When your friend is dating someone you don’t like, here are six things that you should definitely do:

1) Keep your mouth shut
They will never listen to anything you have to say. People in love usually are unable to process information concerning their relationship because they have lost all their five senses. If you keep talking, you will land yourself in trouble.

2) Prepare to be an enemy of progress
Immediately you declare your dislike for their partner, you have become enemy number one. They will definitely bad-mouth you to their other friends and well-wishers, so prepare to be called a lot of bad names to your front, and behind your back.

3) Practice your mugshot
Deep down, your friend knows there is a reason you do not like this person. So, they keep coming to you with all the negative things their partner does, because they know you will be honest about the situation. With access to all this first hand information others do not have, murder might cross your mind a few times. That’s why you need to be prepared. Incase you give into your desires and kill someone.

4) Social distance
Your friend might want to constantly find reasons for you and their partner to spend time together, but you need to social distance, They are doing this because they think once you and their partner spend time together, both of you would bond. Don’t give into it. Stay away.

5) Be there for them
They will complain over and over again, but you love them more than you hate their partner, so you just have to be a shoulder for them to cry on.

6) Mute them on socials
They will make a lot of love related posts even after coming to complain about them to you. Mute them so you can preserve your peace of mind.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/life/6-things-to-do-when-your-friend-is-dating-someone-you-dont-like/

Amongst the other things Twitter is to people — the source of information and access to opportunities, it is also a place to find the love of your life. In this article, eight Nigerian women talk about meeting their partners on Twitter.

Lili
My partner and I started talking on Twitter in 2016. He tweeted something about being irreligious and I found it ludicrous. I messaged him for his number and we started talking. We met for the first time at a creative event and remained friends. We slowly went from talking once in a while to talking every day. Occasional hangouts followed, and by January 2019 we had started dating.

Amaka
My boyfriend and I had been following each other for a while, but I don’t think we ever interacted until last year. One day, I tweeted that I needed a plug for something and he sent me a vendor’s contact.

A few months later, I deactivated my account because life was being a bitch. He noticed I was gone for a while and when I returned, he messaged me to check in. Checking in turned to hours on the phone. We both love music so we would listen to music together over the phone via Spotify’s group session.

A week later, we decided to meet in person. The morning of the meeting, he told me he liked me and I responded, “Oh, you do? I had absolutely no idea. It’s not like we spent hours on the phone depriving each other of sleep like we don’t have work.” That weekend was the best weekend I had had in a while. We started dating a month later and we are 10 months in now.

Omegie
I had given up trying to find a partner in real life and I felt like Twitter would be a better place to find love. I thought I could easily find people like myself whose values aligned with mine. My partner and I met in March. She wasn’t active on Twitter but we had interacted a few times. One day, I tweeted, “Like this tweet and I will tell you what I think about you.” She liked it and I messaged. We immediately clicked in a way I hadn’t with anyone else before. We moved to WhatsApp and started doing video calls. We officially started dating in May. Sometimes, I wish we met in real life because Twitter is where I hide from reality. I tweet all my thoughts unguarded so her having access to that makes me feel watched but she’s reasonable and understanding. We hardly interact on the timeline and I think that’s because we have a lot of other platforms that we talk more on. I go through our old Twitter chats when I need something to smile about.

Layo
My boyfriend and I went to the same primary school. We weren’t in the same set, so we weren’t in contact. One day, a video of him went viral and I messaged him to ask if he went to our primary school. He said yes and that’s how we started talking. We met a couple of times and it’s been great ever since.

Nene
Before my partner and I started dating, I had been seeing her tweets. She looked hot and seemed to have sense but I wasn’t sure she was queer.

One day, I texted her to say she looked familiar and that she is really cute. It turned out her sister and I went to school together. I thought it would be a turn off for her but it wasn’t. We kept talking and two weeks later, we went out together. That day, I realized that she was someone I didn’t want to ever be without. Every day, I experience love in new ways with her. It feels good to watch myself change positively.

Ella
When I relocated to his state, I put up a tweet asking people in that state to like it. He did that and commented. That’s how we became friends. Although we hit it off, we had no intentions of dating. This changed when we met a month ago and realized that we were in love. We have been dating for a few weeks.

