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Career / The Life Of A Millennial Looking To Retire At 40 by BigCabal: 9:35am On Sep 20, 2021
The 34-year-old engineer in this #NairaLife made a career switch into oil and gas in 2014. Since that time, his basic salary has grown to ₦1.7m/month. Now, he wants to retire in six years with $1m in liquid assets. How does he hope to get there?





What’s your oldest memory of money?

My parents worked in the civil service and most of the people I grew up with were in a similar economic class, so I didn’t think there were rich people or poor people. I went to a government-owned school for my first three years of secondary school before switching to a private school for my senior secondary education in 2001. There, I learnt of my social standing. The first thing I noticed was that my school fees jumped from ₦200 to ₦14k per term.

My allowance was ₦50, which was little compared to what others had. What this meant for me was that I had to save for days to afford things some of my classmates could buy in an afternoon.

There was also some anxiety that came with this discovery. I avoided school parties as much as I could because I didn’t think I had the right clothes or shoes to wear. My three years at the school made it clear I had to make money in the future to bridge the gap.

Did you do anything for money during this time?

No, not really. I may have done one or two things for my family that fetched me money, but that wasn’t my objective and they were also far and in-between.

I left secondary school in 2003 and enrolled for my A-Levels programme, and the tuition was ₦100k. This experience was also a reality check. While there were people who were taking the classes and writing the exam to apply to schools abroad, there was me who knew I was going to a university in Nigeria. I didn’t even finish the programme.

Oh, why not?

I applied for and got into a diploma programme at a university in the southwest before the year ended, so I decided to go for it. It cost ₦210k, and my parents took a loan from their cooperative society to pay for it. A year later, I was offered provisional admission to study electrical engineering at the same university.

How did uni go?

I lived mostly on the allowance I got from my parents. It was ₦5k and came once a month. I also had family friends in the city I was studying in and got some money from them at intervals too. However, I wasn’t saving or keeping money aside because it was barely enough. But I survived university and won’t say I had a tough time with money. I graduated in 2009.

I was mobilised for NYSC in June 2010 and posted to a state in the south-south. I worked in a secondary school owned by the state government. I lived on less than ₦13k/month for the entire year — the federal government paid ₦9,775 and the state government paid ₦3k. Luckily, food was also ridiculously cheap in the village I was posted to. I could make a pot of soup with about ₦320. I wasn’t exactly saving because I wasn’t earning enough, but by the end of my service year, I had about ₦50k in my savings account.

How?

The 2011 election was the game-changer. I worked as an ad-hoc staff for INEC during the voter registration exercise and got about ₦30k from it. I also got about the same amount of money from working during the general election.

This wasn’t the last sum of money I made off NYSC.

I’m listening.

After my service year, the federal government increased the allowance from ₦9775 to ₦19,800. My batch was eligible to receive payment arrears. I think they paid about six months arrears, which was good money to me, especially considering that I was at home and without a job.

Man, how long were you unemployed?

About three months. I got my first job in September 2011, as an engineer in an authorised repair centre for Nokia phones. My salary was ₦45k, which I thought was decent. I spent only four months there though.

Why did you leave?

One of my mum’s friends had a son who worked with a contractor that handled marketing for Nokia phones in Nigeria, and I was encouraged to apply for a job there. I did, and I got the job. Nokia was a flagship phone at the time, so there were lots of roles. I was hired as an in-store experience marketer. I was posted to a phone store to serve as a Nokia representative and market the phones to potential buyers. The job paid ₦90k.

That was twice what you earned as a phone engineer.

Yes, it was. At the end of my first month there, they transferred me to a North-central state, which was a bit of an inconvenience. There were no accommodation arrangements, and I had to figure that out myself. Guess what happened on the first night I got to my new station?

What?

I got a text from a bank I had applied to months earlier, inviting me to come for medicals. Man, I jumped on the first bus the following morning and left the town. I sent in my resignation on the same day.

I had to go to the bank’s training school first. This started in February 2012 and lasted for four months. They paid trainees ₦50k. However, my time at the training school was some of the best of my life. Unfortunately, my time as a confirmed staff of the bank wasn’t half as pleasant.

Why not?

Let me start with the good: I got a raise when I was absorbed into the bank’s workforce and my salary jumped to ₦208k. Subsequently, I was posted to the marketing department and had to find new customers for the bank. My department had an annual target of ₦4bn, and this was a drag on my life. In between finding new customers and retaining existing customers, my quality of life took a dip. At the height of it, my job satisfaction was low but the money was decent. Everything only made sense when my salary came in at the end of the month.

Thankfully, two months after I started work as a full-staff, a consulting company I had applied to months earlier reached out, inviting me to the final round of interviews. I got an offer letter from them in August 2012.

How much?

₦128k. Another pay cut, but I was only too happy to accept it. I was like, “If I’m not going to chase customers, pay me whatever you want.”

Haha. Fair enough.

After my induction, I was posted to management consulting. After my first year, my salary was increased to ₦150k. This was also around the time I delved into my first side hustle.

Tell me about that.

I started saving ₦50k from my salary every month because I wanted to buy a car. I saved ₦400k in eight months. One of my friends had an uncle who did Cotonou runs and shipped cars into Nigeria. We went to Cotonou together, but my ₦400k couldn’t buy me any of the cars I wanted. The best deal I got that was within my budget was a 1993 Toyota Camry, and they were going to sell it for ₦600k.

I eventually bought a 2001 Mazda, and it cost ₦700k. Two of my friends loaned me ₦150k each to buy the car. But the trip opened my eyes to the possibilities of shipping cars in and selling them in the country. The opportunity to act on this came a few months later when a friend wanted to buy a car and I told him I’d handle it. I went to Cotonou myself and brought the car in. On that trip alone, I made ₦75k in profit. For context, I was earning ₦150k per month.

You made half your monthly salary in a day.

Exactly. Omo, I started telling everybody I knew that I was selling cars. When this side business caught on, I was doing an average of two trips per month and making between ₦50k and ₦75k on each trip.

Interesting. How was it going with your day job?

I was now in my second year at the consulting company. One day, a former colleague who had left for an oil company called me and informed me that his company was recruiting. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but I applied and went through the entire process. I got an offer to start work in May 2014.

Whoop!

My basic salary was ₦650k, minus allowances. It would take me about six years to hit that number at the consulting company I was with. It was an easy decision.

I was hired as an instrumentation engineer. Basically, we automate the process used in bringing out oil and gas from the sub-surface.

The first payment I received from the company was an accommodation allowance. ₦22k per day for 90 days. And guess what? They paid everything at once. ₦1.98m landed in my account, and I hadn’t even done any work. It was the biggest lump sum payment I had ever received up until that point.

Subsequently, I was put on a trainee programme, moving around different on-shore facilities to work and learn about the job. Mostly, I was working for two weeks and taking the following two weeks off. My basic salary was ₦650k, but there was also some form of allowance payment every month. On average. I was earning up to ₦1m every month as a trainee.

Baller.

I also saw an opportunity for my side business there. I told everyone I could that I sold cars, and the orders came in. They had a higher purchasing power than the guys at my former workplace, so they went for higher-end cars — mostly vehicles around the region of ₦4m – ₦5m. My profit on these deals were about ₦1m.

Interesting.

I graduated from my trainee programme in 2017 and was transferred to my first facility. I got a raise and started earning ₦1.2m. The constant allowance I remember from that time was my accommodation allowance. The facility I was working out of didn’t have great accommodation options, so the company paid me ₦250k every two weeks to make up for that.

And how has your salary evolved since that time?

My salary has increased by at least 5% every year. At the moment, I earn ₦1.7m/month. But there are also a couple of allowances and bonus payments that come in during the course of the year. Everything I earn, including bonuses, stacks up to ₦25m – ₦30m per annum.


On the side, I invest heavily in cryptocurrency.

How did you get into crypto?

I grew out of the car business, so I started looking for something else I could do. I became interested in crypto in the early parts of 2020. I finally took the plunge in July when I bought one bitcoin for ₦4.5m. By the time I sold it, it was ₦4.9m. I made a profit of ₦400k on one trade.

Information is important when dealing with cryptocurrency, so I subscribed to every crypto subreddit I could find. And started doubling on my investments as much as I could. The more I got into crypto, the more I saw the possibilities. It’s been a game-changer, and it’s part of my retirement plan.

What’s your retirement plan?

I want to retire at 40 with $1m in liquid assets. I’ve decided that crypto could get me there, so it’s pretty much my side hustle now. At the height of the bull run earlier this year, I had about $210k in my portfolio. But the dip happened and I held on. The last time I checked, I had $90k, and I’m building it back up.

Man, how do you decide what coins to bet on?

Research. I do a lot of technical and fundamental analysis. With the fundamental analysis, I look at the coin, what problem it solves, and who the backers are. I’m not good at technical analysis, so I follow a lot of people who are. I look at their research and decide whether to invest in a coin or not.

I know cryptocurrency is volatile, so I’m not putting all my hopes on it.

What are your other investments?

I started investing in Eurobonds in 2018. I started with about $20k, and the ROI is 12% per annum. When Covid hit last year, I wanted to put more money in it, so I took a loan of ₦14m from work and topped the account up at ₦440/$1. The total value of my Eurobond investment now is about $60k.

There’s also my company stock. Employees get a 15% employee discount, and I’ve been putting some of the money I get into that too. My stock in the company is currently valued at $30k.

I have some landed properties in two states in the country, but I don’t put a lot of thought into this. I believe landed properties are not the best investment choice in Nigeria — inflation eats at every profit you can ever hope to make. But I have a 3-bedroom project I’ve been working on since 2014 and is valued at ₦40m and another piece of land that’s worth ₦8m.

All of this should bring my total investments across my portfolios to at least $180k.

That’s impressive. Let’s talk about your monthly running costs. What do they look like?

I’m not married, but I have a live-in partner and we have two kids together, hence the housekeeping expenses. I took a loan from work last year to invest in Eurobond, and it’s spread over four years. I’m not mad about it — I’m repaying the loan in naira and earning my ROI in dollars.

I also don’t save or invest in naira anymore. When I get paid at the end of the month, I take out my monthly running costs, convert the rest into dollars and put it into my range of investment.

I really want to know how your perspective about money has changed over the years.

It has largely remained the same — money is a tool to get things. I acknowledge that and also understand that I need to stay hungry to make more.

Also, I don’t feel validation from owning things or splashing money on things I don’t need. I currently drive a 2004 European model car I bought for ₦1.5m. My annual rent is ₦500k. The plan is to keep expenses as low as possible and stack my bag up the best way I can. I’ve learned that money is like working out to grow muscles — you don’t get what you want in a day, so intentionality is key.

Looking at where you are in your career, how much do you feel like you should be earning?

For starters, I don’t feel underpaid. The next role I’m going into in my place of work should see my salary grow to ₦1.8m – ₦2m/month. I feel like I’m right where I should be.

Great. Is there anything you want but can’t afford then?

A Tesla maybe. I don’t think I can’t afford it, but it wouldn’t make sense to buy it when I’m living in Nigeria.

What about something you bought recently that required some planning?

I used my last phone — a OnePlus — for five years. The newest model came out earlier this year and I just decided to go for it. It cost me $1054. It didn’t require a lot of planning; I just had to think about it for a bit before I liquidated some of my investments in crypto.

I’m curious, when was the last time you felt really broke?

I can’t remember. I feel like I’m broke when the money in my account goes below ₦100k, and this hasn’t happened in a hot minute. Also, I know some money is available if I need to access it. I try as much as possible not to do it, but I could liquidate some of my assets if I badly need money. There’s some sense of security that comes with that.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your financial happiness?

8. There’s no great need in front of me that I can’t afford. I’m also excited about my potential earnings and the strategy I’m putting in place to hit them. Life couldn’t be better, really. If I hit my $1m target by 40, this might increase to a 10.

Source: https:///39nGEim

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Romance / Love Life: “We Are Married, But He Needs To Propose” by BigCabal: 4:05pm On Sep 16, 2021
When Kingsley (40) met Ada (31), he was mesmerised. But Ada did not want anything to do with a man from Rivers State. Today on Love Life, they discuss moving from enemies to friends to husband and wife, and a pending marriage proposal.

What’s your earliest memory of each other?

Kingsley: The first time I saw Ada was at a salon where she was making her hair. A friend of mine was at the salon, so I decided to stop and say “Hi.” And then I saw Ada. She had no make-up on, her hair was combed out, and she looked completely tired. But even in that state, she was stunning. That was when I realised that stopping at the salon was the best decision I ever made.

Ada: This man was greeting another babe next to me, then he asked the babe if we were together. Immediately she said no, he moved to me so he could collect my number. The moment he came to me, I thought to myself, “This one na ashawo.” But I gave him the number to save myself from plenty talk. My plan was to ignore his calls later on.

LMAO. But look at you today…

Kingsley: Omo, she was a tough nut to crack. This babe suffered me. I would call and she would not pick. And even when she did, her responses were direct, no time to joke around. She never wanted to see, and hanging out was completely out of the option. I even began to wonder if I had wronged her before.

Ada: Please, don’t paint me bad. I had my reasons for that.

Oya, tell us. We are all ears.

Ada: He would call me to come and see him only when it rained. At some point, I had to ask him if I was dry gin that brings heat.

Kingsley: But I also asked if I could come to your house, and your response was something along the lines of, “No sir, my house nor be hotel.” This woman would even read my WhatsApp messages and refuse to reply.

LMFAO. What did this man do to you?
Ada: Okay, to be fair, I did not like men from Rivers state and he fell under that demographic.

Kingsley: Oho.

Ada: And I was also seeing someone at the time.

Now, it’s adding up. What did Rivers men do to you?

Ada: Not me, specifically. I have just had people around who had bad experiences with them. For example, a friend of mine dated a man from Rivers state years ago and had no idea he was married. The day she found out, she fainted and went into a coma for a week. The man never called or checked on her till today. And this happened in 2009.

Kingsley: Wow. That’s cruel.

Ada: As for the man I was dating at the time, I was ghosted for over a year and it ended in hot breakfast and premium tears. I guess the heartbreak was what made me begin to see Kingsley in a different light.

Aww.

Kingsley: For me, I had to be patient and pray so I could understand her. In learning how to understand, I realised that she did not like people disturbing her too much. That was a major turn off. And so, whenever I checked up on her, I would tell her to let me know when she would be free, unlike before when I would call and demand to see her “now now”. And strangely, this simple understanding was the key I needed all along.

Ada: In my defence, I think the heartbreak made me let my guard down, and he took the opportunity to strike. Either way, I started to consider him as a friend, not as a lover. I had just gotten my heartbroken, there’s no way I could jump into another relationship immediately.

So, you started as friends… How long did it take for this to happen?

Kingsley: A whole year of me begging her. When we became friends, we would hang out frequently and gist. We went to the movies, took walks in the park, and just vibed generally.

Ada: We were regular customers at Port Harcourt Mall. I loved the chicken and chips. Also, I think it was over a year before I said yes to his offer of friendship.

In this one year, were there other women in the story, Kingsley? I’m asking because one year is a long time to stay waiting for a babe to consider you.

Kingsley: Well… yes. There were other women.

Ada: Ashawo!

Kingsley: LMAO. I wasn’t committed to any of them though. I was just a young man enjoying himself. Ada was the goal for me and the other babes were just a distraction. My initial thought was to add her to this list of other women, but as time went on and our friendship grew, I began to see her as a wife and consider a future with her.

But did these other ladies know they were just “distractions”?

Kingsley: They knew I was not ready for anything serious. My last relationship was in 2009, and the serious pepper that entered my eye ehn. Let’s just thank God for life.

But Ada was different from the rest. She was calm and collected, and she has small skoin-skoin when provoked. The friendship proved all this to me.

Ada: And then we had sex.

Platonic friendship in the mud.

Ada: See! Anyway, I guess the sex took us from a friendship into a relationship. One day, he took me to an isi-ewu joint and said he just wanted us to talk. In my mind, I was like, “Hian. Talk wetin?”

Anyway, we got there and he started this serious talk of how he really needed me in his life, how he has had peace the few times we have been together, and all those long stories. Me I just sat there thinking, “Shey nor be the sex dey make this one dey yarn dust.”

Kingsley: See your big head. This woman just sat there rolling her eyes while I was giving my heartfelt speech.

Ada: He kuku asked me to fix a date so he could meet my parents. I did, and they met.

Wow. So you people didn’t do boyfriend/girlfriend stage. It was just friendship, mekwe and meeting parents?

Kingsley: Delay is dangerous, my guy. Time is of the essence.

Ada: When he came to meet my parents, I left him in the living room to face all the interviews alone. When they were done with him, they called me in and started advising us as a couple. The advice was so intense I had to wonder if my father had already collected my bride price.

I got the whole package: “Don’t allow a third party in your home”; “Settle your quarrels”; “Avoid harsh words.” Ah, Daddy! Mummy! Won’t you ask first ask me if I wanted to marry him?

Kingsley: They saw the spec in me, dear.

Ada: I met his own family too. His dad is late, but his mum showered me with prayers and blessings. Next thing, introduction of families and then marriage date was fixed. Both the family meeting and the introduction happened in December. By January, we had our court wedding. It was almost as if he did not want me to say I had changed my mind.

I’m screaming. Was there ever an official proposal?

Ada: Hell no. Oga, you need to propose oh. I know we are married, but please.

Kingsley: Marry me again, my love. See, my knees are bent.

Ada: Ogbeni, shift abeg.

LMAO. How has married life been?

Kingsley: Blissful.

Ada: It’s been very beautiful. We are not perfect, but we are doing good at it.

How would you say marriage has changed you both?

Kingsley: For me, not so much. But I think it has made me pay more attention to the “serious” things in life. How the world works, for example. Marriage forces you to sit up and sit right. You suddenly become responsible.

I still have my guys around, but I can no longer spend as recklessly as I used to, because now, there is a need to do one or more things for the home. Also, I’m now thinking of a future with children, and that requires planning. The end result is that I have tripled my hustle.

Ada: I totally agree with this. I don’t have that many friends, so my circle is still intact. Marriage has made me frugal with finances. When I was single, wetin concern me with planning for a child? Me that I have chicken and chips with smoothie to eat. But now, I find myself wanting to hustle more so I can maintain my old lifestyle and still afford the new one. Marriage is a lot of responsibility.

What’s the best part about being married to each other?

Ada: Kingsley cracks me up all the time. Sometimes even, it can be annoying. He is gentle, peaceful and peace-loving. An all round sweet soul. I like how fervent his love for God is. He is quite the prayerful husband. He listens to me, he respects me, and he has the purest heart.

Kingsley: Dry cleaner! Wash me, baby. Ada is a sweet girl! She is soft spoken, and she gives the best advice. And her sense of humour is unmatched.

Are there things you would love to change about each other?

Kingsley: Yes oh! When she is angry, she won’t say anything until she is calm inside and sometimes, that could take a whole day and I would be guessing what the problem is. There’s been improvement though.

Ada: My own is simple. When he is out with the boys and he says he would be back by 11 p.m., that 11 p.m. should be 11 p.m. I know beer and gist is sweet, but I also need to know if I should sleep and wake up later to open the door.

Kingsley: I’m sorry ma.

LMAO. Have you ever had any fights?

Ada: Just one major fight. And it was for the craziest reason, because na me cause the fight.

Kingsley: Oya, start confessing your sins.

Ada: It was about food. I was hungry and asked him to get some ingredients since he said he was on his way back home. I did not know uncle had not left where he was. Two hours passed, I nor see ingredients, I nor see uncle. I was so angry, I went out and got the items myself. I was already cooking when he came with the ingredients and was apologizing. Omo! My anger was already angered.

How did you resolve that?

Ada: He kept apologising, and I had no other choice to forgive him. For other issues, we are using communication as the healing balm. We try not to go to bed with pending issues.

Kingsley: And it works every time.

How would rate the relationship on a scale of 1 to 10?

Kingsley: It’s a 10 for me.

Ada: 10 for me too. We have made it this far, and it’s been the most beautiful thing ever.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life/love-life-we-are-married-but-he-needs-to-propose/

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/stack/lovelife/

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Phones / Iphone 13 Series Price In Nigeria, Kenya, And South Africa by BigCabal: 2:09pm On Sep 16, 2021
After about a year of speculation and anticipation, Apple has released the iPhone 13 series.

During a virtual event on Tuesday, Apple announced that the iPhone 13 will come in four new models: the iPhone 13, 13 Mini, 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max.

What’s new about the iPhone 13 series?

Well, it looks very much like the iPhone 12 but two notable main updates were made to the phone’s display and camera. The new phones will also run on the latest version of Apple’s operating system, iOS 15. They also come with larger batteries, more storage (maximum of 1 Terabyte storage), a new A15 Bionic processor, a smaller notch and new camera features.

How much does it cost?

The iPhone 13 starts at $829 for 128GB, which is twice the storage the iPhone 12 started with; while the iPhone 13 Mini starts at $729 for 128GB of storage. The iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max start at $999 and $1,099 respectively, for 128GB storage.

Why the iPhone 13 series are more expensive in African countries
Over the years, there’s been a noticeable price difference for Apple products in African countries. So, TechCabal reached out to iPhone retailers in different African countries to find out when the iPhone 13 will be available and how much it’ll cost.

Nigeria

“Of course, you can expect that since the iPhone will be available on September 24, we’ll have it in Nigeria on or before October 1.” Emmanuel Osho, CEO of Bodds IT and Apple certified technician told TechCabal. “The price will be about 30% higher because it’s new and there’s a lot of hype around it.”

