I earned ₦30k/month. I’m not sure how much I was saving this time, but I had more than ₦100k by the end of the year. Luckily, I did well in my ission exams and was itted into a polytechnic. I used this money to sort out my acceptance fees, school fees, and house rent.

In 2019, I started classes in the department of food science at the Polytechnic. See, it felt like I had broken through a barrier.

I feel you. It’s impressive that you nursed this dream for seven years.
Thank you. That said, the issue was finding an income source to me through school. The first opportunity was acting as a middleman between clothes wholesalers in the market and buyers in my school. I was making ₦500 – ₦1000 on each piece of clothing I sold, and I typically sold four clothes on most weeks.

Then Covid hit in 2020, and the school was closed. With nothing else to do, I tried going into the business of making popcorn, but the constant price increase of materials chased me away.

Oof.
Later that year, my brother-in-law helped me get a tricycle to use for commercial transportation. The deal with the owner was that I’d deliver ₦3k every day. Whatever remained was mine. During Covid, I made about ₦5k – ₦8k every day. But after Covid, my profit went up to ₦8k and ₦10/day, even though my daily delivery was also increased to ₦3.5k/day.

Read full story: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-nairalife-of-a-tricycle-operator-in-nigeria/

Sola Ajao is a 59 -year-old Nigerian woman based in Boston, US. She started cooking at 10 and grew to love it. But when she moved to the States to get married, she realised there was a gap in accessing African foods. She’s spent 20 years building a business to bridge the gap and tells us how she’s done it.

Do you have any formal training as a chef?
No, but cooking has always been a part of my life. I started cooking for my family when I was ten years old. We didn’t have a maid, and I had two younger siblings, so my mum taught me to take care of the family while she was away at work. It made me grow to love food.

How did you move from being a ten-year-old learning to cook to growing a business?
When I was 26, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts to marry my husband. I was living in a different country for the first time, and I could never find familiar ingredients to cook my meals.

Whenever I wanted to make something as simple as jollof rice, I’d drive 215 miles to New York for the spices. It didn’t take long to notice the gap, so I decided to buy African spices and foodstuff from New York to start a food business in my Boston home.

Interesting. So there was no competition in Boston at the time?
None that I knew of. New York, on the other hand, was a much bigger hub. When Africans came to the states in the 80s, they usually landed in New York — that’s what most people referred to as Yankee.

As a result of the influx of Africans in New York, they had the infrastructure for importing African food. So I’d place my orders through vendors in New York who had importing licenses.

How were you able to build a network in a new country?
When I started, I was pretty much taking a leap of faith. I put all my savings into the business. I tried to get other sources of funding, like bank loans, but it didn’t work out.

Also, introducing African food to Boston wasn’t easy. Everyone was familiar with Chinese and Indian food, but Nigerian food wasn’t as common. So naturally, the business started very small, and I took up corporate jobs to make up for the money I wasn’t making. I came to the United States with only a secondary school certificate, so the job I could get at the time was a secretarial role at what is now known as Bank of America.

But kids change things.

When my kids came, I decided to be at home more often. This made it easier for me to build a network. I started daycare at home and met a lot of other mums who needed help with their kids. This was a good opportunity to market my products, and I did at every chance. I started offering catering services too — food is a basic human necessity.

My husband became a church minister in 2008, which helped me connect with more Nigeran and African people in my community.

And there weren’t any regulations against running a restaurant from your home?
I only took bulk orders for events while I was trying to expand to accommodate daily orders. It’s very common for caterers to cook from their homes as long as they’re licensed. We call this concept “home cooks” or “home chefs.”

What was your most notable catering opportunity?
A convention for people from Edo state in 2007 was my biggest contract. 2000 people showed up to this event, and I had to hire a team of ten to pull it off. By the end of the day, people from all over the U.S. had tried my bestselling jollof rice. I was pleased. I built on that and continued to grow the business until I got a store in 2020.

I’d wanted to get a store for the longest time, but I didn’t have the money to put into it with a family to take care of. When I got COVID in 2020 and spent two months not knowing whether I’d survive, I knew there wasn’t enough time to wait for the right moment. It’d been 20 years already.

I decided to take a calculated risk and put all my money into renting a property. But even with the money, it wasn’t easy to find a space in my town. The real estate market here is extremely tough.

But without any formal training, how did you manage to scale up the business?
The most important thing to keep in mind is turning your everyday life into useful and profitable skills.

For instance, being a minister’s wife meant I needed to communicate and network even when I didn’t feel like it. I needed that to understand good customer service for my grocery store and catering business to grow. There’s no separation between my business and personal life because my business grows from my life experiences.

Also, a culinary degree isn’t what gets you through the door when you’re cooking a different style of food. What sells you is how well you can educate people and persuade them to actually try your food.

So how do you educate non-Nigerians about Nigerian food and get them to actually try it out?
We host pop-up experiences in different areas of our state, Massachusetts. It takes our business model to various locations outside of our storefront location. We recently did a pop-up in a predominantly white neighbourhood over 25 miles away. We had 100 transactions, many of whom promised to visit our store.

We also use social media as a form of education and entertainment, promoting our foods and creating educational content around them. We also invite influencers to do food tastes at our store. We even have a Spicy Indomie Challenge with some of our community who we affectionately call the #DAMFam.

Did you depend on the supply chain in New York as the business grew?
Not entirely. I ed the business in Nigeria in 2022 for about ₦50k. So I don’t always have to depend on third-party vendors in New York. Instead, I can import directly from local vendors in Nigeria. This has strengthened the business’s B2B wholesale model.

I’m curious. It took you 20 years to get a physical store. Is there any part of the journey you’d change if you could?
Honestly, there isn’t. It’s natural to feel like I could’ve prepared more. But I believe my personal journey is my destiny, hence why I named my business Destiny African Market. My hope is someone will learn from my journey and not have to go through the same hardships.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/after-20-years-of-catering-she-finally-opened-a-food-store-in-the-us/