Memuna
Twitter suggested my account to my husband for him to follow. He said he looked at my profile picture and read my blog before following me. I saw his profile picture, and I followed back. He messaged to say hello and that’s how we started chatting every day.

We met up a few weeks later and it went well. We started dating shortly after. Now, we are married with two kids.

Ife
I followed my boyfriend on Twitter. His bio at the time was, “I am a lot of things.” I messaged him asking him to share some of the things he was. His reply was funny and the conversation continued. We talked off and on for about eight months. We started talking about feelings in January 2020. By February, we started dating.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/8-nigerian-women-talk-about-finding-their-partners-on-twitter/

WhatsApp recently announced that it will not be limiting access to the features of the app for those who reject the new privacy policy and disagree to let it share its data with Facebook and other third-party companies.

The initial deadline for the acceptance of its privacy policies was set to February 8, 2021, but after receiving backlash from its global users and dealing with media scrutiny, Facebook decided to extend the deadline to May 15, 2021.

WhatsApp explained its new line of action on its website, “Considering the majority of users who have seen the update have accepted, we’ll continue to display a notification in WhatsApp providing more information about the update and reminding those who haven’t had a chance to do so to review and accept. We currently have no plans for these reminders to become persistent and to limit the functionality of the app.”

It further explained, “There will also be other opportunities for those who haven’t accepted the updates to do so directly in the app. For example, when someone reregisters for WhatsApp or if someone wants to use a feature that’s related to this update for the first time.”

What was supposed to happen

WhatsApp recently announced that it will not be limiting access to the features of the app for those who reject the new privacy policy and disagree to let it share its data with Facebook and other third-party companies.

The initial deadline for the acceptance of its privacy policies was set to February 8, 2021, but after receiving backlash from its global users and dealing with media scrutiny, Facebook decided to extend the deadline to May 15, 2021.

WhatsApp explained its new line of action on its website, “Considering the majority of users who have seen the update have accepted, we’ll continue to display a notification in WhatsApp providing more information about the update and reminding those who haven’t had a chance to do so to review and accept. We currently have no plans for these reminders to become persistent and to limit the functionality of the app.”

It further explained, “There will also be other opportunities for those who haven’t accepted the updates to do so directly in the app. For example, when someone reregisters for WhatsApp or if someone wants to use a feature that’s related to this update for the first time.”

What was supposed to happen
At the announcement of its May 15 deadline, according to Whatsapp’s FAQ section, it said that by May 15th Whatsapp will offer limited functionalities to users who do not agree to its new terms and privacy policy. Users will be “able to receive calls and notifications” but they “won’t be able to read or send messages” anymore. During this period, Whatsapp’s policy related to inactive users will apply.

What’s next
Although users will no longer lose access to the app if they don’t agree to the new terms of service agreement, users will still get reminded about the new policy if they haven’t accepted it. announcement of its May 15 deadline, according to Whatsapp’s FAQ section, it said that by May 15th Whatsapp will offer limited functionalities to users who do not agree to its new terms and privacy policy. Users will be “able to receive calls and notifications” but they “won’t be able to read or send messages” anymore. During this period, Whatsapp’s policy related to inactive users will apply.

Although users will no longer lose access to the app if they don’t agree to the new terms of service agreement, users will still get reminded about the new policy if they haven’t accepted it.

The Twitter ban in Nigeria affects Nigerians in many different ways. From business owners to already marginalised groups. So, these seven Nigerians talk about how the Twitter ban in Nigeria affects their mental health.

Jane
It’s just not the Twitter ban in Nigeria per se, it’s the general state of Nigeria. Everything about this country is so bad. The future is so uncertain because I don’t have the money to relocate. I am just anxious and I don’t know what is going to happen to all of us. I am not doing okay.

Anita
The ban is affecting me deeply. I usually open this app impulsively to just say whatever is on my mind and to vent, but I can’t do that anymore. The VPN is messing with my other apps, so it is like a tiny inconvenience that’s giving me a serious tension headache.