Despite the increased margin on the iPhone, Osho expects that the new iPhones will still sell out fast. A positive effect of the people purchasing the new iPhone 13 is that they’ll most times trade in their older iPhones, making room for other people to buy them at a more affordable price.

South Africa

In South Africa, the iPhone 13 will reportedly be available from October 8 according to iStoreZA, an Apple premium reseller. Although the store hasn’t revealed the prices, the iPhone 13 Pro 128GB is expected to go for around R23,499 ($1,640), while the iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB could retail for around R25,999 ($1,815). This is a high price margin of over 50%, most likely influenced by the fact that an iPhone or iPod attracts 7% duties and 15% VAT in South Africa per Business Insider.

You can expect that the price of iPhones from other retailers to be around the same price range as the majority of Apple products sold in South Africa come through a sole distributor, Core Computer Group.

Kenya

In Kenya, TechCabal spoke to a Salute iWorld, an authorized Apple product retailer at Yaya Center, Nairobi.

A representative of the retailer told us that they expect to have the iPhone 13 in their stores within the next two weeks.

While he couldn’t comment on how much it’ll cost he mentioned that in general Apple products are charged a 16% import fee with an additional 6% added on for Value Added Tax (VAT). This is aside from the transportation cost and the profit margin that the retailer will add to arrive at a final price for the public.

The iPhone 13 looks like it offers a bit over its predecessor. But not so much that it’ll compel many to upgrade. In the context of Africa, it brings up the question of whether the minor upgrades are worth paying at least an additional 30% – 50% to get the new iPhone 13 in Nigeria, Kenya or South Africa.

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/09/16/iphone-13-series-price-in-nigeria-kenya-and-south-africa/

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Health / What She Said: I Am No Longer Pursuing Conception Anymore by BigCabal: 1:51pm On Sep 16, 2021
The subject of this week’s What She Said is in her mid-thirties. She shares with us her struggle with fertility and pregnancies, her IVF journey, miscarriages, and living with her happy family of three.

Since it’s PCOS month, let’s talk about periods.

Well, my earliest memory of my period is quite vague. I remember getting my period at the age of 13 and not telling my mum because I was angry with her. By the time I had my third period, I didn’t have cash for sanitary towels, and I was stuck. So, I asked her. That’s how she found out I had started menstruating.

Actually, I even got diagnosed with PCOS in 2006. My period had always been irregular, but since I was underweight at the time, I didn’t take it seriously. My mum is a nurse, and she thought my terrible eating habits and the fact I was underweight was why my period was so irregular.

In my fourth year in school, I had a roommate whose mum was also a nurse. One day she told me about her own experience with her irregular periods. I told her about mine and she said I needed to get it checked just in case it was more than I thought. Her logic was that since some of us would soon finish school and would be thinking of getting married, I needed to be sure.

I called my mum and told her I was going to get my tests done. She got me an appointment at the hospital she worked, I was diagnosed with PCOS and put on oral contraceptive pills. As long as I took the pills, my period would come. I stopped the pills in November 2009 because I was getting married in March 2010 and wanted my body to adjust.

Why didn’t she take you seriously, didn’t the periods hurt?

Well, my periods were never painful. Plus, I didn’t have endometriosis. When my period came, it was usually for three days. The first day would be heavy and the other two days would be light. PCOS is such a spectrum and the symptoms can vary from woman to woman. If you put 10 of us in the same room and ask what symptoms we face, a lot of us might record so many different things.

My only concern was fertility and having children. Luckily, I had my first child in August of 2011. I was just about to start a round of fertility treatment when I got pregnant with my son in November 2010. In fact, I had been given a drug to induce my period so they could then start the process.

I was supposed to do a thing called follicular tracking to determine what methods and other things the doctors were to proceed with. They also wanted to know if, during the period that was induced, my body released any eggs. When the test results came back, they told me that my body didn’t release any eggs. I was angry, but I didn’t know I was already pregnant.

Since the eggs weren’t released yet, I decided that I would start the fertility treatment after my birthday in January 2011, so I could enjoy the holidays and my birthday. I was at my parent’s place in December when I started cramping. I told my mum and she told me to just get a pregnancy test. I was so excited when it tested positive.

After my son turned two, we started trying again for a second child. I had started my fertility treatment and had gotten pregnant by February of 2014. Unfortunately, I lost the pregnancy in the sixth month. I waited for a bit after that miscarriage to continue the fertility treatment, and that was when I had the ectopic pregnancy which they couldn’t for some reason find in the urine and blood tests until it ruptured.

A miscarriage AND a ruptured ectopic pregnancy?

The miscarriage happened in 2014, and my husband had travelled for work. I sent my help to call my mother-in-law because I could feel the head of the baby coming out. She came to pick me up and drive me to the hospital. My father-in-law met us in the hospital. They were there with me till my mum came from Ibadan. When they dispose of a fetus at that age, they usually give the family to make arrangements. My parents-in-law shielded me from having to deal with all of that. They buried the fetus and everything.

The ruptured ectopic pregnancy happened in January of 2017. I was sitting on the rug in my living room, loosening my hair and planning on picking my son up from school when I got the most violent pain I had ever felt in my abdomen. I thought if I pooped it would help, but the pain wouldn’t go away. I called my mother-in-law on the phone and told her that I didn’t know what was going on, but it felt like someone put a knife to my intestines and was slicing it to bits. My parents-in-law came and rushed me to the hospital. By the time we got there, my stomach had already doubled in size and was looking like I was five or six months pregnant. After the tests, it turned out I was accumulating blood in my abdomen. I had emergency surgery done and had to get four pints of blood transfused. One of my fallopian tubes was also removed because of the surgery.

I am so sorry that happened. Did you still keep trying for a child after that?

Yes, I did. After the ectopic pregnancy in 2017, I started IVF in 2019. The first IVF cycle I had was not successful, and in my second IVF cycle, I had Ovarian Hyper Stimulation syndrome (OHS). It’s a condition I was predisposed to because I had PCOS. The doctors kept monitoring my medication and adjusting it accordingly. With my first cycle, whatever eggs were harvested, we didn’t freeze them, but for my second cycle, I did not want to go through the egg collecting process, so I froze the eggs. During the second IVF cycle, I had decided to freeze the eggs because I did not want to go through the collection of the eggs process again. When it was time to transfer the embryos, they couldn’t because of the OHS. So, they waited for a few months before we continued with the cycle. This time, they didn’t have to harvest any eggs. They just gave me a lot of hormones to get me to a point where I would bleed and my body would be ready to receive the eggs.

That sounds emotionally and physically tasking.

It is. You keep asking yourself why your body does not function the way it is supposed to. I had a picture of a family of four, but it wasn’t happening because my body was failing me. My son wanted a companion and friend. He used to cry when people who come to visit go back home and was always so emotional when people talked about their siblings. I just wanted to give him that.

In addition to the hormones and steroids, I had to inject myself with and things I sometimes had to insert vaginally, I would sometimes ask myself why I couldn’t just have sex and get pregnant like every other person? Why did I have to have PCOS and emotional imbalance? There are so many things you have to deal with. The hormones also mess with your body and your mental health. There was a particular injection I used to take that would make me sad till mid-day. Months even after stopping my IVF I still felt a lot of pain in my thigh. I even had blotches of pink on my thigh that eventually became brownish.

I can’t imagine what it was like for you to live through all of that.

I have had a very strong support system around me. I come from a very close-knit family and knew there was no emotion I couldn’t express to them. My in-laws have been wonderful. They’ve been a gift and have walked me through a lot of my journey. My husband was also amazing, being there for me and supporting me. I also drew strength from my faith. I allowed myself to express my anger, anguish, and hurt to God. I also have really good friends who care about me. When I got pregnant again, I had family taking turns to come to be with me. I was constantly surrounded by people.

You got pregnant again?

My third IVF was the only successful one, but I had a miscarriage. While I was pregnant, I was put on five weeks of compulsory bed rest. A friend of mine who makes jewellery called during that time and asked me if I could be in a product shoot happening the day after my five weeks of bed rest would be complete. I agreed to it because it was an opportunity to glam up and take pretty pictures.

The night before the shoot, I was having intermittent throbbing pain in the area where my fallopian tube used to be. Since it was night and my IVF clinic was closed, I decided to go to my regular clinic to have it checked out. They didn’t find anything, and the moment I told them I was pregnant and it was from IVF, they didn’t want to bother me or touch anything. They gave me painkillers and asked me to go home. I sent a message to my IVF doctor, and he told me to take the painkillers, my medication, and just let him know if anything changes.

When I woke up the day of the shoot, there was no pain. I was quite comfortable. At the venue after the makeup artist was done with my makeup, I felt a strangeness wash over me. I couldn’t tell what it was, but because I promised my friend I was going to do the photo shoot, I was certain I was going to get through with it. During one of the sets of pictures, I felt a warmth in my nether regions I knew I should not be feeling. It spread some more and was followed by a little lump. By the time I felt the lump, I knew what had happened but I was determined to get through the shoot.

The second outfit I was to wear was a bubu, and I didn’t take off the leggings I was wearing because I knew that taking them off meant I had to deal with whatever was going on in my pants. After the shoot, I had checked and knew I was bleeding. I called my husband and we drove down to the IVF clinic. When I got there, they did some tests and told me they, unfortunately, could no longer see my gestational sack. The night before in my regular clinic, they saw the sac, but by the time I got to my IVF clinic, they didn’t see it. When they told me that, I knew what I experienced was a miscarriage. I went home and had a good cry and just waited for my body to do what it wanted to do.

A few days after, something was feeling wrong, so I called my doctor and he told me I had to have an evacuation because I still had some pregnancy materials in me. This was my second evacuation done. It was a same-day procedure so I got home by 9 in the night. It was a total emotional mess and my husband held me tight. I had a good cry.

I am so sorry. You went through so much. Did you continue IVF after that?

I wanted to, but my husband didn’t. I was not accepting the fact that my body had failed to do what a woman’s body should do. After that, my husband said we were not trying anymore. I couldn’t believe it was so final. I didn’t want to accept it. We had about fourteen embryos we had proven from the first cycle, and I wanted us to freeze it for a year hoping he’d change his mind. But he was adamant. He said, “Why would you want me to lose you in the process of having a child?” He had seen everything I had gone through and was being so strong for me, but I couldn’t accept him saying we would not do it again. I was angry with that, angry with God. I drew strength from my support system.

What’s life for you now?

Well, I am not doing any form of assisted fertility anymore. I am no longer actively pursuing conception anymore. I am happy and living my life with my husband and my son. I also no longer have to calculate when to have sex.

I have made my peace with the fact that I have just one child, and we are praying to God to help us raise him. We are in a space where we were each other’s friends and are just present for each other.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-i-am-no-longer-pursuing-conception/

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/her/
Jokes Etc / 10 Food Combinations Nigerians Need To Normalise by BigCabal: 2:17am On Sep 16, 2021
Nigerians often like to play it safe with food. The typical Nigerian would visit a foreign country only to ask for egusi soup. It’s time to stop that behaviour. We came up with these top ten food combinations you need to try out. Brethren, this life is too short to eat boring food.

1. Shawarma with ponmo slices.

Hear me out: if we can eat chicken shawarma and beef shawarma, then what’s stopping us from trying out ponmo shawarma? Besides, isn’t ponmo part of beef? You people just hate local content, that’s why you are discriminating against ponmo. Free yourself from discrimination, add ponmo to your shawarma today and live life.

2. Eba and ketchup.

The rationale behind this is simple. If we can eat tomato stew, why not tomato ketchup and eba? Ketchup is literally tomato stew with sugar, so what is stopping us from normalising it, especially on those nights when you wake up hungry and there is nothing at home. If you have ketchup, you can just make eba and eat both.

3. Plantain and ice-cream.

If you have not tried this, I’m sorry for you oh. Sweetness overload.

4. Golden morn and stew.

The Yoruba part of me endorses this. I can’t eat something bland without adding a dash of pepper. Golden Morn isn’t exactly bland, but it’s too plain and sometimes, a little stew is what is needed for that extra oomph. You don’t have to try with stew on your first attempt. Start with stewed meat. Eat one spoon of Golden Morn and bite the meat. The next time you eat Golden Morn, you will be eager to try proper stew.

5. Gbegiri and bread.

Let me not even hear anybody shout. You people can eat bread and beans but bread and gbegiri is where you draw the line? Isn’t gbegiri beans soup? Please please please. So you can eat amala and beans but not bread and beans in soup form? Don’t vex me.

6. Baileys and cornflakes.

Alcoholics will love this one. And we give it to you.

7. Garri and milk with tomato slices.

It’s time to take your garri drinking to the next level. If you are worried that milk will make you add weight, that’s why the tomato slices are there: to help you diet.

8. Fried yam and ice cream.

I don’t have to preach about this for too long. The experience is in the taste. Try it and see that the Lord is good.

9. Garri and cake.

You can either cut your cake into bits and pour it into the garri, or you can bite the cake after each spoon of garri. Both ways work and are guaranteed to give you a throatgasm. I know, I’ve been there.

10. Semo and Milo.

If Semo porridge is your thing, then you will enjoy this immensely. Now, who do we have to talk to so we can sign these foods into the constitution?

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/chopist/10-food-combinations-nigerians-need-to-normalise/

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/chopist/
TV/Movies / Titi Kuti: 6 Reasons Nigerian Women Love Ade Tiger In “King Of Boys” by BigCabal: 2:35am On Sep 15, 2021
Hold your Nigerian woman tight, because Titi Kuti is out there capturing hearts with his role as Ade Tiger in King Of Boys 2. The TV series was released over the weekend and according to some women, the hype is worth it for these 5 reasons.

1. His loyalty
There are no loyal Yoruba men, yen yen yen. Ade Tiger doesn’t have two heads oh. You heard him: “Till I die, Oba.” Can your man ever?

2. His fine face
What’s not to love? Man’s hot. When last did you come across such a well-structured work of art? You can bet your left butt that some women are already “investigating” whether Ade Tiger is single, married or snatchable.

3. His hair
Forget men with bald, coconut head. What will you clutch when you start reciting the “Yes Daddy” anthem? Men, if you are reading this, start growing a luxurious, neat, sexy head of hair before your Nigerian woman leaves you.

4. His voice
Every time he says, “Oba….” all some women can imagine is their name in his mouth. Hay God. Shivers.

5. His skin tone
If light-complexioned men are not your spec, sorry oh. Ade Tiger is a yellow paw-paw, and there are Nigerian women that love to see it.

6. He gets things done
Men like Ade will not abandon you to figure stuff out on your own. You can trust him to take action and find solutions. God when?

https://www.zikoko.com/her/6-reasons-women-ade-tiger-king-of-boys/

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Business / How Bfree Is Improving Trust In The Lending Space by BigCabal: 9:51pm On Sep 14, 2021
Source: https:///2YLYzNF

Read more like this here: https:///3htKmM4

A few months ago, Udoma Nseobong took a ₦30,000 ($60) loan from CashLion Credit. He repaid the weekly interest consistently for six weeks until his final payment.

Unfortunately, he defaulted on his final payment by a day due to unforeseen circumstances. This short period was enough time for Nseobong to be declared by CashLion credit as a fraudster on the run with his entire family to his contacts (OP: ICIR Nigeria).

This incident is one out of many which indicate that digital lenders will go the extra mile, sometimes using unethical methods, to get their loans back.

Notably, despite the criticism against unethical practices by lenders, some still justify this method of debt collection.

“There is no defamation of character involved when we trust people we’ve never seen by giving them money and when it’s time to pay they don’t pay,” Titilayo Adetonya, a customer representative for digital lender CashLion told The ICIR.

“It’s lawful to send those messages to their contacts because we warn them before we send those messages to their contacts and that’s how we get our money,” she said.

After many years of unending complaints, on August 17, the National Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA), slammed Soko Loan Company Limited, a Nigerian digital lending platform, with a fine of ₦10 million for privacy invasion. Soko Loan was found guilty of unilaterally sending privacy-invading messages to the loan defaulters’ contacts.

This sanction, although a mere warning shot, is the first public attempt by NITDA to address this prevalent issue. The sanction served as a clarion call for digital lenders to use ethical alternative methods to collect loans.

But what does an ethical alternative look like and how effective is it?

An alternative approach

Julian Flosbach knows what it’s like to look for better alternatives, as he experienced it first hand when he was the general manager at FairMoney, a Nigeria-based digital lender turned digital bank. He helped grow the company from 8 employees to over 120 employees; and in that same period, Julian also supervised doling out loans to over a million customers.

“In the early days when giving out a few loans, it’s easy to have a team of five in charge of collections but as things scale up and you have to manage over one million borrowers you start reconsidering a few things,” Julian said. “When you have 100,000 defaulters [10% default rate], you have to ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be a fintech lender or do I want to be a collection company?’

At one point, FairMoney had as many as 80 employees managing collections in-house; but it quickly became clear that running in-house collections moved the company’s focus away from its business model: giving out loans.

So the company decided to search for an external solution, and found themselves with the best available option at that time: business process outsourcing (BPO) firms who do customer service for big banks and telcos. But it didn’t take long to see that there were some cracks in the collection process.

“If you want to do collections with operational excellence then just calling customers actually doesn’t always work. These BPOs don’t have customised computer systems for collections, rather they have generic customer relationship management tools (CRMs) or predictive dialers. So for instance they call customers once a week, instead of when the customer actually should or wants to be called. It’s not very efficient.”

This harrowing experience led him to team up with Moses Nmor (Chief Product Officer), and Chukwudi Enyi (Chief Operations Officer) to start BFree, Africa’s first digital credit collection company. All three co-founders worked together at FairMoney.

The company saw an opportunity to be one of the less than ten digital credit collection companies grappling for a slice of a $14.4b credit collection market in emerging markets. In emerging markets, BFree’s competitors are India’s Credgenics (recently raised $25m Series A) and CreditMate (backed by Paytm), FLOW in Singapore and Blu365 in Brazil.

In the space of over a year since it launched, BFree has grown to nearly 460,000 active customers from over 20 lenders in Nigeria and Kenya.

What does Ethical credit management look like?

Looking away from the approach of other debt collection solutions, most of which thrive on humiliating customers, BFree focuses on ethics and technology in debt recovery.

BFree helps lenders collect loans from their borrowers for a fee. The company charges a commission on the repayments that a lender receives. This commission depends on the lender’s portfolio size and quality amongst other factors.

BFree’s ethical approach to loan recovery is guided by a data-backed belief that the majority of customers take a loan with the intention to repay. Of course, with the exception of isolated cases of fraudsters and fraud victims.

This approach is validated by the fact that the average 90 days default rate of Nigeria’s top digital lending companies is 10% — FairMoney (10%), Carbon (11%), Branch (<10%). This means that only about 10% of Nigerians (there’s no central register, but Flosbach estimates about 10-15 million people) default on loans.

“The majority of the customers (70-75%) fall into the category of folks that want to pay but cannot repay. This is usually due to loss of income — loss of job or the business went bad or there was an emergency that took away the money.”

This is a common case in a country like Nigeria where people live from hand to mouth. Without insurance, anything can topple their sustainability.

At BFree customers are appraised based on two factors: willingness and capability to pay.

“When a lender like Branch or FairMoney gives us a portfolio, we assess and underwrite the loan. We take their behavioural data and build two things: collectability score and use case. Then we move these into a collection funnel.”

This debt collection process basically starts as a self-service platform where customers can log in and see their own repayment plans. At this phase, customers get SMS messages and perform loan repayment activities themselves. This way BFree reduces the number of man-hours spent on making calls and customers aren’t forced to deal with unexpected phone calls during working hours.

In the case where a customer defaults, BFree reaches out to the borrower to find out why and to also get a promised date of payment (verbal agreement). This simply involves reaching out and asking them for when they’ll be able to make a payment. Based on the agreed dates, automated reminders are put in place.

BFree operates call centres with about 200 agents who are responsible for reaching out to customers. BFree’s goal is to make the process of debt recovery 95% automated in the next few years.

“The story of collections has gotten bad press with BPOs taking data and threatening customers. Automating this process helps remove the risk of this happening because a bot will never threaten a customer.“

What happens when customers default?

Flosbach acknowledges that one of the inherent risks of lending is that you have to accept that there’s always going to be default. He believes that the way out here is to accept that some customers won’t repay, and assist customers that will repay as much as possible.

“There’s no portfolio in the world that doesn’t have default. In this case, you have to assess whether it’s a natural default or an operational default.”

In a natural default, the customers don’t repay because of an unexpected occurrence like a health emergency. When this happens the best case is to re-assess the customer status and agree on a different repayment plan.

“We should normalize the fact that customers have financial emergencies, the same way nobody blames people for going to the doctor when they fall unexpectedly sick.“

In an operational default customers don’t repay because of a flaw in the loan collection process. For example, customers don’t get the right repayment plan or they’re not aware of how to make the repayment i.e they don’t know which bank account to pay to.

BFree’s process helps to ensure that operational default decreases as much as possible. So far 95% of customers have rated their experience with BFree as good or satisfactory, a hint that the company’s approach is effective.

As lending expands beyond an activity being performed by only traditional banks and digital lenders to one that almost every company can, BFree’s value proposition remains relevant.

Flosbach believes that BFree’s ultimate goal is to increase trust in the African lending space.

“We’re increasing trust in the financial retail market by decreasing risk and giving businesses a better margin.”
Business / Nigerians, Here’s What The Football Club You Support Says About You by BigCabal: 9:09pm On Sep 14, 2021
Read with memes[i](it's so much more hilarious, trust me)[/i] here: https:///3zcMbmz

Read more like this here: https:///3kadMQO


In this life, everything you do says something about the person you are. Here, we are telling you what the football club you support says about you. Did we lie?