Peace
I’m fully aware of the fact that this country will move mad and I need to get the Bleep out of here with immediate alacrity because one small declaration can destabilise my entire life. I have three remote jobs. An internet shutdown means I’d be unable to work, and I might lose my job or lose hours ( I charge per hour) and my employers would be unable to trust that I can do the job, through no fault of mine.

I’m literally scared. Freedom of speech is so important – I even have an entire business and product I’m building around it and plan to launch in 2022. It would wreck all my sources of income.

Tolu
The fact that the possibility of being able to japa for my family is ridiculously low has me stressed. I’m scared and I’ve been upset at my parents because when we had the opportunity to leave, my dad turned it down. Now, we’re here.


Continue Reading: https://www.zikoko.com/life/7-nigerians-talk-about-how-the-twitter-ban-in-nigeria-affects-their-mental-health/

We asked Nigerian women what they would do differently if they had the chance to become mothers again. Here’s what they had to say:

1. Dupe, 60
I would learn each of my children’s love language and correct them in a better way than I did.

2. Valentina, 48
If I had the opportunity to start afresh, I would discipline my children more and enforce more rules on them. Simple things such as making them do things immediately I ask them to would go a long way in making sure that they turn out to be more disciplined adults than they are right now. The way they are now, it’s obvious that I was too soft on them, and that I was too protective. I would definitely let them face more hardship than they did growing up. I’d let them go out on their own earlier and face more challenges than they did. They grew up too sheltered.

3. Patience, 56
First of all, I would go abroad to finish my master’s before I have children. Then, I would use my first salaries to build my own house so I can have a more settled life. I would basically invest more in my finances so that when I finally have children, I’ll be able to provide more for them. I didn’t invest enough in myself when I was younger, and I went ahead to have children, forgetting that I have 8 siblings, and black tax means that I’d spread my earnings across my own family and my extended family. If I made better financial decisions, I would have been able to provide for my children better.

4. Toun, 56
There’s lot of things I would do differently if I had the chance to start parenting afresh.
First of all, I would marry a different husband that would join me in raising godly children early enough, and not one that counteracts my upright upbringing with subtle criticisms and displays that a laissez-faire life is superior.

Then, I would honour my children more by protecting them from an overdose of respect and service to domineering inlaws who claim some kind of lordship over them. I would no longer be stupid to allow the traditional culture of “we must train them together” to affect my parenting. In my experience, these people shielded their children, while “training” my own. I was too stupid, looking on and letting uncles and aunties turn my children to errand boys and girls, letting my children sleep on the cold floor while they took over their beds, and allowing them to eat the best part of the meals, all in the name of family, love, warmth, and hospitality. These people lived with me. I sent them to school.

When it was their turn to receive me, they treated me like trash. I couldn’t even send any of their children to get me a glass of water. It made me feel stupid because I could have lived a nice, simple life with my children and they would have enjoyed me better, but I decided to be Mother Christmas and spend all my time and energy on people who didn’t do the same for me.

Then lastly, I would spend more time with my children. I would play with them. Now that they are grown, I really miss them. There was a saying that was popular when I was growing up “Ọmọ tó bá da ni ti bàbá ẹ, ọmọ burúkú, màmá ẹ ló fà” (When a child turns out good, he’s his father’s child, but when he turns out bad, it’s the mother’s fault). I raised my children with anxiety because I didn’t want to be the reason they didn’t turn out well. So I was very strict. It didn’t help that my husband was nonchalant in parenting, so I had to take up training and discipline both as a mother and a father.

5. Loveth, 54
I have three children, and parenting is very difficult. If I was to do parenting all over, I’d marry a very rich husband so that we can hire plenty maids and helps to do the parenting while I spend all my time traveling and touring the world.

6. Alo, 59
If I could turn back the hands of time, I would focus better on my health and deal with my health challenges more hands-on, instead of casually thinking my family members and doctors had the best interests for me. I didn’t do any research, I just went with whatever whoever told me and it led to more complications. That affected the way I brought up my children.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/6-older-nigerian-mothers-on-what-they-would-do-differently-as-new-mothers/

A lot of people want big breasts until they realize it comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s what women with big breasts hate hearing:

1. Slut shaming.
Whenever women with big breasts wear clothes that show cleavage, everybody becomes a morality police. It’s tiring.

2. “Your husband will enjoy o”
Women’s bodies do not exist for the entertainment and pleasure of men. Selah.

3. Random sexual comments.
From men of course. Either that or they keep looking at my breasts instead of at my face during conversations. My face is up dear, look up.

4. “There’s a place for all this”
How so, dear? Next time I’ll leave it at home. Why do people assume that women with big breasts have a hidden agenda?

5. ‘’Don’t you know you are very busty?”
No, dear, I don’t. People usually follow this question with “That top won’t fit you’’ or ‘’that dress won’t fit you” while suggesting an ill fitting, uglier option instead. Fix it, Jesus.

6. “Can you dash me some of your breast? I wish I had boobs too.”
Do you also want back pain, suffocating while lying on your back and not finding your perfect cup size? No? Thought so.

7. ‘’Sorry ma, we don’t have your size’’
Is it our fault that God gave us big breasts? It’s as if lingerie companies only make fine bras for small breasted women.

8. ‘’Your breast is not even that big’’
Oya now, it’s breast olympics time. Come and take it off my chest since it’s not that big.

Source: https://www.zikoko.com/her/8-things-women-with-big-breasts-hate-hearing/

Rising Tide Africa wants more women to be bolder at investment tables, to dream bigger and ask for more money to do bigger things.

When Ivana Osagie first started investing in startups, it was not entirely to make money for herself but out of a shared passion to help small businesses gain ground.

This meant that her investment efforts were without any knowledge of how things should work. So she did things without a proper framework, like weighing and diversifying her risks as well as evaluating her opportunities.

Before she could come to terms with this defect, the entrepreneur she invested with had disappeared with her money and she lost everything.

While sulking over her loss, she stumbled upon angel investing and realised that it was what she needed to build her portfolio. Angels flock together for a reason,” Osagie tells TechCabal on our Google call. “By investing alongside others, you get to diversify your risks to some extent, bringing certain expertise to the table. When you combine that with the expertise of other people, then you have a fuller picture of a startup.”

Today, Ivana is a founding member of Rising Tide Africa, an investment network that consists of a group of female angel investors harnessing their power, passion and capital to positively impact and actively create a new Africa.

What exactly does Rising Tide Africa do?

Funded by private investors only, Rising Tide Africa was founded in 2016 by Co-founders Yemi Keri and Ndidi Nnoli- Edozien as a trans-border women-oriented investment network that engages in educating women to become angel investors. They do this through activities such as mentoring, networking and ultimately, offering opportunities for women to build a diversified portfolio of investments.

Rising Tide believes that it will bring about positive change by investing in the continent’s exciting startups and next generation to create a new Africa.

Osagie said that apart from investing money, they are also involved in other routines that aid the growth of the startups in their portfolio.

With every investing procedure comes other packages that involve mentoring and networking. She is of the opinion that investing isn’t just about capitalism. “When entrepreneurs come on board, we find that many times they’re not investment-ready. So we need to work with them to get them investment-ready.”

This process includes mentoring by industry experts and sharing a network of contacts.

This network of female investors has a mentoring team that works with founders to build business models, develop business plans and get a proper hold on the businesses. “It could be about helping them personally, for instance, learning how to communicate, how to stand in front of investors and convince them of the viability of the solution,” she tells Techcabal.


Although the VC firm invests in female lead and gender diverse teams predominantly, there is a reason for this.

In the last decade, Africa has seen a massive explosion in the business sector, especially for tech-enabled startups. Early-stage companies and SMEs now exist in an exciting technology economy that is fast sprouting a lot of opportunities for business owners on the continent. But in all of these, there is still a limited opportunity pipeline for women.

When it comes to access to finance, amongst other things, reports still prove that women aren’t participating as much.

Globally, women’s access to finance is disproportionately low. In 2017, according to this report, 65% of women had a financial account compared with 72% of men. Fast forward to 2021, not much has changed. In trying to determine what could still be the reason behind this, according to a World Bank report, the gap between men and women in developing economies remains unchanged since 2011, at 9 percentage points.