If you support any club outside of this list, we have nothing to say to you.

1. Arsenal

You have issues, and you don’t know. How can you still support such a club? You need help.

2. Chelsea

You are either a bus driver or an agbero. If you’re not either of those things right now, you’ll end up being one.

3. Manchester United

You like dwelling on past glory, but in reality, you have nothing to boast of.

4. Liverpool

You stay on your own and people like looking for your trouble and accusing you of things you’ve not done.

5. Man City

You’re a fake person and a gold-digger. You only stay when times are good. When they’re bad, you japa.

6. Real Madrid

You have bastard money. Please do giveaway.

7. Barcelona

See, just accept that you’re not the person you once were. That’s the first stage to being truly happy in this life.

8. Juventus

You like forming, “I’m more special than everyone. I’m different” Even though you know that you’re just as basic as the next person.

9. AC Milan

You’re 50+. How are you even reading Zikoko?

10. PSG

You like money and new things. You are an ojukokoro.

11. Bayern Munich

You don’t like nonsense. It’s either the best or nothing for you. You don’t like people wasting your time.

12. Dortmund

We don’t know what to say to you. How did you even get here?

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Business / Access Bank Income Grows To $73 Million In H1 2021 by BigCabal: 5:16pm On Sep 14, 2021
Source: https:///396TykY

Read more here: https:///3htKmM4

Nigeria’s Access Bank Group made ₦29.9 billion ($73 million) in income from its channels and E-business in the first half of 2021, a 37% increase compared to ₦21.8 billion ($53 million) in the same period in 2020.

The bank’s Channels and other E-business income include earnings from electronic channels, card products, and related services. The disclosure was made in its interim financial results for the six months to June 30, which was released on Friday.

The E-business income contributed about 40.5% of earnings from fees and commission, which reached ₦73.7 billion in H1 2021, and about 7% of gross earnings. The report, however, did not indicate any reason for the rise in earnings from electronic channels.

Access Bank became Nigeria’s largest bank by customer base and total assets after merging with Diamond Bank three years ago. Since then, deposits have grown to nearly ₦6 trillion ($15 billion) from about ₦3.5 trillion ($8.5 billion) in 2018 when talks about the merger began to surface.

The H1 2021 financial report also shows a 31.21% rise in profit before tax to ₦97.50 billion ($238 million), from ₦74.31 billion ($181 million) in 2020.

Gross earnings stood at ₦450.62 billion ($1.099 billion) for the first half of the year, a 13.58% increase from ₦396.77 billion ($968 million) in H1 2020.

Interest income rose by nearly 32% from ₦211.99 billion ($517 million) in 2020 to ₦279.64 billion ($682 million), while its earnings per share increased by 43.35% year-on-year from ₦1.73 to ₦2.48.

Even with the growing adoption of electronic payment systems, Nigeria remains a predominantly cash-based economy. A number of challenges hinder mass adoption, still, the future holds opportunities for online payment service providers and companies like banks in the country.

*Conversions were done using the official exchange rate of ₦410/$1
Nairaland / General / A Week In The Life: 8 Must-read Stories Of 2021 by BigCabal: 1:31pm On Sep 14, 2021
A Week In The Life” is a weekly Zikoko series that explores the working-class struggles of Nigerians. It captures the very spirit of what it means to hustle in Nigeria and puts you in the shoes of the subject for a week.

I don’t know about you but it has been a long year. A lot has happened that it feels like we’re starting to forget a few things. With that in mind, I decided to refresh our memories on some episodes of “A Week In The Life” that I have enjoyed writing.

Whether you started reading in January or just last week, here are some stories that deserve to be read twice.

1) A Week In The Life: The Interstate Driver With Girlfriends In Many States
“To be honest, I’m even changing. I’m not bad like that. If I count my girlfriends, I have only five consistent ones. I’ve removed the inconsistent ones from my list because no time. I’m also thankful that God take libido bless me to be able to keep everyone satisfied. It’s grace. I be pure Igbo guy, I strong die.“

This long-distance driver has gone from having a girlfriend in almost every state in the country to having “just” 5. Why does he do it? What’s his motivation? and is he not scared of the risks involved?

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/a-week-in-the-life-the-interstate-driver-with-girlfriends-in-many-states/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

2) When I’m In Front Of A Camera, I Feel Like Wizkid Or Davido — A Week In The Life Of A IndecentStar
Forget everything you know because this story will challenge it. After failing to get into Nollywood, Juliet, the subject of this story decided to go into acting porn. She talks about the stigma involved in her job, not being ashamed to show her face in her videos and how powerful she feels in front of a camera.

According to Juliet, “During video shoots, I tell my men that it’s acting we’re acting so they shouldn’t get carried away thinking it’s their girlfriend they’re fucking. I also make it clear that they must not cum in me — they can cum on my laps, face, tummy but not inside me.”

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/when-im-front-of-a-camera-i-feel-like-wizkid-or-davido-a-week-in-the-life-of-a-IndecentStar/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

3) A Week In The Life Of An Unpaid Full-Time House Wife
What’s it like being an unpaid full housewife? It’s a lot of thankless hard work, unnecessary suffering and acceptance in the grand scheme of things.

The heaviness in this story still haunts me today.

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/a-week-in-the-life-of-an-unpaid-full-time-house-wife/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

4) “Everyone Shouts At You” — An Exhausting Week In The Life Of A Medical House Officer
Doctors are leaving Nigeria for many reasons ranging from poor pay to terrible work conditions. What’s it like being a junior doctor in a toxic work environment? It’s a lot of shouting and being treated like you don’t matter or exist. It’s also a lot of crying and making up your mind to leave Nigeria as soon as you can.

Don’t take my word for it, instead listen to a junior doctor narrate their story.

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/everyone-shouts-at-you-an-exhausting-week-in-the-life-of-a-medical-house-officer/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

5) A Miraculous Week In The Life Of A Nigerian Olympian
If you watched the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics, the name Enoch Adegoke must ring a bell. If it does, it’s because, for the first time in over 20 years, Enoch took Nigeria to the 100m men’s final.

What does it take to be a pro athlete in Nigeria? Are Nigerian athletes rich?

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/a-miraculous-week-in-the-life-of-a-nigerian-olympian-olympics/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

6) I Don’t Have Any Human Friend —A Week In The Life Of A Zookeeper
As a zookeeper, you spend more time with animals than with humans. What happens when your job becomes your life? Well, if you’re like Mr Emeka, the subject of this story, it means you have no human friends.

How must that feel?

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/i-dont-have-any-human-friend-a-week-in-the-life-of-a-zookeeper/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

7) I Earn Dollars But I Still Feel Unsafe — A Week In The Life Of A Freelancer
The Naira is tanking and everyone is screaming “earn dollars or save in dollars.”

Alright, you listen to them and do both. However, you still feel unsafe because deep down you know that if anything happens to you, dollars can’t save you.

This is an anxiety-filled “A Week In The Life.”

Read more here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/i-earn-dollars-but-i-still-feel-unsafe-a-week-in-the-life-of-a-freelancer/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland

cool Manager By Day, Sugar Baby At Night: A Week In The Life
The subject of this story has gone from swearing not to sleep with married men to not refusing their advances.

The result? A lot of gifts and houses. Why did she suddenly change her mind and go down the sugar baby route?

Read her story here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/manager-by-day-sugar-baby-at-night-a-week-in-the-life/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=nairaland_reshare&utm_id=Nairaland
Nairaland / General / Re: The Rollercoaster #nairalife Of A TV Producer by BigCabal: 1:53pm On Sep 13, 2021
Where?
An international media company. I was hired as the country manager and my salary was $4k per month. After a few months of business, the board saw the money-making potential the Nigerian office had and they brought in a new CEO. This guy was ruthless. He questioned the purpose of every staff that had been previously employed and fired some.

My salary was even stopped for two months. I had to pass an assessment before he reinstated me and resumed payment. It didn’t help much that the evaluator at my assessment spoke highly of me, the new CEO had other plans. He brought in his people to fill every position available. Gradually, he began firing people until it came to my turn. On the last day of September 2018, I received an email from the CEO that I had been relieved of my appointment. It could have been the stress or the shock of the news, but I fell critically ill shortly after. I had managed to stash away about ₦1.7m in savings. By December 2018, my income and savings were down to 0.

Damn.
I struggled a bit with work and my health in 2019. The jobs I got were far and in-between and paid nothing more than ₦200k. 2019 was also the year my family house got burnt, killing my dad. What I had managed to save up to that point went into everything that came with this.

I’m so sorry.
2020 was a blur. But I suffered significant health challenges. I think the stress of not having a regular income got to me. The only reason I could afford my rent was because I got a ₦1m gig.

2021?
I thought it was time for a new start. I decided to pack it all in and move from the city I had been living in since my first job. The cost of moving cross-country was also something I had to deal with.

What was it like?
Ah, moving property across the country isn’t easy or cheap these days. When they took a survey of my property, I got quotes between ₦300k and ₦500k. They mentioned insecurity as one of the reasons for their charges. They also had to bribe security officials along the way. I didn’t have all that money, so I had to raise money from friends and family, and I supplemented what I got by selling off property. At the end of it, everything I spent came close to ₦210k.

Now, to the real reason why I moved.

I’m listening.
My daughter. In the last three years, she had to see me deal with anxiety and depression from the moment she woke up till she slept. She saw it all — the tears, outbursts, and the helplessness of it all. I decided that had to stop this year.

You’re living with your family now. How’s that been going?
So far so good. There’s staff to watch my child and I feel less reluctant to get out of bed these days. I’m hopeful for the future.

I have a feeling that your perspective about money would have changed a lot over the years.
My view on the acquisition of material things has changed a bit. When I moved in with my parents in 2010, I kept my property with a friend in their home storage. By the time I had a home to take it to three years later, most of my things were gone. Yet, I replaced a lot of it a few months later. When I travelled out of the country in 2016, I gave my things out. In 2017, I acquired much more. When I was moving this year, the dance happened again — I sold stuff off and gave others away. All of these things are replaceable.

Over the years, I have learned that holding on to possessions is a futile task. They are tools and they should be used because one of two things will happen: you go or they go. Now, I have no value for any material possession.

What has significantly changed is how I view success.

I’m listening.
When people talk about a path to success or berate others for not working hard enough, I laugh. I believed that too, but not anymore. Success is a lot of luck before anything else.

I hear that. So what are things looking like now financially?
I only just got here recently, so my income is still 0. I’m living off my relative here, and they honestly don’t mind. I’m using this time to make a plan and pursue it.

No current income means no expense, but I could give you a ballpark figure of my monthly expenses in the last three years.

Please.
I never bought new clothes for either my daughter or me. Our money went to feeding. Or health.

I imagine there’s something you want now but can’t afford.
Oh my! There are so many things. Shoes for my daughter whose feet stretch by an inch every night. A paid-off year for her school. But a little thing would be a JBL Bluetooth speaker. During the last few years, music was therapeutic to me and my daughter. But I had to hold my device close to our ears. Also, because of my background, I’m particular about sound, and this speaker does the job.

What about a part of your finances you wish you would be better at?
Maybe spinning money from nothing. Some people have the uncanny ability to make money anywhere they are from whatever they do. I don’t know how else I can do this except to work at a job or offer a service I’m skilled at.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your financial happiness at the moment?
It’s a -2. I can’t be happy until my daughter’s future is assured, no matter how good it seems I’m doing. The right scenario would be that if I die today, my child can continue and finish her education at the level and standard she became accustomed to.

Your daughter’s dad is not in her life, is he?
No. He walked away.
Nairaland / General / The Rollercoaster #nairalife Of A TV Producer by BigCabal: 1:53pm On Sep 13, 2021
Source: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/the-rollercoaster-nairalife-of-a-tv-producer/

Read more nairalife stories here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life


The 43-year-old producer in this #NairaLife has had her fair share of highs and lows. Between 2001 and 2017, she worked her way up from ₦21k/month to $4k/month. 2021? She’s at ground zero. Now, she thinks success is a lot of luck before anything else.

What’s your earliest memory of money?
It was the late 80s, and I was a 10-year-old JSS 1 student in a boarding school. The food at the dining hall was never enough because some senior student or greedy classmate always cleared it all. Small, defenceless students like me lived on food from the tuck shop, and this cost money. My allowance was between ₦5 and ₦20.

What was life like pre-boarding school?
My mum was a school principal and my dad was a senior officer in the army. He was in charge of the engineering works the army did across the country. My dad retired when I was 12 or 13, and he found work as an engineer and quantity surveyor. Unfortunately, the economy had started crumbling under Sani Abacha. I can’t tell what the direct effect on him was, but I can tell you the changes I noticed at home.

Please.
It started materialising with the small things — we switched from using the gas stove to the kerosene stove. There were periods that there were no pieces of meat in our meals. Then my dad began selling his houses. This affected relationships within the family too. My parents started fighting about everything, and the effect of this trickled down to us kids. It began to feel like me and my three siblings were a bother to them.

I started forming my opinion about money at this point. I knew I needed to have my own money so I wouldn’t need to depend on a man or marriage.

What was the first thing you did for money?
I took a job at a video club. This was 1994, and I had just finished secondary school. Memory fails me, but I think I was paid ₦100 or ₦200. Then I worked as a salesgirl at a trade fair, and I was paid about ₦800.

I took up these jobs because I didn’t want to keep asking my dad for money, but it was also because ASUU was on strike. In 1995, I went off to school. Nothing prepared me for university.

What do you mean?
I was in uni during the peak of the 419 scams and cultism. The cults were usually linked to 419, and my dad used to give me about ₦3k – ₦5k every month. There were times my allowance was slashed without explanation, so I had to figure out a way to earn some extra money on the side.

What did you do?
A couple of things between my third year and my final year. I sold used clothes and shoes and for each one I sold, I made between ₦200 and ₦500 in profit. However, people didn’t always pay on time or at all — and it affected my profit — so I dropped it. After that, I worked as a salesgirl for a consumer goods company. Not much happened after that until I finished university in 2000 and went for youth service. In 2001, I got my first job at a TV station.

The salary was about ₦21k, but I was shown the ugly side of unemployment in Nigeria from the get-go.

How?
I found out that the company was notorious for owing their workers salaries for months. A friend of mine believes that your first job sets the tone for your career. He may be right because I think that job jinxed me. I worked there for six months and wasn’t paid once. I lived on money from my parents and friends.

I tried to get another job after I quit, but it didn’t work out. After a couple of months, I returned to work at the station.

Omo.
Here’s what happened: a colleague who had also resigned decided to become an independent producer and produce a show for the station with a revenue-sharing agreement. He brought me on board to present. After two episodes, he threw in the towel and walked away. I decided to produce and present the show myself. I wrote a proposal, which the management of the TV station agreed to.

What were the terms?
They were going to pay me what they owed me in salaries, which I would use as a production fee. Also, they would give me an extra ₦5k – ₦10k every two weeks for my production. In return, I would bring in advert revenue and be entitled to 5% of whatever I brought. I had no idea what I was promising.

Uh-oh.
The show was a lot of work. I covered events for free and made excellent reports out of them. I would sleep in the office at night to edit my show. But I never brought in ad revenue, so I didn’t get much respect from the admin. They gave me the old cameras and studio equipment and tossed my show to whatever time slot they could spare if there was a revenue-generating show.

The good thing was that this show brought me my next job. A colleague saw me working overnight and proposed that we produce another show together. The project was for a foundation, and it ran for several months from 2002 to 2003. By the end of production, I’d earned at least ₦400k.

Must have been huge.
It was. It was even enough to buy a car.

I was sure that the independent producer life was the one for me. My partner and I purchased some production equipment, and I thought I was set. However, we fell out later that year. He had the equipment and never returned them. My dreams began to die again.

A couple of things happened here that also set me back: I‘d paid ₦160k for a new apartment. It turned out that the agent rented the same space to about 39 other people. The police were involved, and the agent was detained. Long story short, we realised that the police were in on it too and the guy had duped about 50 people the year earlier. The last straw was when the police told us to let him go so he could dupe others to pay us.

I don’t even know what to say.
As I was returning from the police station one night, some guy ran into my car from behind, destroying the rear windscreen, tail lights, bumper and paint job. He gave me his vehicle particulars, which contained his address. I found out later that none of it was real. I was set back a bit trying to fix all this mess.

Guess what I did.

What did you do?
I went back to the TV station. I worked there into 2004, struggling to make ends meet. Eventually, I took a long look at myself, decided that I couldn’t do it anymore and resigned.

After I quit, I interned with a couple of filmmakers for a brief period of time. One of them co-opted me into their show and paid me ₦15k per month to produce short documentaries. All of this happened between 2005 and 2006.

I got another big break in 2006.

Tell me about it.
I was introduced to the head of a production company who was in charge of two big international shows and was looking for a runner for one of them. After interviewing for the gig, they decided I couldn’t be a runner. They made me a production manager instead.

Whoop!
The salary was ₦180k/month. Imagine moving from ₦15k to this. The second show was running concurrently with the production I was on, and I worked on it when they needed someone with some local expertise. Working on both shows built my reputation, so when the production I was actually working on was cancelled, I was asked to come work on the second production.

Wait, why was your show cancelled?
The production house was into some shady stuff. They wrote off personal expenses as show expenses and altered the contract of the production team. I noticed the several discrepancies and raised an alarm, not knowing it was an “official” instruction. The showrunners loved me for that, but people in the production house hated my guts. Gradually, I was building a reputation as being “uncooperative and difficult to work with”.

I’ve seen this movie before.
It didn’t matter at the time because I was asked to work on the second show. I was paid an allowance, not a salary because I wasn’t a part of the original crew. My pay was ₦10k for each day I was on set and I worked there for four weeks. By the time I was leaving, I had made about ₦100k in direct payments excluding what I got in lunch and fuel allowances.

Ah, I see. What were your finances looking like at this point?
It was definitely better than the previous year. My main expense was my ren, even though I was rarely at home. I think my apartment cost ₦100k or ₦120k. That was it. Most of the money I was earning at the time went into food, hair and clothes.

Moving on. Shortly after my time on the show, a girl I had helped get a job on the same show told me about another TV station that was hiring. I applied, and they brought me on as a producer and presenter. My salary was ₦100k.

Was it better than the last TV station you worked at?
It was. They paid salaries and were keen on innovation and growth. I was out by the end of 2006 though.

Ah, why?
The TV station was bought over by a church. Next thing, there were restrictions on what we could talk about or broadcast on-air. There was also a compulsory prayer service every morning, which I thought was ridiculous.

I was an idealistic person who thought everything must be done a certain way, and these changes were spoilt that. With mounting responsibilities, building frustration and my immense ego from being the “teachers’ pet” at the station, I began acting out. During one night working overtime, I got into an argument with someone in senior management. He hit me, and I insulted him. An investigation was set up and I was asked to resign. I wasn’t sad about losing the job, but I was enraged by the obvious bias. I took the lesson and moved on.

What was moving on like?
I was in between jobs for a while. In March 2007, I was headhunted for the role of a creative head in an experiential marketing agency. The pay was ₦140k but by the time I was leaving a year after, it had increased to ₦155k. Also, there were many avenues to make money outside of office work because I was meeting new people and working with them. In the best months, I took home about ₦400k – ₦500k.

So why did I leave?
Short answer: my mental health took a hit. We had a major client whose account I was in charge of. I loved the work, but those people were so unpleasant to work with. They blamed us for their errors and turned their nose up at everything we did. I constantly had nightmares about them. I had to leave.

Fair enough. What happened after?
I had already negotiated with a tech company that wanted me to join them in a creative role. The offer was ₦250k per month and a car. By the way, tech at this time meant selling ringtones to GSM networks.

I didn’t work there for more than two months. There was a lot of unnecessary power play, which got irritating and boring. Luckily for me, a producer I had worked with on the two shows from 2006 reached out to me to work as a fixer on a production he was working on. I accepted the offer.

How much did this pay?
₦23k per day, and it ran for 12 days.

By some stroke of luck and diligence on my side, the cable channel that the show was produced for made me a work offer. The pay was $2k per month. This was 2008.

Fast forward to 2009, the landlord of the house I had been living in since 2004 and paying ₦140k in rent decided to sell his house. When the eviction notice came in June 2009, I stalled on moving out because I wanted to see if I could get a loan from the office to pay for a new place to live. In July, they cut off electricity and started demolishing parts of the house. For some reason, my boss refused to have a conversation with me about a house loan. I moved my things to a friend’s house. In August, I started staying in a hotel, which wasn’t sustainable. I left in two weeks. But it was long enough for me to sleep with my then on-and-off boyfriend and get pregnant.

Omo.
My boyfriend didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I later found out that he had had his traditional wedding two weeks before he came to visit.

Toh.
Here I was, pregnant and homeless. I was 32-years-old and had health complications, so abortion wasn’t an option. A friend took me in, which was a big relief. While registering for antenatal classes, the third bomb dropped.

What was it?
They tested my blood for HIV, STDs and other significant things. My HIV test came back positive. It was done again and again, and it returned positive every time. I was homeless, pregnant and now, HIV-positive. My village people had finally caught me in a dark alley.

I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.

Oh, it’s fine. This meant that I had to pay for antenatal services and HIV treatment. My doctor provided the antiretroviral drugs, which cost $100 per month — one dollar was ₦116 at the time. On the other hand, the antenatal expenses were about ₦5k – ₦10k per week. I had to figure all of these expenses out on a monthly salary of $2k.

Whew. How was it going on the work front?
Around the time, they brought in a new Head of Talent who seemed to have a problem with me being pregnant. December 2009 came, and it was time to renew my contract. Usually, this was just a routine thing.

The new Head of Talent reached out to me and asked if I would like him to sort it out. I thought that would make things faster, so I said yes.

He asked if there was anything I’d like to see changed, and I was like I could use more money or fewer work hours.

After this, he sent me an email that went, “Hey. Would $2000 a month and working 5 days a week be a dealbreaker?” I wrote back: “Yes. This is what I’m currently earning. They can do better to increase the salary or reduce my workdays.”

At this point, I thought I was still having a friendly conversation with the HR guy. But the next thing he said was, “It was nice working with you.”

Hay God!
In retrospect, I think he wanted written confirmation that he had asked me and I had said no, so he could present the email to the HR department as proof that I was no longer interested in the job. I was shocked and blindsided. More importantly, I was 6 ½ months pregnant.

Deep sigh.
I received $500 at the end of that month. Afterwards, I had several issues that complicated my situation, including being kicked out of the places I was putting up. Also, being out of a job meant I couldn’t pay for my medical services.

Shortly after I had my baby in 2010, I left the city I was in and went home to my parents. I was there until 2012 before I returned.

Why did you return this time?
A friend from my last job made me an offer to manage his company — a record label cum media company. The basic pay was ₦250k but he also promised me accommodation and a car.

How did it go there?
It was the most abusive job I’ve had to date. I never got the car. It took eight months before I got money to pay for my accommodation — I was sleeping on a mattress in a room in the office. I moved on from that job in 2013.

I stayed for as long as I did because of my daughter. My lifestyle and decision-making had to change when she came along. Not sure the decision to stay at the job was entirely bad because I could afford to put her in a great school and meet my needs.

2013 to 2015 was characterised by small jobs, mostly event and project management. Each job I got paid between ₦200k to ₦300k, which saw me through the years. In 2016, I travelled out of the country for a year — a foundation I worked with sponsored it. I got my next job when I returned to Nigeria in 2017.

Contd in the comments.
Phones / How To Take Screenshots On Your Iphones And Android Phones by BigCabal: 1:35am On Sep 13, 2021
Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/09/03/how-to-take-a-screenshots-on-your-phones/

Read more helpful consumer tech articles here: https://techcabal.com/category/consumer-tech/


Taking screenshots on your phone is very useful for different reasons. You can take a screenshot of a receipt to confirm payment; or take a screenshot of a movie scene, article line, tweet or IG story to back up a story; you can even screenshot an error message to submit complaints.

But taking screenshots doesn’t come easy to everyone, especially people who aren’t familiar with every feature on their mobile devices.

There are different ways to screenshot, mostly depending on your phone type.

How you take a screenshot with your iPhone differs from how you would perform the same action on an Android device.

How to take a screenshot on your iPhone

Screenshotting on iPhones is a simple process; although that process differs from model to model. Some older iPhone models come with the Home button (such as an iPhone 5 – 8 and iPhone SE) but new models were designed without the Home button (like iPhone XR, 11, and 12 series models).

- If your iPhone has the Home button, press the side button and the Home button simultaneously.
- If your iPhone doesn’t have the Home button, press the side button and the volume-up button simultaneously
- You’ll get a thumbnail image of the screen you screenshotted in the lower-left corner
- Tap on the image to make it larger. Icons in the upper-right corner let you delete it or share it. There will also be editing tools below that let you add highlights or mark them up. Click on the plus sign in the lower-right corner to add text, a signature, arrows, or various shapes.
Tap “Done” in the upper-left corner when you are finished with editing. You can save the image to Photos, Files, or delete it.

How to take a screenshot on an Android device

Unlike iPhones, which have only one way to take a screenshot, android phones have various methods of screen grabbing an image or text on your device.

Samsung Phones

Galaxy S8 and subsequent models:

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

Galaxy S7 and downward:

- Hold down the home and power buttons for a couple of seconds.

Infinix, Tecno and Itel Mobile phones

These three devices have similar operations especially in taking screenshots. The simplest way to capture the screen is with micro Intelligence, which is a built-in feature in all three devices. Micro intelligence lets you perform some functions by drawing simple gestures on the screen. But you will have to do some settings before you can use this feature.

Setting up micro intelligence

- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down to micro Intelligence and open it.
- Select “Take screenshot with 3 fingers” from the list and follow the illustration on the screen.
- Now toggle on the feature from the interface.
- After you are done toggling the feature, return to the screen you want to capture, then swipe down on the screen with 3 fingers.

Google phones

Nexus:

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

Pixels:

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

Huawei phones

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.
- Pull down the notification panel, switch to Shortcuts, and tap the Screenshot icon.

LG phones

LG G7:

- Press and hold the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

Other LG phones:

- Hold down the power (located on the back of the phone) and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.
- Pull down the notification panel and tap the Capture+ icon.

OnePlus phones

All OnePlus phones:

- Press and hold the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

OnePlus 5, 5T, and 6:

- Swipe down with three fingers on the home screen.

HTC phones

HTC U12+:

- Press and hold the power button until your phone vibrates, and then tap the virtual home button on the navigation bar while still pressing the power button

HTC U series (up to U12+):

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

HTC 10:

- Hold down the home and power buttons
- OR hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

All other HTC phones:

- Hold down the power and volume-down buttons for a couple of seconds.

The following methods are the simplest ways to taking screenshots from your various phones. Now you won’t have to worry about missing a moment when you can easily swipe or press a button to capture it.

2 Likes

Business / Wave, Francophone Africa’s First Unicorn Startup With A 1% Money Transfer Fee by BigCabal: 11:48pm On Sep 12, 2021
Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/09/07/how-wave-became-francophone-africas-first-unicorn-startup/

Read more stories about fintech startups in Africa here: https://techcabal.com/category/fintech/


Within four years, Wave has gone from a spinoff from Asia and Africa-focused cheap remittance company, Sendwave, to a mobile money service provider worth $1.7 billion; the latest unicorn startup in Africa and the first in the French-speaking region.

The billion-dollar valuation comes after it raised $200 million in a Series A round led by payments giant Stripe; Sequoia Heritage, a private investment fund and unit of Sequoia; Founders Fund; and Ribbit Capital, with participation from other existing investors.

No other startup operating in Africa has raised as much in a Series A. OPay’s recent $400 million raise is the region’s largest venture round, followed by Interswitch’s $200 million investment from Visa and Flutterwave’s $170 million fundraise. All were Series C rounds.

Taking on incumbents

Senegal is one of Africa’s fastest-growing mobile money markets, according to a 2020 GSMA report.

In 2015, the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), the common central bank of eight French-speaking countries in the region (including Senegal), allowed nonbanks to operate mobile money in its member states. Mobile money adoption has expanded since then, driven by early telecom entrants that had the requisite infrastructure and user base (mobile networks and subscribers) to establish the service.

Orange is Senegal’s largest mobile operator and controls around 50% of the telecom market share with nearly 8 million mobile users, twice as many as runner-up Free, which has 4.4 million subscribers. Expresso Telecom, a unit of the UAE’s Expresso Telecom Group Limited, holds 22% of the market share, with over 3 million subscribers.

All three telecom firms provide mobile money services under the Orange Money, Free Money, and E-Money brands respectively, and along with banks, dominate the digital financial services space. Other third-party providers like fintech have had to make do with small market shares while competing with incumbents.

But Wave, a product created by two Americans (Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk) to lower the cost of mobile money transactions, piloted in 2016 and officially launched in Senegal a year later, entered the market with a 70% cheaper service.

Wave offers free deposits and withdrawals via its mobile application and applies a fixed transaction fee of just 1% for money transfers between individuals. Unlike its competitors, Wave passes additional fees on bill payments from users on to businesses. For users without a smartphone, it provides a free QR-card to transact with agents, who are able to open accounts, receive deposits, and execute withdrawals.

According to co-founder Drew Durbin, Wave is building a mobile money service that is “radically affordable”. The startup has had to build its own infrastructure, including agent and consumer applications, an agent network, and QR cards in order to provide its super cheap service.

The startup’s low-cost transaction service has helped it take on incumbents, eat into their market share, and turn the entire mobile money industry on its head.

Wave’s strategy has managed to shake Orange in particular. To match the ultra-competitive offer that the startup has operated with since May 2020, the telecoms company was forced to lower its prices as well, bringing down bill payment fees to 1% from June 1.

Pressure on the network operator also saw it stop users in Senegal from purchasing Orange airtime via Wave’s mobile application, a move that’s been described as anti-competitive by the fintech company and resulted in a dispute currently in the hands of the country’s telecoms regulator.

Wave’s branch in Dakar – which is led by IT veteran Coura Sène – claims to be the largest mobile money player in Senegal with over half of the country’s adults, between four and five million people, making up its several million monthly active users. The Wave app has more than 5 million downloads on Google PlayStore. As reported by TechCrunch, the startup processes billions of dollars in annual volume and has partnerships with UBA and Ecobank for its Senegal operations.

Having previously raised just $13.8 million since its creation, Wave was able to attract the landmark Series A funding from investors to expand its disruptive business model, which has seen it become one of the most-used mobile money services in Senegal and achieved unicorn status – startups valued at or above $1 billion – as a fintech in Africa.

Other African unicorns include fintech startups OPay, Flutterwave, Interswitch, Fawry as well as e-commerce giant Jumia.

With the fresh investment, Wave plans to deepen its presence in Senegal and Ivory Coast, a country it expanded into recently and is currently running communication campaigns to raise awareness. The startup also intends to grow its 800-man team across product, engineering, and business, as well as expand into other markets it considers regulatory-friendly, like Uganda and Mali.

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Celebrities / Leaving Home Was My Saddest Moment — Man Like Johnny Drille by BigCabal: 11:20pm On Sep 12, 2021
The subject of today’s Man Like is Johnny Drille, a singer and songwriter. He talks to us about moving to Lagos to pursue a career in music, how fame has affected his everyday life, and how his family helps keep him grounded.

What was growing up like for you?

It was uptight and conservative. I had to stay in the house most of the time. But the few times I went out with my family was so much fun. I still have memories of a visit to the amusement park. My favourite memory from childhood is sitting outside with my sister and staring at the moon every night or singing with her.

I see you dedicated a song to her on your new album. What’s your relationship with her like?

We’re quite close. We talk almost every day. I wrote a song inspired by her because she’s a symbol of what women go through in a society like ours. She’s had very tough experiences.

Women are burdened with the responsibility of family care and have to put their lives on hold while men don’t have to. It’s even worse in other parts of the country where girls are forced to marry at a young age, and they lose their youth. The song is meant to encourage women in those situations and let them know that there’s hope.

Your early music used to feature Christian themes. How much does your faith factor into your music?

My faith is still at the core of my music. My music did start out featuring a lot of Christian themes, but the songs on my latest album, Before We Fall Asleep, have expanded to other themes such as the state of the country and youth issues like police harassment. The songs are more daring, like something my alter ego, J.D, would do. With more projects, my music is going to evolve even more but at the core of it all, it boils down to love and God.

Your music’s appeal has gone from having a niche fanbase to mainstream appeal. How did that happen?

I started making music while I was in Benin. Pushing ahead was hard because Lagos has a big chunk of the music industry space. It mostly happened because people on the radio started playing my music, even before I thought about moving to Lagos.

What was the driving motivation behind making Before We Fall Asleep?

For this project, I wanted to be daring and experimental. I wanted to do things I’d never done before. The most difficult part of it was owning the sound, making it mine and not a copy of something. It’s a fusion of a lot of sounds and probably one of the most daring albums to come out of this country.

What was it like, singing alongside the legendary Styl Plus on Odo?

It was really good. They’re some of the most amazing musicians of an era who redefined Nigerian music with their distinct sound. They’re such an inspiration, and two generations of Nigerian singers coming together on a song was such a wonderful experience.

You’ve gone from underground to the mainstream. How has life changed for you since you blew?

The hardest part of it has been staying sane. I try to stay level-headed even though there are many things outside my control. I’m grateful for the new things and the new levels my music is reaching, but sometimes I miss going to the supermarket without needing to wear a hoodie, face mask and sunglasses. I’m grateful for the love my fans have for me but sometimes, I just want to take a walk down my street without being recognised. I’ve had to let go of a lot of my personal life and “everyday guy-ness” doing the things I would have loved to do.

I try not to let fame get to me by staying rooted in my family. I visit Benin as often as I can to spend time with my family so I can always remember who I am and where I’m from. Family is one of my core values; it keeps me grounded. Recently I’ve only been able to go home twice a year and that makes me sad.

Why?

Every time I see my parents, it feels like I’ve missed a period of time in their lives. Time seems to be in fast-forward as they’re getting older quickly. I wish I could spend more time with them. I now make a conscious effort to visit home as often as I can.

What’s your relationship with your parents like?

We’re closer now than ever. I speak to them almost every day. My mom is one of the most hardworking women I know.

My dad, like every other dad, used to be very strict. He did a lot of things I hated but it all made sense over time when I realised he did it out of love. He’s softened a lot in the last 12 years and is more supportive of his kids and whatever we want to do.

That’s sweet. How did it feel when you had to move to Lagos?

One of the saddest and most daring moments of my life was when I left Benin for Lagos to pursue music in 2017. It was an important moment because I was leaving behind everything that I knew — friends, home, parents, siblings — to move to a new town with very few friends. The first couple of months were very hard. I was sad all the time. I wrote a few unreleased songs about that time.

I’m going to ask a question I’m sure you get every other day.

LOL. Go for it.

What’s Johnny Drille’s romantic life like?

LMAO. I’m in a committed, romantic and beautiful relationship. To my music.

You had me in the first half.

If anything changes on that front, I’ll be the first to let you know.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/man/leaving-home-was-my-saddest-moment-man-like-johnny-drille/

Read more interviews with Nigerian men here: https://www.zikoko.com/stack/man-like/
Nairaland / General / 10 Places To Make Over ₦30k Per Day From Selling Akara by BigCabal: 3:25pm On Sep 09, 2021
There is a matter of national urgency we must attend to: many Nigerians are of the opinion that you cannot make ₦30k per day from selling akara. In this Nigeria where akara is competing with the National Cake? When we heard it, we were disappointed. Some people may perish for lack of knowledge, but if you listen to us, that will not be your portion.

Here are 10 valid spots to sell akara and make over ₦30k per day. Start peeling your beans now.

1. Cemetery.

Imagine selling akara to dead bodies who have not eaten anything since their soul departed from this sinful world? Only you, dominating that market and covering distribution from grave to grave. Believe me, you will make nothing less than ₦50k per night. In less than one month, you will be a silent millionaire.

2. Dammy B’s Night Market

If you don’t know her, Dammy B is the Madam of those people that sell anything sellable. Just go to her and beg her to help you. I swear, one client that she will introduce you to can buy like ₦500k akara in one week. You think they call her Dammy B for nothing? The B in her name stands for “Bundles of Cash.” That should tell you what to expect.

3. Aso Rock.

Imagine selling akara to Buhari himself. Ah, you are made forever. God should now help you, the akara should now contain small poison. Sksksksksk. Yes, you will end up in jail, but Nigerians will forever remember you as a hero.

4. House of Assembly.

Just camp outside so they can see you and patronise you before they go in for the meeting. As they are deliberating on taxes, let them be munching your akara and wondering just how much to tax lazy akara sellers who cannot meet daily target of ₦30k.

4. Winners Chapel.

You mean to tell me that you can’t make ₦30k per day from selling akara to these people? Come off it, abeg. You know what you should do? Tell them your akara was what was shared at the Last Supper and see how people will rush you like hot Jollof.

5. Redeem Camp.

Ahan, just look at. If you cannot market your akara to this mammoth crowd, then you are the source of your own problem oh.

6. Hell Fire.

These people are hungry. Imagine how they will feel to hear that you can now buy akara at the Hell Fire Cafeteria. If you want to finish the business, just add pure water to it as jara. Omo. You go too sell.

7. Coven meeting.

Witches are people too nau. They need something to snack on while plotting to kill Iya Ramo’s first son. For them, you can fry the akara with palm oil. It will look like blood to them and they will rush you. You don’t even need to make ₦30k per day if you have the witches support.

8. ATM queues

You can sell on credit to people here. Operate on a policy of trust. As soon as they withdraw their money, they come and pay you. Some of them can even buy more to take home to their family.

9. Road to heaven

They said the road is long and narrow. Imagine if you camp there and you’re selling akara. If you don’t make ₦30k, come and arrest me

10. Going door to door with a gun and forcing 100 people to buy 300 naira akara.

If everything else fails, remember that violence answereth all things. Don’t dull.

Source: [url]https://www.zikoko.com/life/10-places-to-make-over-%e2%82%a630k-per-day-from-selling-akara/[/url]

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/life/
Romance / Love Life: We Fell In Love Three Days After Meeting On Clubhouse by BigCabal: 1:50pm On Sep 09, 2021
Oluwanifemi, 20, and Ayomide, 20 have been dating for five months. Today on Love Life, they talk about meeting on Clubhouse, falling in love within three days and making a long-distance relationship work.

What is your earliest memory of each other?

Oluwanifemi: I joined a queer room on Clubhouse in January. I remember hearing their voice and thinking they sound nice. So I checked their profile on Twitter. It was private so I sent a request. I wondered if they were going to accept my request or what I would DM her if they did.

Ayomide: We were actually playing a game on Clubhouse that day. We had to come up with pickup lines to use on people in the room. If they worked, we would win a prize. Each person was entitled to two pickup lines but I had three pickup lines for her LOL.

Did the pickup lines work?

Ayomide: I don’t know if they worked but I didn’t even text her to find out because I was scared. She had snapped at someone in the room on Clubhouse. Later I noticed she had requested to follow me on Twitter and I approved it.

How did you two start talking?

Oluwanifemi: There was one time one couple was fighting on Clubhouse. Ayomide was in the room with me but they had to leave to sort out something and when they tried to join again, the room was too full to accept more listeners. I was tweeting about what was going on so they DMed me to gist them what was going on in the room. Lmao, I started taking notes of the fight in my Notes app. In my head, I was asking myself, “Sis, are you really doing this because of amebo?”

Ayomide: She was so dedicated to giving me gist. After that, I quoted a tweet about a queer couple that had met on Twitter saying I wanted to recreate that. She sent me a message and we decided to go on a virtual date.

Oluwanifemi: I already had a crush on them so when I saw that tweet, I concluded that it was the universe telling me to shoot my shot.

What was the date like?

Oluwanifemi: We didn’t even have a plan. We just showed up on Facetime and talked.

Ayomide: It was 11 pm my time and 6 pm her time. We were dressed the way we would have been if we went on a physical date. She wore a crop top and I remember being so mesmerized by her.

Oluwanifemi: Me too. We had so much to talk about I remember telling them that I might have overshared and they said, “Who gets to decide what is too much or too little?” That resonated with me.

Ayomide: I can’t remember a lot of the things I said that day because I was really mesmerised by her LMAO. I know I prepared cards to help aid the conversation but we didn’t even need that because our chemistry was great.

Oluwanifemi: I was already in love with their voice from Clubhouse. I was just in awe. That night, I knew that we had the potential to date but I wasn’t sure. Regardless, I told them during the date that I wasn’t there to be friends — I was trying to sleep with them.

Aww. What happened after?

Oluwanifemi: After the date, they messaged me on Twitter to tell me they had a good time. I said it was mutual and we continued talking. Two days later, we made a playlist together on Spotify.

Ayomide: Yea, we added songs that we both liked and thought the other person should listen to. We would get on the phone and listen to the playlist together. It was so cute.

Oluwanifemi: One day, they randomly Facetimed me and we were messing around with Facetime effects as we were on the call. They typed the “I love you” on their screen and I just started laughing because it was so fast. I have been in the talking stage for like a year before. This was three days after our first date. LMAO. The next day, I sent a voice note saying I love them too. That’s how we started dating — we didn’t need to ask each other out, we just knew from then on that we were a couple.

How has the relationship been so far?

Ayomide: Long distance has been hard. I used to laugh at the sapphic stereotype of falling in love with people who lived oceans away, only to now become the stereotype. I live in Nigeria and she lives in Canada but we have been able to make it work so far.

Initially, the time difference used to drive me insane. I have a job and she’s a student so finding the perfect time to talk in between our busy schedules and sleeping hours was hell but we’ve hacked it now and we always make out time to talk to each other. We have dates as often as possible where we talk about our future together so we both know we are not fooling around in this relationship.

So far, this has been the most satisfying relationship of my life. My belly feels full of love because of her. Some days, I find myself grinning because I know I am loved by someone as beautiful as her. Sometimes, it feels like my heart is going to burst. LMAO.

Oluwanifemi: Aww. For me, I feel like I have found someone I can fully be myself with. I don’t have to hide anything about myself with them which is new for me because, in past relationships, I had to shrink myself to get my partners to like me more. I feel loved and accepted here. We are constantly checking up on each other.

We put in a lot of effort to make the relationship work. We read and share articles with each other that help us be better partners with each other. They introduced me to Bell Hooks’ All About Love and the way love is described in the book is how Ayomide loves me. They are careful with me, with words and they don’t hesitate to tell me how much they love me. They also put me on to good music.

What’s the best part of the relationship?

Oluwanifemi: I love the freedom it gives me to be myself. I am able to have my own beliefs and opinions on life. There is always room for everything with us. Ayomide is always affirming me and reassuring me. This relationship was just what I needed and more. I never thought a romantic relationship would satisfy me this much. I am more particular about my friendships than relationships but with Ayomide, I know I have a friend in them. I would like to do things other couples do though like going on a sip and paint date or cuddling each other to sleep.