Only 37% of women have a bank account in Sub-Saharan Africa as of 2017, compared with 48% of men with bank accounts.

The African Development Bank revealed that there is a $42 billion gender gap in access to finance. In Nigeria, for example, an estimated 50% of the population lives in extreme poverty and financial exclusion for women is only 36%. In bridging this gap, more organisations and startups are leaning towards gender balance in their operations.

These reasons and more formed the foundation of Rising Tide Africa.

“We wanted to be able to paint a different landscape. We wanted women to come to the table, to be bolder, to dream bigger dreams, and to ask for more money to do bigger things because we know that women have the capacity to do so. We might just need a bit of support. So that’s why we set about building an angel network that comprises women so that we can open up space for more women,” Ivana says.

She believes that by giving women agency, “we’re actually building a bigger and stronger community and ensuring better outcomes for everybody; men, women and children inclusive.

Investment opportunity pipeline for startups

Apart from investing solely in female-led companies, Rising Tide looks out for all kinds of tech-enabled startups. Co-founder Yemi Keri says leveraging technology will keep the startups flexible and scalable as well as give them a sustainable model. “There are multiple revenue models for startups that leverage technology.”

Yemi says Rising Tide always looks forward to exits so as to plug funds into other businesses that come on board. Ultimately, their goal is to create an avenue for more African women to build diversified investment portfolios.

Read about interesting Investment opportunities on https://techcabal.com/.

We don’t hear enough stories about men being heartbroken or dumped even though we all know it happens. Today, we spoke to four Nigerian men on the worst ways they’ve been dumped.

Tokunbo, 24.
I had this lady, we had been dating for about a year or so. I was still in uni then and one day she called me one day and told me she was pregnant and needed money. I didn’t remember having sex with her but we had done a lot of dry humping and you know pre-intimacy but without sex. I was so scared that I didn’t even try to think, she was asking me for money for different drugs and food and I was sending it to her. I had given her over 50k. We were on a call one day and I heard someone in the background tell her to break up with me and that was it. She said “you probably heard that, that was why I called, I was never pregnant, I just needed money”. It still pains me till date.

Derek, 27.
So I dated this girl for over a year and things were really good. In my head, I was thinking ‘this is it, this is the one.’ One day, she just called me and said she has something to tell me, I asked what. She then said ‘I think we should end this, me I was confused and asked ‘end what?’. She then said this is why she doesn’t like me and then ended the call and that was it. I still don’t know why or what happened.

Chukwuma, 32.
A few years ago, I was dating this girl who was gearing to move to Canada to do her masters. I helped her plan and prepare, the plan was that with her there it would be easier for me to plan my move to Canada too. Anyways, after she travelled she called me once she could, then once again. After that, nothing. I called and called for days, texted, DMed, hell, I probably would have sent a raven if I could. Then one day, she started posting on social media. I still tried calling, no response. Next thing, I was blocked on all social media. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since that day. That breakup makes me go WTF till today.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/man/nigerian-men-tell-us-the-worst-ways-they-have-been-dumped/

The subject of this week’s What She Said is an 18-year-old girl who says her mother hates her. She talks about the death of her father, and the abuse she’s had to endure at the hands of her mother and ex-boyfriend.

What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
When I was two years old, I wasn’t able to eat regular food. I only ate pap, which had to be in a feeding bottle. My nursery school teacher at the time thought it was because my parents couldn’t feed me, so she fed me noodles. After eating, I vomited.

When my daddy came to pick me up, I told him and he stormed into the school and reported the teacher to the owner. I didn’t mean to put the teacher in trouble, but I told my dad everything.

You and your dad must be close.
Yeah, we were. He was my hero.

Was? What happened?
He passed away when he was 86. I was 16. One morning after he woke up and we bathed him, he went back to bed because he was weak. We sat by him and soon after, he passed.

I miss him so much. Before he died, when he was about 80 years old, he couldn’t eat by himself so he needed to be fed. I was the one who fed him. After he died, it became difficult for me to eat alone.