Ayomide: The best part of the relationship for me is that she is in it with me. I also love the way we communicate with each other. We strive for softness and kindness in our interactions. Honestly, this relationship is everything I dreamed of.

Have you ever fought? What was your biggest fight about?

Ayomide: It happened recently. I was going through stuff at work and she was also having issues with school. We hadn’t talked about it but it was affecting communication with each other. It led to us not talking for ten hours. Eventually, I reached out and we asked each other what was really going on with us.

Oluwanifemi: There isn’t much to fight about. We try to communicate as much as we can and we respect each other’s opinions. When we have differing opinions, we always remember to be kind to one another. It’s us against the problem and not us against each other. We also try to voice out anything that we don’t like so that it doesn’t grow into resentment.

What’s your favourite thing about each other?

Ayomide: My favourite thing about her is her lips and the laughter that comes out of them. I love hearing her laugh so much. I don’t have to know what’s making her laugh, I just laugh too.

Oluwanifemi: LMAO. It’s the same for me. Your laughter is contagious.

Do you have future plans together?

Ayomide: Yes we do. She is coming to Nigeria later this year to stay for a while and I’m planning to go to Canada next year.

Rate the relationship on a scale of 1 – 10

Ayomide: 11.

Oluwanifemi: It can’t be 11 — we haven’t met yet.

Ayomide: It’s 11 because I am receiving everything I’ve ever wanted in love and I couldn’t be happier.

Oluwanifemi: Aww. It’s 9.5 for me because I feel like there’s still room for me to be better. I could be more understanding than I currently am. Sometimes I tend to forget things they told me until they remind me. I want to improve on things like that. Also, we haven’t met each other yet so I’m leaving the 0.5 till then.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/love-life-we-fell-in-love-three-days-after-meeting-on-clubhouse/

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/stack/lovelife/
Business / Five Top Instant Loan Apps In Nigeria by BigCabal: 9:20pm On Sep 08, 2021
Securing a loan for personal or business purposes has evolved into a more seamless process; with a smartphone and internet connection, anybody with a bank account can put in a loan request at any time and receive it instantly, in most cases. Some loan companies even allow you to use a feature phone by dialling a particular USSD code.

Nigeria, like every other emerging market, is experiencing a surge in money lending companies. But not all of these companies provide reliable and secured services. The best loan services should provide instant disbursement, have a low-interest rate, sufficient repayment time frame and options, and ultimately, good customer relationships.

In no particular order, here are some of the best instant loan apps democratizing access to credit and bridging financial inclusion.

Carbon

Originally launched as PayLater, Carbon gives instant credit access to anyone in need of an urgent loan within minutes.

Carbon requires its users to input their Bank Verification Number (BVN) for verification, and once that’s done they can request for a loan.

Carbon loans range from ₦1,500 ($3.6) to ₦1m ($2430.13) in Nigeria and Ksh 500 ($4.55) to Ksh 30,000 ($273.10) in Kenya; it allows repayments over a maximum of 64 weeks with interest ranging from 1.75% – 30%, with an equivalent monthly interest rate of 1 – 21%.

Branch

Launched in 2017, Branch makes getting a personal loan simple by providing an app that has a seamless onboarding process. Branch uses the user’s phone data including SMS history to verify identity and create a credit score.

It operates in four countries – Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and India – and its loan amount and interest rate in each country are different.

For instance in Nigeria, loan amounts are from ₦1,000 ($2.43) to ₦200,000 ($486.03) with monthly interest between 1.6% and 23%, depending on the loan amount and repayment history. While in Tanzania, loan amounts range from Tsh 5,000 ($2.16) to Tsh 700,000 ($301.87) with monthly interest between 4% and 27%, also depending on the same conditions.

Across countries, Branch users have the option to choose repayment terms for up to 336 days, but every loan amount comes with the option to repay in a minimum of 60 days.

FairMoney

FairMoney is another fast, reliable and free Android loan app that’s available in Nigeria and India.

Loan amounts on this app range between ₦1,500 ($3.6) to ₦500,000 ($1215.07) with repayment periods from 61 days to 1 year at monthly interest rates between 2.5% and 30%.

This app is available on Google Playstore and it claims that 3 million customers rely on them for loans.

Palm Credit

Palmcredit loan apps allow users to borrow instant money online with a ‘flexible repayment plan and favorable interest rate.” The loan amount is between the range of ₦5,000 ($12.15) to ₦300,000 ($729.04).

Palmcredit’s interest rate is between 4% to 24%. The app provides two flexible repayment options of 91days and 365days, leaving users to pick which is favourable.

Palmcredit doesn’t charge any rollover or transaction charge. It also rewards customers that repay their loans on time with high credit score and reduced interest rate.

QuickCheck

Like every other loan app and their money promises, QuickCheck promises its users they’ll never go broke again. Artificial intelligence is used to run credit scoring and make instant loan decisions.

The loan amount ranges from ₦1,500($3.6) to ₦500,000 ($1215.07) with interest rates ranging from 2% – 30%. Repayment runs through 30 days to six months, depending on the loan type.

This loan app is only available to serve customers in Nigeria with Android phones only.

All these loan apps started off as a single product fintech company offering only loans, but a few of them have pivoted into digital banks. Carbon, Branch and Fairmoney now offer banking services to their customers like payments, savings, investments among others.

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/08/27/best-quick-loan-apps-in-nigeria/

Read more articles about apps here: https://techcabal.com/category/apps-2/
Investment / SEC Creates A Special Division To Study The Crypto Market by BigCabal: 10:37am On Sep 07, 2021
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that it has now set up a department that will study the crypto market in order to create regulatory policies for the sector.

The agency’s Director-General, Lamido Yuguda, revealed this development during a virtual interview with Reuters on Thursday in Abuja.

“We are looking at this market closely to see how we can bring out regulations that will help investors protect their investment in blockchain,’’ Yuguda said.

The commission has sought to regulate the crypto market on the premise that crypto trading is equally a security transaction. According to Yuguda, the regulation will be full frontal once crypto transactions are allowed back into the Nigerian banking system.

Although the SEC boss did not state a time frame, this information is an indication that crypto and fiat will reunite sooner than later.

The commission says it seeks to work with fintech firms to boost the marketing of domestic securities, which in turn will prevent capital flight.

Some crypto experts think this decision could have come earlier, allowing local fintech and crypto companies to pool their resources to support the SEC and help the institution write policies that drive economic development.

“This would have probably led to the fastest regulation development ever in the country had it came earlier than now. But if all goes well, restrictions on the Banking system from supporting crypto payments might be lifted,” Mayowa, an Ethereum Blockchain Engineer and Founder/CEO of Walletcloud (a secure Wallet as a Service platform), told TechCabal.

According to the SEC, the responsibility for creating a framework for crypto trading in Nigeria lies with the SEC and not the CBN, as it is done in developed nations. Yuguda also disclosed that the recent launch of the country’s controversial digital currency, e-naira, is the result of the commission’s engagement with the CBN.

The crypto sector in Nigeria has remained resilient despite the CBN restrictions and continues to be the second-largest crypto market in the world. The volume of crypto traded this year via p2p platforms has doubled that of last year already. More crypto-based companies are investing in crypto-education and more businesses and freelancers are willing to get paid in crypto.

“All of these market signals are weakening the naira against the US dollar and that’s not good for the government. One of the fundamental principles of crypto is decentralization – no single source of control,” Mayowa added. “What the SEC is trying to do is to come up with policies that would give them as much control as possible. It will be nice to see the reaction of the market to the policies they come up with.”

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/09/03/sec-to-study-crypto-market/

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Career / A Week In The Life Of An Anonymous Superstar Social Media Influencer by BigCabal: 10:13am On Sep 07, 2021
The subject of today’s “A Week In The Life” is a social media influencer with over 100k followers on social media. They talk to us about remaining anonymous despite their fame, undercharging for their services and the anxiety that comes with the job.

MONDAY:

The first thought on my mind when I wake up today is that if I didn’t have to work to earn a living, I’d probably not be doing my day job. I only show up because of the money.

Left to me, I’d spend my time living out my imaginations. Instead, I have to pretend like I’m normal and resume every day at a 9-5. During the day I’m the team lead at a digital media startup. At night, I’m a wildling on my personal account with over 100k followers on Twitter, [a little] less than 100k on Instagram and a newsletter with almost 10k subscribers.

My day job stresses me because of how professional it is. As someone with a wild imagination, I don’t find it fun. At work, I want to replicate ideas from the playbook of my personal account but every idea is met with “consider the brand image.”

Even on my personal account, when brands reach out, they like what they see but still always decide to play it safe.

Over time, this pushback has made my personal account the only place I can write the things I enjoy. I love the fact that my thoughts have a home and a receptive audience. What I don’t like is that it doesn’t generate enough money to survive and hence the need for a double life.

This afternoon I got a message that triggered me. Someone came to my DM telling me to always run my content by a team so I can know whether it’s good or bad. For someone who spends all day running content by people at my day job, I was like nope. I thought, “my personal account works because it’s 100% out of pocket and unfiltered me.”

Once I start running content by people, it’s no longer me. And if an idea doesn’t work, I’m going to blame myself for running it by another person. However, as a solo creator, I’m free to experiment as I like.

One of my biggest fears is getting to the point where I no longer recognize my work. With that resolve, I replied to the message: “thank you very much for the advice. I’ll look into it.”

TUESDAY:

No one knows what I look like. At least not the bulk of my followers; my day ones have seen my face. Initially, I decided to be anonymous because the more content I put out, the bigger my personal account got. And I was tired of people saying my face didn’t match my writing whenever they landed on my page, so I removed all my photos. However, over time, anonymity became a necessity for me.

At first, I realised I was insecure about my looks so I decided to grow into them without external influence. I didn’t want to post a picture and have people validate my looks. Next, I thought it was cool to be in the shadows on social media where everyone is constantly putting their face or business out there.

The upside? On good days, like today, I have at least 20 people in my DM begging to know what I look like. People pleading and swearing, earnestly, on their parents’ lives that they won’t share my photos. My answer? “No, I’m not sending.” Although, listening to people beg is like doing drugs because of how intoxicating and powerful it feels. It also helps that I’m aware of the power I hold so I tease and draw out people’s curiosity as much as I can. Some days I’ll post a picture of just my hand or my legs. Other days, I’ll post a full photo of me but covered with a smiley or with my face blurred out. It’s so much fun!

The only downside of enjoying anonymity is that I don’t cash out. If someone with my level of influence who shows their face goes out, they’d receive favours I wouldn’t receive, mostly because they’re famous. But no one knows me. Even if I told them I was the person behind my account, they wouldn’t believe it. Therefore, I’d beg for things I ordinarily wouldn’t have to beg for if I showed my face.

However, the peace of mind from being anonymous is sufficient for me. There’s no pressure for me to keep up appearances or put on a show — and I love that for me.

WEDNESDAY:

Today makes it three days since I last posted on my Twitter account. My mental health is shit, my anxiety is at an all-time high and my self-esteem is at the lowest. Yay.

As a creator with a large following, sooner or later the pressure gets to you. You’re always thinking about numbers: how many retweets did this post get, how many likes, how many quotes? Who shared it? Was it reposted on Instagram and WhatsApp statuses? This obsession puts pressure on you to create fun stuff for the audience so you rush your process. Then it doesn’t bang. Now the numbers are bad and you feel like shit because low numbers are bad for your brand’s business. It’s twice as bad because you can see how other creator’s content are banging in real-time. After a while, doubt starts to creep in.

But when your content bangs —my God! You feel unstoppable. God now help you that you’re on a roll. The type where you tweet the most random thing and it bangs. You quote a tweet and you get 4k retweets. Your reply to a tweet gets 2k likes. That kind of constant real-time validation and gratification is a drug you become addicted to.

As someone who has recently come down from that high, the lows are dealing with me. I’m thinking about how my retweets gradually started reducing from 4,000 to 2,000 to 1,000 and then 500 on a good day. I think reality fully hit me when I got to 500. At that point, it was as if I was relocating from Banana Island to Ikorodu and that affected me badly.

It has taken some affirmations to slowly climb out of it. Every day I remind myself that my worth as a human being is not tied to whether or not my tweets bang. Regardless of what happens, I’m still the same person. I’m still that talented person with room for growth.

In the long term, I know this will pull me out of my mental and emotional chokehold. However, short term, my strategy is to keep avoiding my stressors — most especially Twitter.

THURSDAY:

People always ask me if being an influencer is profitable. The answer is both yes and no. If you’re like me that charged two thousand naira for my first advert, you’re already doing it wrong. Mind you, I had 5,000 followers then. When I got to almost 10k followers I increased my rate to ₦10,000 for adverts.

Every time someone paid me I’d promise to deliver the best work of their life. Looking back, I realise that at every follower milestone I’d increase my rates but still did not make bank.

It wasn’t until today that I realised the reason for my weird relationship with money. The pay at the first company I worked for was shitty so I thought I deserved shit. I was being paid around ₦50,000 to make 90 content items in a month. In my head, ₦10,000 per content item promotion was a good deal for me. And this is how I approached my rates as my follower count grew.

With money, I’m just reaching a point where I can charge the least I deserve, especially for someone at my level of influence. It has taken me months of talking with many people to see that I don’t deserve to earn shit.

Later today, I’ll test out my new resolution on a client I’m talking to. I’m going to multiply my current rate by two. If I die, I die, but I’m no longer accepting rubbish. Thank you very much!

Influencing can be mad profitable if you maximise the opportunities you get. But it’s also short-lived. If you don’t reinvent yourself, another person will come up, do what you’re doing and take your spot.

FRIDAY:

I finally posted on Twitter today. It wasn’t my best work but I’ll take it like that. I’m trying to show up regardless of how I feel. The more work I put out, the more I increase the probability of something clicking.

It’s just difficult shaking off the feeling that it’s been a while since my content surprised people and that’s messing with me. This weekend, I plan to explore new content formats, think up possible collaborations with fellow creatives, and maybe even consider publishing a book.

I hate how creativity can be so hard yet so simple, but I won’t give up. I’ll cry when I need to cry and laugh when it comes.

I know that there’s potential in the business and I’m going to tap into it. One thing I know is that the first step to blowing is knowing your worth. A lot of people think I have money but I don’t because it has taken so long to realise my worth. If you see yourself as trash, this industry is not kind and will treat you accordingly.

Thankfully, things are changing for me. My goal right now is to earn enough from influencing gigs so I can quit my day job. If I play my cards right that day could come sooner than expected. Until then, my plan for today is to open Slack and dance to the tunes of my capitalist employer.

I can’t wait for today to end.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/a-week-in-the-life-of-an-anonymous-superstar-social-media-influencer/

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Career / The Nairalife Of A Family Man Who’s Content At ₦1.3m/month by BigCabal: 12:29am On Sep 07, 2021
Every week, Zikoko seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.

What’s your oldest memory of money?

When I was 13 years old, my dad came home with a bag. When he called me into a room and opened the bag, I saw a lot of ₦5, ₦10, and ₦20 notes inside. We counted the money together and everything was about ₦120k. This was in the mid-90s. My dad worked in a government-owned tertiary institution, and the money was his students’ payment for an exam. He brought it home because they couldn’t take it to the bank that day.

We kept the money at home for a night, but it was such a scary experience.

Why?

I watched my dad struggle to raise me and my two siblings on his civil service salary. Let me put that into perspective: we ate rice and bread during holidays, but we drank pap every day. The first place I saw a colour TV and a VHS player was at a neighbour’s.

So, I was at a loss when my dad brought the money home. It was the biggest amount of money I’d seen at that point. I was pretty sure we were going to get robbed before daybreak.

Where was your mum in all of this?

My parents had a misunderstanding they couldn’t get past when I was younger, so my mum left.

Ah, I see.

Anyway, my view of money at the time was that only big people could have it. I didn’t understand how money worked, but it felt like you had to be born rich to make money. This perspective shifted when I made money for the first time.

Tell me how it happened.

When I was in SS 2, a lady in my compound pitched the idea of selling fruits to me. I didn’t have a full grasp of what she meant but I dropped a small capital and followed her to the market. We brought ₦20 worth of oranges and added our own markup. By the end of the day, we made about ₦50. I think this was my first lesson in the economics of money. Now, I knew I could make it if I worked hard enough.

Nice. What happened after?

Nothing significant until I finished secondary school. But before that happened, my dad became the head of his department, and things improved a bit at home. We could finally afford some things we had thought were luxuries. A memorable purchase was a VCD player because it meant that we didn’t have to go to our neighbours to watch TV anymore.

But there was still a lot to aspire to, and I had started thinking of what my life would look like after secondary school.

When I finished secondary school in 2001, I applied to a university in my state but didn’t get in. I had to wait until the following year to try again. During my gap year, I worked on an aunt’s poultry farm. She wasn’t paying me a salary, but I made some money for myself from selling cracked eggs. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough to hold myself together.

How long did you spend on the farm?

About eight months. In 2002, I got into a pre-degree program at the same university. I left home with some foodstuff and ₦1500. Not sure I would have been able to afford accommodation if a friend from secondary school didn’t house me.

Subsequently, my monthly allowance remained ₦1500. But things took a turn for the worse in my second year.

What happened?

The government restructured my dad’s place of work, and it affected him. He tried as much as he could to make sure I got something every month, but sometimes the money came late or didn’t come at all. I knew I had to find a way to survive.

What did you decide to do?

I can only speak about this now because so much time has passed. I was good at science subjects, so I started writing external exams for people. On average, I charged ₦1500 per paper. The exams were seasonal, so the money wasn’t even constant.

I was almost caught once, and it put things in perspective for me. The decision was easy: I quit.

I didn’t do anything for money until 2005, during the trial census. Someone I knew helped me get on the census team. The whole thing lasted for three weeks, and at the end of it, I got paid ₦13,500. This was the biggest lump sum payment I’d received at that point.

Do you remember what you did with it?

Haha, I bought a phone. The GSM buzz had hit and I felt inferior because I couldn’t afford one. When the money came in, it seemed like an important purchase. I went for an Alcatel phone, which cost ₦9900 and bought a sim card for ₦3500. Like that, the money was gone.

But hey, you had a phone.

See, I know it seemed like an important purchase at the time but looking back now, I don’t think it was. The money could have gone into other things I needed.

Ah, the power of hindsight. When did you leave uni?

October 2006. I was mobilised for NYSC in February 2007 and posted to a state in the south-south. My dad gave me ₦8k when I was leaving — and he struggled to get that money.

I spent about ₦4k on travelling to my state of deployment and had ₦4k left when I got to camp. The three weeks that followed were all about figuring out how to save the money I had left — I ate from the camp kitchen and didn’t visit mammy market once.

The federal government paid the first allawee at the end of the third week — it was ₦8500 at first, but it increased to ₦9775 before I finished my service year. I was posted to a secondary school in a small village on the outskirts of the state, and that was where I spent the rest of my service year.

The thing about the village was that there were no banks or ATMs. Every month, the corps members in the community would gather their ATM cards together and send someone to go to the state capital to withdraw money. If you finished your money before the end of the month, you had to go to the capital by yourself, and that was expensive.

Sounds hectic.

It was. Fast forward to 2008, I finished NYSC and started making moves to get a job. I would buy the Tuesday edition of a Nigerian newspaper and go through the published job opportunities. I don’t know how many companies I applied to, but one of them invited me for an interview, and I got the job.

Yay. What did the company do?

They distributed healthcare products, and I was hired as a marketer. My salary was ₦30k. My quality of life took a hit while at the job though. For starters, I was spending up to ₦8k monthly on transportation expenses. I knew I wasn’t going to be there for long. Luckily, I got another job at a bank six months later.

I had applied to a bank, written their tests, and attended an interview months earlier but I didn’t hear from them, so I moved on. Next thing, the bank called me to come in for my medicals. I resumed at as a graduate trainee in October 2008.

What was remuneration like?

I was earning ₦107k when I joined. The highest amount to hit my bank account prior to this was ₦50k, and now I hit the ₦100k mark. It felt like a breakthrough. When I got my first salary, I bought a Nokia phone for ₦77k. The following month, I bought a laptop.

Balling!

Haha. At the end of my trainee programme, I was posted to the internal control department. Three years and three branches later, I was transferred to the head office. That changed my career forever.

How?

The transfer came with a role change, and I started working in the regulatory compliance department. After a few months, I decided that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my career. What remained was mapping my trajectory and I got started. But first, I had to leave the bank although my salary had increased to ₦200k.

Why did you leave?

It was time. I realised that the best way to grow in the industry was through job hopping.

I started interviewing for a new job in 2013 but I didn’t get the offer until 2014, which worked for me. When I finally resigned, they paid me my gratuity — about ₦1.7m — because I’d spent up to five years at the bank. I started my new job in February 2014.

How did that go?

My gross salary was ₦4.5m per year when I started working there, but my monthly net was ₦250k. At the end of my first year, I got a 30% raise.

In 2016, it felt like it was time to leave again. But before I quit, I started looking at certifications that would give me an edge — the industry is big on those too. I found one that was in hot demand and went for it. It cost $1500 and I was broke for three months after I wrote the exam.

After I got the certification, doors began to open. Someone recommended me to a payment company looking to set up a functional compliance unit, and they brought me on to head the department. The offer was ₦10.4m gross per year. My monthly take-home pay was ₦450k, excluding the bonuses.

Lit.

A couple of life events had happened by this time. I got married in 2013 and by February 2015, I had two kids already. So, I was doing a lot more long term thinking. Getting a property ranked high on the things I wanted, but I didn’t have enough money to buy a house. It was cheaper to build from the ground up. I started saving a minimum of ₦50k every month towards the project in 2015. As my salary increased, I put more money into it. Also, a portion of my bonuses and other lump-sum payments went into the account.

Back to my job. I spent less than a year at the payment company because I got an offer to head the regulatory compliance unit of a bank, and it was a senior role. So I resigned from the payment company and joined the bank. My gross annual pay was ₦14m per year, excluding bonuses and other lump-sum payments. And my monthly salary was ₦660k. I spent two years there before I moved again.


Where did you move to this time?

A telecommunications company. When I saw the job advert, I thought it might be a refreshing change for me. I applied, and I was hired as a manager in their risk and compliance department. I accepted their offer and my monthly salary grew from ₦660k to ₦1.1m. Between the time I started working there and now, I’ve gotten a few raises which has increased my monthly gross salary to ₦1.8m and my net salary to ₦1.3m. This doesn’t include the bonuses and other benefits. With benefits and bonuses, the number rises to about ₦30m per year.

Bonuses: ~₦4m

13th-month salary: ₦1.2m

Leave allowance: ₦1.3m

HMO: ₦600K

You’ve come a long way in the past 13 years, how do you move money around now?

Well, I’m a family man with three kids now — two of whom have started going to school — so my recurrent expenses have grown over the past five years or so. Let’s start with the monthly running costs, which is ₦400k.

Can we break it down, please?

About the salaries: I hired an after-school teacher for my kids, and I pay them ₦20k. There’s also someone who comes in to teach them Arabic and whom I pay ₦20k.

I have two domestic staff on my payroll: a gateman and a lady who helps my wife, and they earn ₦25k and ₦15k respectively.

Got it. Where does the remaining ₦900k go?

I divide it into two parts: ₦400k goes into things like my kids’ school fees and other small projects I’d like to take care of. The remaining ₦500k is for my savings and investments. Thankfully, I don’t pay rent anymore. I completed my building project last year. Do you want me to talk about it?

Yes, please.

I started saving for it in 2015, but I didn’t really act on it until 2018 when I bought a plot of land, which cost ₦550k. But I didn’t like the area it was in. Then I started having ownership issues, so I sold the land for ₦900k.

I had been putting the money I was saving towards the project in my mutual funds account and by 2018, it had accumulated to ₦8m. Later that year, I bought a half plot of land in another part of the city for ₦6m. Now, I had ₦2.9m to start the project — a four-bedroom duplex. Between the time I laid the foundation and the time we moved in, I’d spent more than ₦30m.

Whoa. Let’s break it down.

I’m still not sure how I did it, but let’s attempt to break it down.

I laid the foundation in March 2019, and the first phase of the project gulped about ₦5m. That bit was easy because I’d raised about ₦8m, thanks to my savings and a huge bonus I got at work. After we raised the building to the lintel level, I took a three months break to raise more money. In August 2019, I returned to the project and spent about ₦7.8m to raise it to the decking and roof level, then took another six months break.

I went back to it in February 2020. A month later, Covid struck, so it was suspended for a while. But I really wanted to complete it last year, so I asked the contractor to give me an estimate of how much I’d need to finish the house. The number they gave me was ₦15m, which I didn’t have.

How did you eventually raise it?

I approached my bank for a ₦10m loan, and they approved it. I gathered every other resource I could find to raise the remaining ₦5m. My wife and I agreed to cut down on non-essential expenses, so we could save more. I even sold one of my cars to hit the ₦5m target. Inflation affected the price of things, and I had to borrow an extra ₦2.9m from close associates to pump into the site. That was mostly it.

It took a bit of work and perseverance but we moved into our home in August last year.

Yay! Well done.

Thank you. Now, I have a bank loan to repay. The tenure is for four years, but I’m not a big fan of taking loans unless I absolutely have to. So I’ve been paying it off as fast as I can. I got a bonus at work at the end of last year and most of it went into servicing the loan. Right now, I still have a balance of ₦5m to pay. The plan is to clear it all by the middle of next year.

Man. You talked about savings and investments earlier. What do they look like at the moment?

It’s mostly investments, really. I also do a bit of mutual funds. The ROI is not as attractive as it was a few years ago anymore, but it’s a low-risk investment. I have about ₦4m in my mutual funds account at the moment, and that’s about it.

So how much do you think you should be earning?

I think my earnings are fair. I try not to live in a bubble, so I know it could be a lot worse. Millions of people in the country are not earning as much, and that puts things in perspective for me. I mean, I want more but I’m also content with what I currently earn.

This is a good place to ask how your experiences have shaped your perspective about money.
First, I believe the value of money is in how you use it. Second, growing your income is mostly about how you decide to take on and leverage opportunities. I grew up with nothing and worked my way up here. I won’t deny that I’ve had a lot of help and support, but I also did the work and knew when it was time to move away from a job. Privilege and luck are great, but they don’t work in isolation.

Is there anything you want but can’t afford?

I’m looking to get Canadian or Australian citizenship for my kids but I don’t want to do it via the migration route — it’s too stressful. Citizenship by investment is more straightforward although it’s more expensive. I’d really like that right now, but I can’t afford it.

Fair. What about something you spent money on recently that improved the quality of your life?

My house. The quality of my life has gone up in many ways since my family moved in. The peace of mind I have now is unbeatable.

That makes sense. How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 0-10 then?

7. I have all the things I wanted to have at this age — a family and a home to house them. Also, we can afford to do anything we want, which is a departure from my childhood. Canadian or Australian citizenship will shoot this number to a 9. But even if it doesn’t happen, I’m in a good place already.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/the-nairalife-of-a-family-man-whos-content-at-1-3m-month/

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Family / My Husband’s Mistress Tried To Kill Me by BigCabal: 9:53pm On Sep 03, 2021
Emem* is a 40+ woman whose husband was cheating on her. The experience changed her perspective on life and she wanted to share her story with other women. Here’s what she told me:

My husband and I met in 1999. We dated for three years before getting married. We have three kids together — the first two are in university and the last one is in secondary school. I work as an educationist and run multiple businesses on the side. My husband works as an engineer, which means he is almost always at work, spending weeks away from home at a stretch. I had gotten used to the distance until January 31, 2020.

I was in Lagos on a work trip when I received a WhatsApp message from an anonymous woman. It read that my husband had been dating another woman, and she was planning to kill me.

I ran to the toilet to catch my breath after reading the message. The lady who sent it included details about our house – in case I didn’t believe the story. She refused to tell me her name or her relationship with the woman dating my husband. She said she texted me because she wanted me to act quickly and save my marriage.

When I got home, I asked my husband about this relationship and he denied it. I didn’t believe him because his countenance had changed so I prayed about it.

Shortly after, I saw some receipts laying around. I noticed a name on them, Toks*. I’d seen the name before and when I asked, he said they were doing ajo together. I saw that he’d been sending her hundreds of thousands of naira, and I realised that all the times he’d borrowed money from me, he was probably sending it to this person. There was a time I used my money to build a fence around one of our properties because he said he didn’t have access to money at the time. Meanwhile, he was busy giving money to this mystery woman. I was livid. The message said she cast a spell on him to only do as she pleased.

I was also shocked. He was good with the kids. We laughed a lot. People called us a loving family. How did this happen without me noticing? I don’t have the words to explain how shaken I was. I started dreaming about the whole thing. I kept wondering why she wanted to kill me. She is not the first person to date a married man. I don’t even like wahala. I live a quiet life so why me? Why do you want to kill me? I am someone who speaks to families, newlyweds at church, and students in school. People see me as a role model.

When I first told one of his uncles, he asked me why I was telling him. He said, “This is not new. Every man cheats.” I said I had to tell someone because the woman wants to kill me and he is more or less unavailable these days. His uncle said he would get back to me. A few days later, he asked me to come over. When I got there, he said, “Adultery is not a sin but bringing adultery into your home is a sin.” I was just looking at him. I had to tell him that I have been taking care of the home — providing essentials, paying bills and the kids’ pocket money. Imagine if I didn’t have a job. I would have been begging them for food to feed my children. God forbid.

I reached out to my sister-in-law, who was like a mother to me. She asked me to follow her to church. I am not someone who believes in miracle churches but I had to try. I had nothing else to lose. I was also scared for my life and my children’s life. The pastor was being dramatic when I got there. He said things like, “They want to kill your husband. He already has three chronic illnesses. Look, they are sharing his obituary poster.” My sister-in-law was on the floor crying. I wasn’t moved because I had been praying on my own for a while. After praying with me, he asked me to do certain things to help reverse the spell. I had to use honey in my foods, put salt in our drinking water, and use anointing oil to cook soups. I also had to make a drink for him with fresh coconuts every day for about two weeks.

The truth is, I know he’s been seeing other women. We’ve been together for 21 years. The cheating wasn’t a shock to me. I was just glad he was keeping it away from home. Unbeknownst to me, he was waxing strong with his mistress. One day I saw his old phone lying around and I went through it. On the phone, there were nude pictures of him and her. I kept scrolling and I realised that they had been together for over three years. I was furious. My head felt hot, and it hurt. I think it was around this time I started making voice recordings about the whole thing. In my head, I thought, if they actually kill me, my children need to know the truth. Till today, when I listen to those recordings, I cry.

During the lockdown, I was grateful to be home because I got to see some of the things anonymous had been telling me about like how he would tell me he was at work but he was with her. One time, I took the kids to our other house in town and when we arrived, I noticed that our neighbours were looking at us as if they had never seen us before. Throughout our weekend stay, they looked incredulous whenever my kids came out of the house to play football.

I tried not to think too much of it until we returned back to the city and I got a message from one of our neighbours. She said that there was another woman living in the house, whenever I was not there. I asked them to send me evidence whenever they saw her in the house or both of them together, just so I could have it. I couldn’t believe that the house that I paid for and furnished with my money was being used for nonsense.

Another day, the same woman called me to tell me that my husband just drove into the house with a girl. I said it’s a lie because he had just told me that he was at work and wouldn’t return for about a week. She laughed and said, “Your husband is here.” I asked her to help me monitor him. I confirmed from the neighbourhood vigilante that he was indeed in town and they had gone shopping. I couldn’t believe that he would go straight from work to her with his dirty clothes that I would have to wash or that we did not have provisions at home, yet he was shopping with his babe. One of my sons, Uwem* is closest to him and likes to wait for him to return with snacks before he eats. I asked Uwem if he had heard from his father. He said no. I asked if he told him when he was coming back, he said no.

I called him twice, he did not pick, so I called his office. I realised that when I called the general office line, they would ask him what they should tell me so I called a woman in another department. I told her someone called me to say they saw him somewhere. Meanwhile, he told me he was at work. She said she was in quarantine but she called the office while I was still on the phone with her. She asked me to stay quiet while she spoke to them. When she asked where my husband was, they said he left by 2. After she ended the call with them, she told me I had to be strong. Then she asked if he was paying the children’s fees. I said yes, she said, “If he stops paying their fees, I will get him arrested but you have to sleep tonight.” Of course, I couldn’t sleep.

The next day, Uwem strolled into the kitchen while I was arranging the snacks I bought for him. He said, “Daddy has been calling you but the network is bad.” I asked where his father said he was. He said, “At the office.” I asked what the background sounded like. Uwem said it sounded like a room, “Like he just woke up.” I couldn’t sleep that night either. I was picturing everything. How I would go to the airport to pick him up and drop him off, meanwhile he would be diverting trips. I wanted to die but death didn’t come. I thought about what I could do. I can’t go to the girl or her family because according to anonymous, she was dangerous and her family was in on it. Morning met me there.

That’s when I started praying for God to guard my heart, so I would stop being shocked by his actions. The next day, he called me twice. I didn’t pick. In the night, Uwem said, “Daddy said I should greet you.” I said, “Greet him too, dear.”

My sister-in-law called the next day. She wanted me to come to her house to get the anointed honey her pastor recommended. I told her I had work and couldn’t make it. I couldn’t help it so I asked her if her brother was with her. She said he told her he was at home. I told her what I had found out. She tried to call him but he did not pick her calls. She had to send him a text saying it was a matter of life and death before he called her. She asked him where he was, he said work. She asked when he was coming to visit her, he said that weekend. She couldn’t believe he was lying to her. In my head, I was like welcome to the party. Later, Uwem called me to say his father was coming home. After work, I went to an eatery I liked, bought food to make myself happy. I made sure I returned later than I usually do. When I went home, I saw that he had piled the clothes, waiting for me to wash it. He was eating my soup in the kitchen — soup that I didn’t have money to put meat inside. He was smiling. In my head, I thought, “Who is smiling with you?” I said “You have come” and walked past him. That night, I called up to five people to keep myself occupied. He noticed something was different. Instead of confronting me, he went to the children’s room. I paid him no mind. I went to bed. Later he joined me and tried to touch me. I laid there like a stone. When he got tired, he left me alone. I prayed for him not to die in all of this because how would I have dealt with the shame when people find out what killed him? They will say I cannot keep a man.

That Saturday morning, my husband left the house before I did. As I was driving out, I saw a car that looked like my husband’s car and there was a woman in the passenger’s seat so I followed it. When my husband noticed that I was following him, he tried to run into a MOPOL base but they refused to open the gate. I blocked them with my car, rolled down my glass and took pictures. My husband was asking me why I was doing this? I said, “Please, dear, smile for the camera.” That was my evidence for his family. He quickly drove off and the MOPOL men came to ask me what’s going on. I said, “My husband and a side chick. You know men now.” They didn’t say anything. Me too, I left. I won’t lie, that incident made me weak. I was just thinking if I was younger, I would have followed him. I would make sure both cars hit each other since he wants to be mad enough to bring her to the city. I thought of my children and all the people looking up to me and decided to leave it be.

I told my sister-in-law everything. She said he had still not gone to visit her. I told her that I will report the issue to my people because it has gotten out of hand. She begged not to do so, that she will handle her brother. I also thought about telling my kids but the woman at his office called and told me not to. She said she left her husband and it hurt her kids. I told her I was going to. When I got home, I was too tired to do anything. I just lay there. My sister-in-law called back to say he came over to report himself that I caught them. He said he had been trying to leave the girl but she wouldn’t leave him alone. She told me she would handle it and I should be patient, that God wanted it to happen this way. She begged me to let him into the house so he wouldn’t disappear, so that he would come and apologise to me. I waited for him. I didn’t even go to church as planned.

I was watching a church programme on my phone around eight 0’ clock, when he came back home. He asked me to reduce the volume so he could speak to me. He said the same things he told his sister — that he had been trying to leave the girl to no avail. He said in the bible when the prodigal son came back, his father threw a party for him so I should be happy he is back. He begged me to not tell the church. Then he said, “Don’t blame me, since I came back to this house, you have not been welcoming to me.” That’s when I got up. I asked him who am I to not forgive him when he is quoting the bible but I have a question, “Do you live here or do you just stop by? When did your office actually release you from work?” He looked at me for a while before saying, “You have started listening to outsiders abi?” I laughed and asked if he had seen me with anybody. He said people want to spoil his marriage. It was all hilarious to me. We sat there till past eight, when I asked him to end the meeting so I could go and sleep. He said let’s pray. Coming from someone that does not open his mouth to pray LOL. I said okay. He prayed that it should be well with his family and God should remove his eyes from all distractions. I noticed that he said distractions, not a distraction. I just kept quiet and said Amen. Later that week, his sisters took him to church. He was told to pray and fast but he didn’t do as long as prescribed. I was just glad that they were able to see that I wasn’t the problem.

I noticed that he started coming home earlier. He started spending more time with the kids. He started calling his family more. When he talks to them, they will call me and say, “Do you know my brother has not called me for three years now? He doesn’t even pick my calls. This is a miracle.” He even took me out to have lunch. I also noticed that he put his phone on vibration because Toks kept calling him. I was even feeling bad for him because he was scared, now that he knew juju was involved.

By January, I noticed that he started picking her calls again and he was being secretive. He refused to admit to it so I didn’t say anything. I just prayed for him. I also stopped paying the bills in the house. No be me be mumu. Now, I will let him know what is needed at home as opposed to doing it myself. One time, because I did not pay light bills, we didn’t have light for up to three weeks. What’s my own? I turn on the generator, charge my phone and turn it back off. I asked my sons to look for schools to go abroad, let their father pay international tuition. Since he doesn’t know what to use money to do. The first one is leaving in September.

I told him the love I had for him when we got married is not what I have for him now and I am only staying because of the kids. Personally, I am focused on ticking off things on my bucket list. If I feel like eating anything, I go out and buy it for myself instead of waiting around. I embrace my kids more these days and find myself appreciating nature. I want to be able to say I lived for me if anything happens.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/my-husbands-mistress-tried-to-kill-me/

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/her/
Romance / He Loved Me, So He Let Me Go by BigCabal: 9:21pm On Sep 03, 2021
It’s June 2021, and I’m meeting an old flame. It’s been about a year since he broke up with me, and he’s here to answer a question that plagued me for months after the split: Why did he leave me?

For you to understand why this means so much to me, we will have to go back to 2017 when it all started.

I was in my second year at Ahmadu Bello University and my dating life was non-existent. The thing nobody mentions about being single is how the boredom gnaws away at you. I wanted some excitement. Or at least something to look forward to.

One day, my roommate casually talked about Badoo — the dating site. I thought it was a good way to meet new people and see what would happen. I registered on the dating site, and sure, there were tons of people. But I didn’t vibe with anyone. At least not until two weeks after I joined.

Ismail changed everything.

When I matched with Ismail, I didn’t think anything would come out of it. Our worlds were slightly apart — he was a masters student in my university, and I was an undergraduate. However, he sounded interesting during our conversations, so I gave him some of my time. After a few weeks of phone calls and text messages, I agreed to meet him. The only condition was that it had to be in a crowded area.

We met at the university gate. God, was he a fine man! Light skinned, tall, and his palms were soft when I touched them. I took a liking to him immediately. I held on to his hand and wouldn’t let go as he walked me back to my house. Two days later, we met again at his house where we spent a magical time together. It had been a year since I had sex but I knew I wanted to sleep with him. However, he didn’t make a move. There I was, wondering how someone could be so clueless. When I told him I was leaving, this guy tried to help me put my shoes on. I had had enough. I don’t know where this came from, but I looked at him and blurted: “I want to do.”

Now, he got it. Slowly, his soft hands gripped me and pinned me against a wall in his room. We had sex for only a few minutes but I knew this was one I could never forget.

We met a couple of times after that to hook up. We were having fun until he told me he wanted to be in a relationship with me. I liked him a lot, but in my head, he only wanted a relationship because of the sex we were having, and I wasn’t down with that. Besides, there was someone else I was also talking to at the time. I did what I thought was right for me and ghosted Ismail for months.

In January 2018, a couple of months after I cut him off, Ismail reached out. I had found out that the other person I was talking to had a girlfriend, so my guard was down. On that phone call, Ismail insisted that he wanted a well-defined relationship with me. He was in Kaduna, visiting his parents when he called, but we agreed to meet up and discuss the situation when he returned to Zaria a few days later.

In February 2018, we met again for the first time in months. All the doubts I had in my mind evaporated when I saw him again. He was still tall and fine as I remember. I was sure he was in it for the long haul now. There was no way he couldn’t possibly be. We had a long discussion, but at the end of it, our relationship had started. It didn’t take long for Ismail to become my best friend. We shared everything and did everything together. We managed our money together and even shared one toothbrush. I knew his social media passwords, his bank details, and his ATM card pin. I could log on to his WhatsApp and reply to his messages or update a status, and it wouldn’t be a problem. Nothing either one of us owned was off-limits. He was family, and that’s the foundation our relationship was built on. It was that deep.

The only downside? Ismail was an unemployed postgraduate student with no money. At one point, his brother was sending him money but this stopped after the brother got married. Although I was also a student, I had more money — courtesy of my parents. Naturally, I became the provider in the relationship.

This wasn’t a problem for me, but it was for my friends. They couldn’t understand why I was doing so much for a guy that could just up and leave anytime he wanted. They had a lot to say, especially when I started getting suitors — people who wanted to marry me. My friends wanted me to leave the relationship and be with someone else that could provide for me.

Ismail and I had never had a conversation about marriage, so I feared my friends might be right. I could be making a big mistake. When I finally brought up the conversation with him — trying to get where his head was at — he said he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from, so he couldn’t answer yet. But all he knew was that he loved me. Our bond was strong, and I believed him. From where I stood, he would never leave.

Like every good love story, tragedy also struck ours. How? The age-old cheating. In 2019, about one year into our relationship, I cheated on Ismail. It was with a guy who didn’t mean anything to me. Wrong place, wrong time. He met me at a time when I was tired of Ismail not manning up. Tired of me being the sole provider in the relationship. Immediately I slept with the guy, I knew I didn’t want him — Ismail was who I desired.

I didn’t tell Ismail what I had done but maybe I should have. He found out from looking through my chats with the other guy. I could tell it broke him and I knew I bleeped up. But he forgave me, or at least that’s what he said.

Later in 2019, his house rent expired and he said he couldn’t afford to renew it, especially since he was done with his Masters. It was time for him to return to Kaduna, our hometown, but he was willing to give a long-distance relationship a try.

We didn’t see each other for a couple of weeks after he left but we talked every day. When school went on semester break, I dashed home immediately. I couldn’t wait to see the love of my life.

Something weird happened on the day we arranged to meet: he got to the hotel we were going to meet before I did, and since I was going to pay for the room, he had to wait outside for me. He was on a call when I saw him, and the moment he realised that I had arrived, he ended the call abruptly. I was like “Babe, who are you talking to on the phone?” but he waved it off. When I checked his phone later, he’d wiped his call history. He was hiding something.