He protected me from my mum for as long as he could.

I’m so sorry for your loss. Why was he protecting you from your mum?[/b]
My parents had different ways of raising and disciplining children.

If I was disobedient, she would flog me with a cane or use a water hose. Around the time I turned 11, she switched to hot water and pepper.

She would put pepper in my eyes, vagina and hands. Sometimes she mixed the pepper with hot water. The older I grew, the worse it got.

[b]I’m so sorry that happened.
When I was 16, there was this girl on our street who always changed her phone. One day, my mum asked her how she changed her phone so often because she lived with her aunt and not her parents. The girl said she has numerous boyfriends who bought her these phones.

After she left, my mom said, “is that not your mate that has men who give her money and buy phones for her. All you know how to do is sleep with boys for free.” And from that day on, the torment got worse. She started expecting me to foot bills in the house.

I couldn’t because I had just gotten into uni. I didn’t have a job or anything. It was around this time I met my 25-year-old ex-boyfriend. Our relationship was smooth for sometime until he met my family and problems started.

When you say family…
My mother and my younger sister. My step-siblings are older, so they don’t live with us. They’re the children from my father’s first marriage.

My younger sister outgrew my mother’s treatment and started siding with her to hurt me. They frustrated me so much.

My sister tried breaking my then-boyfriend and I up. She messaged him on Facebook and told him she saw me sending nudes to my male best friend. It was all a lie, but he didn’t believe me. When I reported her to my mother, she told me to forget about it.

My ex stopped trusting me. He would monitor my chats, calls, outings, and my mother allowed it.

How?
I wasn’t allowed to have either male or female friends, and I was only allowed to go to his house. Anything he didn’t allow me to do that I did in the presence of my mum and sister, they’d tell him.

When the lockdown happened, I wanted him to end the relationship. He used to say horrible stuff to me. I was so tired. I kept cheating, but he wouldn’t leave.

My mother’s friend told her that he’s the only one that can control me, so the relationship can’t end. My mother told me I wasn’t allowed to end it.

There was a time he even flogged me with a cane.

He did what?
One time at home, he insulted my mother because of an incident with a missing card. When he left, I called him and insulted him as well.

The next day, he came to my house with four canes, left them in the garage of our house and came to meet me in my room. He told me to repeat what I said on the phone.

I knew he was angry, and I felt trapped. When I tried to leave, he pushed me and my phone fell. When I tried to pick up my phone, he started dragging it with me, then he slapped me, so I slapped him back. He went to the garage to bring the canes.

He flogged my back where my mum had given me a spinal injury before, so I was in so much pain. I’m also asthmatic. I fell down and was crying, but he just kept flogging me.

Was there nobody at home? Did nobody help you?
Initially, when he came, he met my sister and she saw the canes in his hand. He told her to call my mum, and she went. She told my mum, who was at her friend’s house, that he came with canes, but my mum didn’t take her seriously.

After he finished flogging me, he felt bad and went to call my mum from her friend’s house. She saw the cane in his hand, but didn’t know he had already flogged me.

When she came to the house, heard me screaming and ran to meet me. She boiled hot water to help me massage my wounds.

That evening, he started begging me. He said he didn’t know why he did it, and he was sorry. My mum talked to him and told him to go home.

A couple of days later, my mum told me I had to continue the relationship. That I shouldn’t take life too seriously. When I threatened to report the boy to the police, she said she’d disown me.

That must have been so traumatising. How were you able to cope with the lockdown?
It was terrible. When the lockdown intensified, my mum made me stop eating at home because I wasn’t dropping money for food. So, I would wake up in the morning and go to my friend’s house next door. We would work out, cook and eat. She fed me for about three months. Then, my ex complained I spent too much time there, so I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I started using my dad’s money.

Your dad left money for you?
Before he died, he linked my sim card to his bank account so I could withdraw money when I needed it. I’d just transfer from his account to mine. The money was about ₦200,000.

I started using some of the money to invest, but I wasn’t really great at it, so I kept losing money. Eventually, all of the money finished.