I probed further and checked his Facebook. I found a girl he’d been sending cute messages to, for six months. I also found proof that he had spent time with this girl after seeing me off a few months earlier in another hotel room I paid for.

I confronted him in the morning, and he didn’t deny it. God, the pain I felt! I couldn’t help myself, so I let the tears fall freely.

I travelled to Abuja later that week because I wanted some space from him. Ismail called me the entire week, trying to apologise. By the end of the first week, it made sense to let it go. I’d cheated on him once too, remember? The scores were even, and now we can try to patch things up.

Fast forward to 2020, two days before the lockdown was announced, we met up again in a hotel. The whole Covid talk had started getting to me and I understood that a lockdown was imminent. So, I just wanted to spend time with the love of my life before hell broke loose. And that’s what we did. We talked about our lives — where we were at and what the future looked like. I remember he said something along the lines of “Babe, I love you, and I want us to work out. I don’t have much and it’s not going to be easy. But trust me, you’re the one I love and we’re going to work things out.”

God, I loved that he said those words. We were going to be alright, and that was all I wanted to know.

That’s why it didn’t make sense when he started acting up barely two months after. The frequency of his calls reduced. If I called him and he missed it, he wouldn’t call him back. The seemingly harmless questions I used to ask him started to irritate him. I could ask him “What are you doing?” and he’d go “Why are you asking me.”

Of course, I became miserable. Following the advice of a friend, I called him in June 2020 to have another conversation about where we were and what we are doing. On that call, he dropped a bombshell that still rings in my head till today.

He said “I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t love you anymore.”

When I asked him what the reason could be, he said he hadn’t been able to let go of the time I cheated on him. Granted, he cheated too, but the fact that I forgave him didn’t mean he forgave me.

I nearly died. A lot was happening at the time. First, it was the lockdown and the uncertainty of the time was wearing everyone down. Then I had to deal with this too.

I wasn’t going to let go without a fight, so I texted him the following day

Me: “Babe, are you sure about this.”

Him: “Yes. I don’t want you anymore.”

My laptop was with him and he told me to make plans to get it back. We agreed to meet at our usual hotel the following week. Well, we slept together again. But when he didn’t spend the night with me, I knew this relationship was indeed over. I had to move on.

Getting over someone you love is a hard thing to do, even if you have the best support system. Months after we broke up, I was still thinking about Ismail and the events that led to our split. The memory of our years together haunted me and the futility of it all broke me over and over again. I gave the relationship my all, yet I had nothing to show for it — not even a concrete explanation. Nothing prepares you for this kind of thing.

I should mention that I got into another relationship about three months after Ismail broke up with me — how it happened is another story. I just wanted to move on as fast as I could and my new boyfriend was there for me when I needed him the most. But he couldn’t give me what I needed the most: closure. Only Ismail could. So, I reached out to him repeatedly, trying to find out if there was still a chance we could get back together. The answer remained the same. There was none.

In the following months, I went through different phases of sadness and bitterness. If Ismail could leave me, then anyone else would. Thankfully, my boyfriend understood and was there for me all through. But I still wanted my closure. I wanted it so bad.

In June 2021, I saw Ismail again. He reached out to me, wanting to talk. That was an opportunity I wasn’t expecting and I wasn’t going to pass on it. Thankfully, my boyfriend knew how much it meant to me and said I could see him.

I knew the question I wanted to ask Ismail and it kept playing in my head on my way to where I was going to meet him: “Why did you leave me?”

When I asked him the question, he came clean for the first time. He said he didn’t leave because I cheated. He loved me despite that. He left because he was pushing 30 years and hadn’t figured his life out, and he would hate himself if his journey affected mine. He couldn’t offer me stability and wasn’t sure it would change soon. He didn’t want me to bet on him because he wouldn’t bet on himself either. He loved me so much, so he had to let me go.

This was the closure I had wanted for months. But I didn’t know what to say. If I had heard these words months earlier, I would have wrapped him in a hug and told him not to worry about me. I would have assured him that it was okay and we would figure it out together. I wish he had told me. Things could have gone differently.

I had a new life already, though, and I needed to return to it — to my boyfriend. Ismail was the love of my life, and I will never forget that or the fact that he gave me the closure I desperately needed. Till today, I remember his words. He loved me, so he let me go.

Ultimately, he gave me what I needed to move on.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/ships/he-loved-me-so-he-let-me-go/

Read more stories like this here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/ships/
Career / 10 Quizzes To Take This Weekend by BigCabal: 11:38am On Sep 03, 2021
1. Can You Make 10 Words Out Of Essence In 1 Minute?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quizz-can-you-make-10-words-out-of-essence-in-1-minute/

2. If You Score 12 In This Quiz, It Means Your Jollof Rice Is Bomb
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-if-you-score-12-in-this-quiz-it-means-your-jollof-rice-is-bomb/

3. Are You Really An Angel Fan If You Score Less Than 8/10 In This Quiz?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-are-you-really-an-angel-fan-if-you-score-less-than-8-10-in-this-quiz/

4. Which King Of Boys 2 Villain Are You?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-which-king-of-boys-2-villain-are-you/

5. Score 10/13 On This Riddles Quiz To Prove You’re An Efiko
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-score-10-13-on-this-riddles-quiz-to-prove-youre-an-efiko/

6. How Chaotic Is Your Love Life?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-how-chaotic-is-your-love-life/

7. If You Get 10/20 On This Quiz, You Were A Gifted Child
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-if-you-get-10-20-on-this-quiz-you-were-a-gifted-child/

8. Can You Score 13/15 On This Rhyming Words Quiz In 2 Minutes?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-can-you-score-13-15-on-this-rhyming-words-quiz-in-2-minutes/

9. Can You Identify 12/15 African Countries Without Vowels In 2 Minutes?
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-can-you-identify-12-15-african-countries-without-vowels-in-2-minutes/

10. Only True Liquorose Fans Can Score 8/10 On This Quiz
https://www.zikoko.com/quizzes/quiz-only-true-liquorose-fans-can-score-8-10-on-this-quiz/

Take more quizzes here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/quizzes/
Career / Working Law Religiously For Self And Family At ₦225,000 Monthly by BigCabal: 12:04am On Sep 02, 2021
A consistent pattern in this #NairaLife is how this 25-year-old lawyer’s black tax increases as her income increases. But she doesn’t mind a lot. So how does she balance her black tax obligations with her hopes and aspirations?

What’s your oldest memory of money?

Primary school. Besides my allowance, my parents used to pay my siblings and me anything from ₦5 to ₦10 to wash plates, usually when there was a big pile in the kitchen. My parents also had an ice block business run by my mum. Whenever we helped out, they’d pay us between ₦30 and ₦50 naira. This was in the late 90s through the early 2000s, and my relationship with money then was “earn and spend”.

Would you say you were rich?

I won’t say we were rich, but we were comfortable. We had a grass to grace story. When my dad first started working in the civil service, things were a little hard at home. By the time I was born, he had gotten a few promotions and a flat.

The ice block business was the first side business my parents started. When I was in JSS 1 or JSS 2, my mum opened a bookshop. So we had multiple income streams. The only tricky thing was that a lot of people in our extended family depended on my dad, and navigating that was a bit of a challenge.

Tell me about how it worked.

A lot of people on my dad’s side of the family saw him as a big man. That meant paying school fees for their kids. During the holidays, about three or four cousins would come to our place, and he’d pay for their summer lessons. Asides from that, when someone wanted to start a business, my dad was the first person they’d call. Every month, he always had a new list of family expenses to worry about. At one point, his black tax was even larger than our home’s expenses. My mum wasn’t a fan of that.

How did she handle it?

My mum understood that my dad was generous to a fault, so she advised him to do something for himself and his kids.

It’s funny but my dad didn’t have a lot of assets to his name, and it was because of all the money he was giving out. Even the house we lived in was owned by the government. Eventually, my mum convinced him to buy land and build a house in our village and another land on the outskirts of the city we lived in.

They still had constant arguments about how much money he was giving out. Since this caused friction between them, my mum was particular about managing the ice block and bookshop businesses by herself, so she could have her own security. If she had left the businesses to my dad, I’m not sure we would have seen one profit from them.

I should add that I was still young when this started and wasn’t always at home because I went to boarding school. The only thing I knew was that they paid my school fees and gave us an allowance. It wasn’t until SSS 1 or SSS 2 that I started knowing the true affairs of things.

Got it. Enough about your parents, what was boarding school like for you?

I went to a state school, so there were people from different walks of life. At the start of secondary school, my monthly allowance was ₦1k or ₦1500. It increased over time to ₦2500.

Boarding school taught me how to save. It was there I realised that I didn’t like not having the safety of money, so I took saving seriously in JSS 3.

During the holidays after I wrote my Junior WAEC, an opportunity to make more money presented itself.

What was it?

My mum had my younger sister, so she was at home for a while. She put me and my older sister in charge of the bookshop, and she gave us ₦1k – ₦2k when she could. But we figured out that we could make more if we added a markup on some products. For example, if the selling price of a book was ₦200, we would add ₦50 naira to it. By the time school resumed, I had made about ₦10k from the shop. It opened my eyes, and I was like “Wow. So this is how people make money.”

Do you remember what you spent the money on?

I spent the money on myself to the fullest. I got a wristwatch, a pair of slippers and other things I had always wanted to buy. When I returned to school, I felt like a big girl.

Lmao. I guess you continued helping out at the shop during the holidays.

Yes. This continued even after I left secondary school in 2011. The shop really came through for me and my siblings. We even started stocking the shop with books my mum didn’t sell, especially Harlequin books.

I got into the university in 2011 to study law. My allowance was ₦5k per month, which was hardly enough for a uni student. I augmented my allowance with whatever I made at the shop during the semester and session breaks — I was always back at the shop during the holidays. On average, I was making ₦20k every month from the markup and sales of books I bought and put on the shelves.

I lived within my means while in school — I cooked my meals and rarely ate outside and bought thrift clothes. So the money I made at the shop during the previous semester and my allowance were always enough for me to live on until the next semester break when I’d return to the bookshop. While my classmates were going for internships, I was at the shop trying to make as much as I could. That place really saved my life.

I bet.

Things changed a bit during the session break in 2017. I was going into my final year in school at the time.

What happened?

I had an accident, which caused some damage to one of my legs.

I’m so sorry.

Thank you. My dad was retiring, and my eldest sister was going to a school abroad. He also had to figure out how to settle my medical bills. Both expenses ran into millions of naira. That was a lot of money for a civil servant.

Do you have an idea how he raised this?

His savings. He had money in his domiciliary account, but the events wiped most of it. When he retired the following year, he used his severance pay to complete building a house on the land my mum convinced him to buy a couple of years back. Now, we were essentially surviving on my mum’s bookshop, which wasn’t as profitable as it used to be. The economy was hard, and that impacted everything.

Omo. Tell me, what changed after the accident?

My life as I knew it. I couldn’t go to the shop for the longest time because I was recovering. Although, people gave me money gifts during this time — I got about ₦50k — I would have preferred to be able to make my own money. I needed some things when I was going back to school and that brought all the money I had down to ₦20k.

I resumed school a month before the first semester exams, so there was a lot to catch up on. After my father’s retirement, I got my first reality check about what it meant for us. He sent me ₦90k for my rent as opposed to the usual ₦120k. One of my sisters and I used our money to complete the rent.

My finances were non-existent at this point. I wasn’t doing anything for money and was pretty much depending on the goodwill of people. And I had to worry about my final year project too. Thankfully, my mum and my sister funded it but I had to do a lot of things I would ordinarily outsource myself to save money. Anyway, I graduated from university in 2017.

Well done. What came after uni?

Thank you. There was a short wait before I went to law school. I had recovered by then, so I returned to the shop. However, the economy was on a fast decline and customers weren’t coming as they used to. Whatever little money I made there, I used it to get things I needed for law school. I had ₦5k on me when I was going to school.

Law school wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. My family came through for me. I could go home during weekends if I wanted to get stuff. The shop was there for me to make urgent ₦2k too. Also, I had a boyfriend — we started dating right before law school and he was there for me all the way through.

Thank God for the best support systems.

Fast forward to post-law school. While I was waiting for my call to the bar, I was making some money from the shop. I also started giving legal advice to small businesses which fetched between ₦3k and ₦5k. I saved ₦50k doing these things from August to November 2018. I was called to the bar and mobilised for NYSC in October.

Where did you work during your service year?

I was posted to a law firm and the pay was ₦40k. The federal government was also paying ₦19800. The primary problem during my service year was the amount of money I spent on transportation. I was earning ₦59800 and spending up to ₦30k on transportation.

Why was that?

My parents lived on the outskirts of the city and my office was in the city centre. It was a struggle to move around on days my boyfriend didn’t call me a cab. Sometimes, I slept at a friend’s place. Despite this, I was always tired and frustrated, which makes sense — I was spending about half of my earnings on moving around and didn’t have enough money to save. My quality of life was pretty much non-existent.

The best thing I could do was to find a place closer to work.

That makes sense. Did it happen?

Yes. I got a one-room apartment in February or March 2018. The basic rent was ₦300k but the total package was ₦500k. My sister — the one studying abroad — had promised to support me with rent, but when I got a space, she was figuring out how to pay for her PhD. Thankfully, my boyfriend came through.

Nice.

Although the space I got was small, it was worth it. I was now spending about 45 minutes to one hour on my commute and spending about ₦15k on transport in an average month. Let me even give a breakdown of my monthly expenses during my service year.

After the end of my service year, I quit the law firm. The pay was too little for the trouble. I had been applying for jobs and attending interviews before I finished NYSC. Shortly after my service year, I was hired at a law firm. My salary was ₦120k.

You went from earning ₦40k to ₦120k. How did that feel?

I was so excited. It seemed like I was earning a lot of money. But do you know what it means when they say someone earns their living? I earned that money. I worked long hours repeatedly. Sometimes I was at the office until 11 p.m.

It was while I was at this job that I started paying black tax. Omo, e choke. My parents didn’t ask but I knew things were not as good at home. Every month, I was saving between ₦20k and ₦25k. After paying other bills, I had enough left to send ₦20k home. I wouldn’t say it didn’t affect me because, by the middle of each month, I’d be down to ₦5k. Afterwards, I’d be forced to take out of my savings. The monthly cycle was to save money, take out of my savings, return whatever I took after I got paid, take out of the savings again.

Sounds hectic.

Oh, it was. I almost forgot about this. I started a legal business during NYSC, helping people establish businesses. I made ₦20k in profit from the first company I got as a client. A lot wasn’t coming in from it, so I dropped it.

While I was at my second job, I picked the business up again because a colleague was also doing it, and he was gracious enough to show me the ropes. This was in February 2020 and I started making ₦40k – ₦50k from each client I worked with. Before long, I had about ₦150k in my savings. It didn’t take long before I had to use it.

Why?

Something came up with my health, and it was related to the accident I had in 2017. The medical bill I incurred was ₦200k. My mum gave me ₦50k to complete the payment. A couple of weeks later, the pandemic hit and I had to deal with a 50% pay cut.

Ah, that breakfast.

Lmao. Nothing came from my side hustle either.

You were now earning ₦60k with no side hustle. What did that mean for you?

It was figuring out how to live on ₦40k after sending ₦20k home to my parents because my mum’s shop was locked up. It also meant that I couldn’t save. To be honest, I didn’t try to.

Fair enough. When did you return to receiving your full salary?

July 2020. My boss also paid me a ₦100k bonus in July 2020. I put ₦60k in my savings, sent ₦20k and used ₦20k to buy stuff for myself. Let’s be honest, I deserve it.

Haha. I mean, I agree.

After that, I was trying to rebuild my savings. I knew my salary at my job wasn’t going to do it for me, so I started looking for a new job. To be fair, they increased my salary to ₦140k in august, but I didn’t think it was enough to make me stay. I eventually quit the job in November and resumed my new job in December.

What’s the new job about?

I got an offer to work in the legal department of a financial services company. My salary? ₦200k. It was a major bump for me, even though my friends in other firms were earning between ₦350k and ₦400k. Sha, everybody dey run their race.

I’m still at the company and aside from my basic pay, they pay for my internet and give me another ₦25k stipend every month. So really, I’m earning ₦225k.

What’s happened between the time you got the job and now?

I got serious with my business establishment hustle in January 2021, so I set it up properly. I leveraged social media, and it’s been very helpful for referrals. Sometimes, I make up to ₦250k from my side hustle in a month.

That’s lit.

However, my black tax has also increased to about ₦50k per month. The major family expenses are sorted by me and my older sisters, then some by my mum. Nobody disturbs my dad for money now.

It’s not been that bad. My standard of living has also increased over time. Can I break down my monthly expenses now?

Yes, please.

My core savings goes into my PiggyVest account. My mum manages the ajo thing, so I send the money to her every month. Most of the money I use to manage myself during the month is from my side hustle.

I see you have money in mutual funds. What do you think about investments?
I only put money in it because my company offers a mutual funds service. I’m not interested in investments like that. I’ve realised that you need to invest a reasonable amount of money to get decent returns. I’m looking forward to getting my capital back by the end of the year.

Would you say you have a fear of investments?
I know that I have a low-risk appetite. My mum was always careful with money so I think that’s where the fear came from. I’m always thinking, what if something happens to the money. I like financial security and at the moment, my savings give me that. I know I have access to the money whenever I need it.

How much do you have in savings right now?
About ₦700k in my PiggyVest and ₦200k in my mutual funds.

What have your current earnings meant for your standard of living?
I moved into a bigger apartment recently. The rent is ₦1m but I’m sharing it with a roommate. My boyfriend paid my share of the rent, so I didn’t have to worry about it. I have stopped buying thrift clothes because I can now afford to buy new clothes every other month. Also, I spent ₦120k on a wig this year although I had to save for three months to afford it. I had been spending money on wigs that didn’t last long, so I wanted to invest in a good one.


My standard of living has improved but my parents’ haven’t. And since I centre my life around my family, I can’t enjoy myself too much without thinking about them.

I’m curious, do you have a plan for medical emergencies?
My sister pays for premium health insurance for my parents, and it puts me at ease. I don’t have up to ₦1m to my name, which isn’t enough for big emergencies. But I have HMO at work, which should cover a few things. For the most part, my boyfriend is my safety cushion. And maybe my sister who is abroad.

A segue. How much do you think you should be earning now?
Oh, I have been promoted at work and will start earning ₦250k at work from next month. People I went to law school with and got jobs in top law firms are earning about ₦400k – ₦500k. I think I should be earning within that range too, but things don’t work out that way in this country. I truly appreciate my salary. I’m content with this for now.

What will get you to your next level of income?
I don’t plan to leave my current job any time soon but I hope I get another promotion. Ultimately, the plan is to leave Nigeria for school next year, so I need to earn more to save more. I’ve been applying for scholarships and if one of them comes through, I want to have enough money to sort out the other bills that come with it. The only thing I can do is work hard and hope that promotion comes through.

I want to ask, is there anything you would like now but can’t afford?
A car! I really want one. However, I’m saving for school. At the moment, the option is choosing between a car and an education. I’m going with the obvious choice.

On the flip side, what was the last thing you spent money on that improved the quality of your life?
My AirPods. I got it for ₦75k, and it’s made my life so much better. Now, I can be in a meeting and doing chores at the same time. I love it so much.

What part of your finances do you think you could be better at?
I don’t want to say managing my black tax better, but that’s it. I’m always thinking about sending more money home. It’s not easy to navigate.

Going forward, what do you imagine your black tax will look like?
I don’t think it’s going to completely go away. As it stands, I have four siblings. Two of them are older than me, so I don’t have to worry about them. But the last two — a sister and a brother — are still in school, and they need us. The only option is for myself and my older sisters to get our money up and assist my mum. The black tax isn’t going anywhere.

How has your perspective about money evolved over time?

I’ve grown from earning money and spending it. I still think money is meant to be spent but I’m more responsible with money now. I do YOLO in a while because I believe there has to be a balance between making money and spending money. The point is, I don’t spend more than I can handle.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your financial happiness?

6. I’m not earning as much as I want, and I can’t afford to spend money on a couple of important things. I shouldn’t have to choose between going to school and buying a car. I want to be able to spend money without looking at a list for too long. Also, the black tax is tiring — it worries me all the time.

What would get you to an 8, a 9 or maybe even a 10?

A significant salary raise and growing my side business to scale. For starters, I won’t feel the black tax a lot, and that’s half of my troubles solved already.

Source: [url]https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/nairalife-working-law-religiously-for-self-and-family-at-%e2%82%a6225k-month/[/url]

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Business / Central Bank Issues E-Naira Guidelines, Charges And Transaction Limits by BigCabal: 11:41pm On Sep 01, 2021
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released new guidelines on how a state-backed digital currency (e-Naira) will be regulated, designed, and issued. The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is on schedule to be launched on the 1st of October.

Expected to be a legal tender for the entire country, the e-Naira will be accessible to both bank account and non-account holders, according to a CBN presentation seen by TechCabal.

Consumer Wallets

In order to meet the October deadline, a three-tier consumer “speed wallet” system will be issued by the apex bank before banks and other licensed operators can provide their own wallets for the e-Naira.

The tier 1 wallet is open to anyone without a bank account. It also comes with a transfer limit of ₦50,000 and a cumulative balance of ₦300,000 fixed daily. The minimum requirement to open this wallet is a National Identity Number (NIN).

For tier 2 wallets users, an existing bank account with a linked bank verification number (BVN) is the minimum requirement for this level. Users are restricted to sending and receiving ₦200,000 daily and having a balance of ₦500,000.

Tier 3 wallet holders can transact up to ₦1,000,000 daily with the cumulative balance set at ₦5,000,000. At least a BVN is needed to get this wallet category.

Transaction limits on merchant-level wallets are also set at ₦1,000,000 per day, though there are no limits to how much users can have in their accounts.

Zero charges

The e-Naira also has a non-interest-bearing CBDC status and in addition, there won’t be charges on merchant services, user-to-merchant, and peer-to-peer wallet transactions.

The zero charges also apply when users send money from their wallets to bank accounts and make withdrawals at agent or merchant locations.

After the launch, Nigerian banks can invite all their customers to register for the e-Naira, with necessary validation and verification processes.

The banking regulator notes that the e-naira system, being a National Critical Infrastructure, will be subject to comprehensive security checks.

According to the central bank, Nigerian banks are to “market and promote the adoption of eNaira as a digital version of cash to existing and potential customers, in support of financial inclusion objective of the CBN.”

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/08/30/cbn-issues-e-naira-guidelines/

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Business / Customer Loyalty Is Helping Nigerian Fintech Apps Through Regulatory Crackdown by BigCabal: 11:08pm On Sep 01, 2021
On August 17, a court in Abuja granted an order to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to freeze bank accounts belonging to four startups, which allow Nigerians to invest in foreign securities, for 180 days.

The crackdown by the apex bank could result in severe unintended casualties for the companies; but above all, it puts at risk what is arguably their most valuable asset — customers’ trust.

The global finance industry is built on the foundation of trust. And in Nigeria, where more than 80 million citizens live below the poverty line, trust is even more paramount. Most Nigerians are likely to be skeptical about storing their hard-earned Naira with a digital-only company for extended periods.

And the fintech platforms affected by CBN’s move — Trove, Risevest, Bamboo, and Chaka — know this.

Beyond offering financial products with attractive investment returns, the startups have invested in building a customer trust and loyalty bank. This has mostly been through providing consistent financial literacy and transparent communication over the years, primarily via emails and Telegram channels.

Each of the fintech firms has thousands of members in its respective Telegram community — Risevest (+12,000), Chaka (+5,000), and Trove (+3,000) — where inquiries and queries are responded to in real-time with opportunities to further educate their users.

News of the embargo on their bank accounts would ordinarily have sparked a frenzy among customers and it did for a moment. Some users took to social media to express their shock and others made moves to withdraw their funds, exhibiting a natural human instinct to fight or take flight when faced with a crisis or an unexpected situation.

But the majority of users have held on, helped by their trust in the companies, which quickly communicated the suspension to customers while assuring them their funds were safe.

“I got an email from Risevest before I even read in the news that their accounts were barred. So I was already calm knowing that my money was safe,” Motunrayo Koyejo, a software engineer and Rise Vest user, told TechCabal. “I don’t think I would have this much confidence if I didn’t get that email.”

While the suspension affected four retail trading apps, there is a tendency that such clampdown can result in contagion; a situation where a crisis affecting some companies spreads to other players in the industry.

Stephanie Osaji, who uses Cowrywise for savings said after seeing news of the court order, she was “scared, thought about my funds and was wondering what would happen to my money” if the platform suddenly shut down.

“To be honest, I considered withdrawing my money. I remember logging into the app and checking when my next due date for withdrawal was,” Osaji said. “But then I just told myself that they would figure it out. I mean Nigerian startups almost always have a way of figuring things out.”

Another Cowrywise user, Mosopefoluwa Okeowo, told TechCabal she thinks fintech startups will always find a solution. “I honestly believe in them totally.”

This sort of consumer confidence is one that takes years to build. Communicating with customers and stakeholders at the very early stages of a mishap is crucial to reassuring their confidence.

See the money I have in risevest yh, even if it will go like that we go die there. Thats how much I believe in Eke

Sani Yusuf (@saniyusuf) August 17, 2021

Sem. Sem. Started investing with Eke so long ago. Before he even started coming this way and we had never met until years later.

Rise will survive. https:///a42wEDeVAW


Gossy (@gossyomega) August 23, 2021

Nigerians embracing investment-tech amid economic uncertainty
Africa’s bustling fintech ecosystem has been increasingly defined by payments specialists and digital banks.

But a crop of wealth management startups has emerged in recent years, the majority helping Nigerians invest in foreign stocks and assets easier than ever before.

Investing in reliable financial assets appeals to many millennials in the country who are keen on hedging their future wealth against the unstable Naira, amid broader economic uncertainty.

With ₦1,000 (around $2), anyone with a smartphone and internet can register on Chaka and browse through over 11,000 shares publicly listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and stock exchanges in the U.S.

Savings and investment apps also boast superior returns on deposits. Compared to less than 5% interest rates on fixed deposits offered by Nigerian banks, Rise Vest offers a guaranteed 10% annual return on its fixed-income offering.

“I think it’s safer to save money with banks but one gets little or nothing in return,” Koyejo said. “That’s not an option in this economy. I’d rather keep my money and invest with Rise Vest. I don’t plan to use the money I have invested soon anyway.”

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/08/25/nigerian-fintech-app-users-confident-despite-regulatory-crackdown/

Read more like this here: https://techcabal.com/category/fintech/
Nairaland / General / My Current Job Is Having Rich Friends by BigCabal: 8:55pm On Sep 01, 2021
The subject of today’s What She Said is a 22-year-old woman who became an orphan at the age of 11. She talks about being raised by her strict grandmother, leaving her first school because of cultists, going to film school instead of studying medicine, having rich friends and pursuing a life of luxury and fame.


What’s a childhood memory you can’t forget

When I was younger, my dad beat me till I almost fainted because I did not wear slippers downstairs. I actually think he did it because he was drunk.

He was usually drunk and whenever he got that way, he would beat me a lot. When he died, I didn’t like the fact that he was dead but because of the beatings, I wasn’t particularly sad either.

Apart from the beatings, he was a very cool dad. When he came home from work, he would buy gifts not just for me, but for the other children in the compound. So, all the children loved him, but I didn’t — because of the beatings.

What about your mum, where was she in all this?

Well, I never grew up with my mum. She dropped me with my father when I was just 4 months old. It’s not like I didn’t know who my mum was, she was just never an active part of my life. She later remarried and had other children, but my dad’s mum never allowed me to interact with any of them.

Technically, I don’t think I would have wanted to stay with her. The environment she lived in was not one I wanted to surround myself with. She was suffering. So, I stayed with my grandma who raised me. My mum passed away when I was 11.

I am so sorry. Being an orphan must be tough.

Well, technically none of them raised me. I didn’t really know them. The only parental figure I had was my grandma. She worked in NNPC at the time and lived in a large and nice compound. It was a comfortable upbringing. She was very strict.

What’s the biggest thing you got in trouble for?

It was when I stole ₦1,000 from her wallet. She’d counted the money before she kept it in her purse, and I didn’t know. Also, when I took the money, I didn’t arrange it properly and so parts of it were sticking out from the purse.

I stole it because I had a college mother when I was in JS1 who my grandma would give ₦5,000 to keep for me. My college mother was not giving me enough money, so I stole the ₦1,000 so I could flex for one week. There were a lot of rich students in my class. In fact, there was one girl that used to lie that she was dating Wizkid. So there were those people, and then me that was eating jam pie and pure water.

One day, because I was tired of their bragging, I told them I was a mermaid and if they poured water on me, I’d start shaking and grow a tail. They believed me.

LMAO. That is fucking wild.

Another time I got in serious trouble was when I got home really late. By the time I got home, she had pepper and water solution waiting for me. Luckily for me, she did not use it.

I was in SS2 and my friends and I went to some kind of bar. That was the first day I smoked shisha. We were making videos and unfortunately, one of the videos got to my pastor who then sent it to my grandma.

A lot of things are different now. She’s retired and is receiving a pension. A lot of times, I have had to fend for myself. The first time I had to fend for myself was when I was 19 and in a polytechnic in Delta state.

How was life at the polytechnic?

Well, I had to run away because I had issues with cult boys. The leader of a cult wanted to date me and the first time he approached me, I was very rude to him. That day he was catcalling me and I gave him an attitude. I had a boyfriend then who was taking care of me, so I was really not interested in talking to him.

His guys found my house and came to threaten me. It was after they showed up twice that I left the polytechnic.

How did your grandma take it?

I wish I hadn’t told her. Well technically, I’d told my boyfriend at the time and he and my grandma were close so he told her. When my grandma found out, she told my Bishop and he told me I had to leave the school. They all came to that conclusion on my behalf.

After I left the polytechnic, I used the time I stayed at home to learn how to sew. Then after a year, I went to a different university in a different state to write Joint Universities Preliminary Exam Board (JUPEB). Unfortunately, I failed. I don’t like book.

If you don’t like book, what do you like?

I like acting. I am currently in film school. I want to be an actress. I tried to get into a film school for two years, but my grandma wanted me to be a medical doctor. It was hard for me to tell her that medicine was not my dream. She was the one who raised me so it felt like the only thing I could do was just be a doctor, but I couldn’t.

Whenever the conversation came up with my grandma, there’d be a lot of yelling and she’d say “you will never go to that school.” After failing JUPEB, I iced my grandma out for a bit because we were still clashing over my decision not to study medicine.

The day I bought my form for film school, I called my grandma and explained what I wanted to do with my life. She was calmer, and she shared with me that she was just scared. She didn’t want me to fail.

Film school is currently the best part of my life. Although it’s still school and a lot of work, it feels right. Like this is what I am meant to be doing with my life.

You mentioned fending for yourself, how did you do it?

Well, at first my boyfriend used to take care of me while I was still in Delta state. He would pay my school fees and send me money for feeding. He also used to pay for my luxury lifestyle because I’m a luxury babe. Unfortunately, we broke up.

Why?

Well, he got married. I went for a reality TV show competition at the time because I was really pursuing entertainment. Before I left, he told me he would get married, but I just played it off as a joke. One Sunday morning, during the show, my grandma called me to say he had gotten married on Friday. I cried so much. That day was the party night, so I drank a lot of alcohol. I was in so much pain.

So, how did you continue living your luxury lifestyle?

I have rich friends.

Rich friends as in how?

I just have rich friends. I go out a lot to parties and clubs and I tend to meet rich people. I am a fine girl and very sensual, so people tend to be drawn to me.

My friends randomly send me money and honestly, I’m gathering all the money they send to me so I can open my own fashion line. I can’t have rich friends forever, and at some point, I too would like to be a rich friend.

Like how much do you think your rich friends send to you? Let me start looking for my own

Well, it depends. Sometimes, I can get as much as ₦600,000 a month. It’s not constant but I’d say that I make more than two to three million naira every year just from having rich friends.

Sometimes, my friends have tried to sleep with me, but if I am not interested, they can’t force me.

What do you spend the money on?

Flexing. I spend the money going out, buying Hennessy and champagne and just living my best life. Sometimes when I’m out, I meet new [rich] friends who pay for the drinks, so I also spend the money on clothes, shoes, bags, and hair. Anything that makes me happy.

What would you say is the most expensive thing you own?

Well, it used to be my iPhone 11. It cost over ₦300,000 but it was stolen, so I bought an iPhone XS Max which cost over ₦250,000. Apart from gadgets, you could say my ₦210,000 wig. It’s a beautiful ginger bone straight wig.

I have been meaning to buy a Macbook, but I really don’t feel like using my own money to pay for it. Talking about it now made me realise that there are a couple of friends I could call and tell I want the Macbook and they would buy it for me. Maybe I am just focused on the clothing brand I am trying to build now. That’s very important to me.

I thought you wanted to be an actress?

I still do, but then I want a Rihanna type situation. I want to act but still, have my clothing factory. A situation where I can win my awards and still have money coming in from the side.

What’s your ideal life?

I want to be a star and live a luxurious life. For me, luxury is being able to afford whatever I want, whenever I want it.

I want to be able to travel on a whim and buy whatever designer bag catches my eyes. I deserve a luxurious life, and that is what I am aiming for. The freedom to just do whatever I want. Currently, I feel like I haven’t started enjoying life. When I start making the kind of money I need, I’ll travel a lot and finally start enjoying the life of luxury I deserve.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-my-current-job-is-having-rich-friends/

Read more stories from Nigerian women here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/her/
Business / Aboki Africa Takes Money Exchange Online With 1% Fee by BigCabal: 12:34am On Aug 29, 2021
Aboki Africa is a startup that offers digital foreign bank accounts and foreign exchange services to Nigerians via its web-based platform. The company was founded by Idorenyin Obong and Joseph Aghedo, inspired by the personal experience of the former.

“The idea first came up in 2019. I had saved up in U.S. dollars and wanted to pay my rent with the money. I remember spending most of my day trying to convert USD to Naira,” Idorenyin told TechCabal. “The experience was concerning to me at that moment, and led to Aboki Africa, which we launched around a year later.”

Back then, Idorenyin employed the services of a bureau de change (BDC) operator in Lagos to convert his money. Fast forward to two years later, the exchange rate has not only skyrocketed (in favour of the USD), it’s also become harder to find a money changer.

This is because, on July 27, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) halted the sale of foreign currencies to bureau de change operators, a decision that sparked backlash due to the vital role BDCs play in the retail segment of the forex market.

The wide network of the 5,600+ licensed BDC operators has been a reliable and easy go-to source for Nigerians quickly seeking foreign currency for education, travel, and other minor transactions.

But that was not the first time a CBN announcement on forex-related affairs would cause apprehension. Since 2015, a major economic challenge Nigerians have had to deal with has been the sourcing and pricing of foreign currencies, due to the central bank’s questionable forex management.

Keeping track of the CBN’s foreign exchange policies can be a dizzying affair as is setting up and using domiciliary accounts at legacy banks. The only solution is to build a better system and that’s what Aboki Africa has set out to do.

1% fee

Aboki Africa officially launched in 2020 as an online money exchange service. Users could transfer foreign currencies from domiciliary accounts to their Aboki accounts in exchange for naira and vice versa.

But after facing some difficulties with executing transfers, Idorenyin revealed that the company had to rebuild the platform, which culminated in a July 2021 relaunch with the addition of digital foreign bank accounts.

“Initially, we expected that users would figure out how to receive their money and then come to the exchange using Aboki Africa. But now, we’re also helping them solve the problem of receiving money, which they can exchange with us immediately.”

Aboki Africa uses the parallel market (black market) rates for currency exchanges and charges a 1% fee on every transaction or conversion, capped at ₦3,000 (around $6).

Nigerians can sign up and get a foreign account within 1-2 business days after registration, provided they meet compliance requirements, according to Idorenyin.

For now, Aboki Africa only provides European currency-denominated accounts (Pounds and Euros). It is currently working on adding USD accounts.

What next?

Aboki Africa’s operation so far has been funded by two angel investors. Idorenyin revealed that the startup is in the process of raising pre-seed funding.

The startup plans to expand product offerings for users, starting with the addition of more currency support including USD, and the launch of a mobile application. It is also looking to deepen market penetration in Nigeria.

Currently, Aboki Africa has around 3,000 users. Given the sheer scale of the retail forex market in Nigeria, the startup will be looking to increase its user figures significantly as it expands, especially in the wake of the CBN ban on BDCs. The demand pool includes remote workers, remittance recipients, importers and exporters, traders, manufacturers, etc.

“There’s a huge market of business people and remote workers, especially because of Covid. They can generate foreign accounts with us, give to whoever is paying them from abroad and get paid, as well as exchange currencies with us.”

Idorenyin is also targeting the API infrastructure market for foreign exchange, which he says is currently untapped.

“We have a couple of things to improve on and offer. For instance, providing infrastructure services such as APIs to other companies for global foreign payouts. Aboki Africa is also considering expanding to as many countries as possible.”

During his undergraduate days and since bagging a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Cross River University of Technology, Idorenyin has worked with some of Nigeria’s leading startups, including Hotels NG, cryptocurrency exchange Busha and Paystack, and as a technical writer for foreign companies.

He says with his work experience, he could “easily have kept working and earning great salaries” but had to build Aboki Africa because it was a “personal pain point and there was no solution” available.

“That’s one of the things that keep you going every day. We were not trying to build this because everyone is building a startup. It’s a problem we really wanted to solve.”

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/08/26/aboki-africa-charges-one-percent-on-online-forex/

Read more stories like this here: https://techcabal.com/category/fintech/

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Health / 7 Things You Should Know About The Vagina by BigCabal: 9:56pm On Aug 28, 2021
The vagina is such a complex organ. Anyone who has one can testify. Here’s a list of things you should know about the vagina.

1. Your vagina contains a combination of yeast and bacteria

Your vagina naturally contains a balanced combination of yeast and bacteria. The bacteria works to keep the yeast from overgrowing. Yeast infections happen when but that balance is disrupted. The worst part is that a lot of things can affect this balance including antibiotics, pregnancy and even sex.

2. What you call your vagina could be your vulva.

Many people call the vulva the vagina. The vulva is made up of parts you can see like the clitoris, labia, urethra and vaginal opening while the vagina is an elastic canal that runs from the cervix to your hymen.

3. The vagina is positioned at a 130-degree angle.

It may seem as though the vagina goes straight into the uterus but the canal bends towards the back at some point, which is why wearing tampons can be a bit of work.

4. Tampons cannot disappear inside your vagina

Contrary to popular opinion, tampons cannot get missing inside your vagina. It is medically impossible for it to do so as the opening at the top of your vagina is too small for it to go through.

5. The vagina has 8000 nerve endings

Yup! This is twice as many nerve endings as a penis has. It contains the greatest number of nerve endings in the entire human body. Small but mighty.

6. Getting wet doesn’t always mean arousal

This is called arousal non-concordance, which describes situations where you are being stimulated but you are not wet or when you are not being stimulated and you get wet. It can be caused by a number of factors including stress and trauma.

7. Not everyone who has a vagina is a woman

Trans men, intersex people, nonbinary people and agender people may have vaginas, even though they are not women.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/7-things-you-should-know-about-the-vagina/

Read more stories by women for women here: https://www.zikoko.com/category/her/
Business / Five Top Instant Loan Apps In Nigeria by BigCabal: 9:38pm On Aug 28, 2021
Securing a loan for personal or business purposes has evolved into a more seamless process; with a smartphone and internet connection, anybody with a bank account can put in a loan request at any time and receive it instantly, in most cases. Some loan companies even allow you to use a feature phone by dialling a particular USSD code.

Nigeria, like every other emerging market, is experiencing a surge in money lending companies. But not all of these companies provide reliable and secured services. The best loan services should provide instant disbursement, have a low-interest rate, sufficient repayment time frame and options, and ultimately, good customer relationships.

In no particular order, here are some of the best instant loan apps democratizing access to credit and bridging financial inclusion.

Carbon loan

Originally launched as PayLater, Carbon gives instant credit access to anyone in need of an urgent loan within minutes.

Carbon requires its users to input their Bank Verification Number (BVN) for verification, and once that’s done they can request a loan.

Carbon loans range from ₦1,500 ($3.6) to ₦1m ($2430.13) in Nigeria and Ksh 500 ($4.55) to Ksh 30,000 ($273.10) in Kenya; it allows repayments over a maximum of 64 weeks with interest ranging from 1.75% – 30%, with an equivalent monthly interest rate of 1 – 21%.

Branch loan app

Launched in 2017, Branch makes getting a personal loan simple by providing an app that has a seamless onboarding process. Branch uses the user’s phone data including SMS history to verify identity and create a credit score.

It operates in four countries – Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and India – and its loan amount and interest rate in each country are different.

For instance in Nigeria, loan amounts are from ₦1,000 ($2.43) to ₦200,000 ($486.03) with monthly interest between 1.6% and 23%, depending on the loan amount and repayment history. While in Tanzania, loan amounts range from Tsh 5,000 ($2.16) to Tsh 700,000 ($301.87) with monthly interest between 4% and 27%, also depending on the same conditions.

Across countries, Branch users have the option to choose repayment terms for up to 336 days, but every loan amount comes with the option to repay in a minimum of 60 days.

Fairmoney app

FairMoney is another fast, reliable and free Android loan app that’s available in Nigeria and India.

Loan amounts on this app range between ₦1,500 ($3.6) to ₦500,000 ($1215.07) with repayment periods from 61 days to 1 year at monthly interest rates between 2.5% and 30%.

This app is available on Google Playstore and it claims that 3 million customers rely on them for loans.

Palmcredit

Palmcredit loan apps allow users to borrow instant money online with a ‘flexible repayment plan and favourable interest rate.” The loan amount is between the range of ₦5,000 ($12.15) to ₦300,000 ($729.04).

Palmcredit’s interest rate is between 4% to 24%. The app provides two flexible repayment options of 91days and 365days, leaving users to pick which is favourable.

Palmcredit doesn’t charge any rollover or transaction charge. It also rewards customers that repay their loans on time with high credit score and reduced interest rate.

QuickCheck Loan

Like every other loan app and its money promises, QuickCheck promises its users they’ll never go broke again. Artificial intelligence is used to run credit scoring and make instant loan decisions.

The loan amount ranges from ₦1,500($3.6) to ₦500,000 ($1215.07) with interest rates ranging from 2% – 30%. Repayment runs through 30 days to six months, depending on the loan type.

This loan app is only available to serve customers in Nigeria with Android phones only.

All these loan apps started off as a single product fintech company offering only loans, but a few of them have pivoted into digital banks. Carbon, Branch and Fairmoney now offer banking services to their customers like payments, savings, investments among others.

Source: https://techcabal.com/2021/08/27/best-quick-loan-apps-in-nigeria/

Read more articles like this here: https://techcabal.com/category/apps-2/

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