My mother was a signatory to the account, and one day she went to the bank and noticed that the money was gone.

By this time, the lockdown had eased so I went back to school in Ibadan. She tried calling me, but I blocked her number. She told my ex to tell me to return the money. My school fees were also due, so I was looking for about ₦300,000.

Doesn’t she pay your school fees?
No, she doesn’t. I’m basically sponsoring myself through school. I reach out to people and if they can, they help me out. If they can’t, I figure it out.

She still expects me to send money home for them to take care of some of their bills. She thinks I’m a prostitute.

My sister sent me a message a while ago, that they need a new freezer and she wants to register for GCSE and WAEC so she needs money.

This must be so much for you to deal with.
It’s a lot. At a point, I wanted to kill myself because of all of the stress. I developed high blood pressure, and I have headaches that never go away no matter how many painkillers I take.

With my school schedule now, I can’t work. The days I ask around and nobody has money to spare for me to get food, I just drink water and sleep.

My dad’s pension comes every month, but it’s not enough because I’m in my final year in a Polytechnic. I need money for my project. If the money for this month gets paid, it’ll finish that day.

If I’m not fast enough and my mother takes the cheque book to the bank to withdraw the money, I’d have to wait till next month.

Have you tried asking your step-siblings for help?
I did in 2019, and they said they weren’t banks. I never asked them for money again.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-my-mum-hates-me/

When most Nigerians hear ‘submissive’ in the context of a relationship, they envision a woman. However, this isn’t always the case. Many men are subs in the bedroom and many have embraced that and are living very happy sex lives. Over the past few weeks, I have spoken to several people I knew who were into BDSM and spoken to several Nigerian men on what it is like being a sub.

These are some of my favourite answers as well as some of the most insightful takes I got on what it is like being a Nigerian man and being a submissive.

Eric, 32.
I realized I was submissive totally by chance. When I started dating my ex, I didn’t have an inkling of the whole sub/dom thing and that a man could be submissive. Anyways, one day my ex kind of took control of the sex we were having, telling me what to do, and stuff. It was weirdly thrilling having someone else control what you were doing. It started from there and now I only like being involved with dominant women. For me, being submissive goes beyond the bedroom and BDSM and stuff. It’s in the woman telling me what to do, to stand up, to sit down, controlling when I am allowed to climax etc. Being dominated for me is great, it’s freeing to have someone else take control.

Patrick, 36.
I realized I liked being dominated pretty early but I didn’t go seeking it because of shame. Tell a Nigerian woman you enjoy being submissive and watch her face squeeze in disgust. Luckily, I went to Canada for my Masters and there I got to explore the BDSM as well as the sub/dominant scene. I was able to hone in on what it was I liked. In Nigeria, it’s hard because even the women who are dominant in Nigeria either don’t know they are dominant/don’t even know how to do it. Anyways, I found a small but thriving sub/dom scene in Abuja and that’s where I met my current mistress. For me being dominated is just the way my brain is wired. Away from the bedroom, I’m pretty dominant but in the bedroom, control me, demean me, everything.

Dapo, 28.
I kind of always knew I was a sub, to be honest. However, I didn’t know how much of a sub I was till a few years ago. I met someone who knew all the right buttons to press, all the right ways to push me. Part of the appeal of being a sub is doing things you know you shouldn’t do simply because you have been instructed to do them. I would stand while he is working and not look at him till he asks me to, I would wear what he wants me to, he dictated how sex works, when I’m allowed to climax etc. It’s so hot to me.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/man/nigerian-men-tell-us-what-it-is-like-being-a-submissive/

Being a black sheep is mainly dependent on the values your family lives by. These six Nigerian women talk about being the black sheep of their family.

Fego, 25
Both my parents are pastors. So with my hair, my partying, drinking, and dressing, I am the one that doesn’t conform. I neither go to church nor believe in the bible anymore, but they don’t know that. My hair is a major issue right now. I cut it and dyed it yellow, and my mum constantly complains. Especially when I’m home. She says how can she preach against such to her people, and her child openly doesn’t care. I don’t share their opinions on marriage or relationships either. When I told my mum I didn’t want to get married, I’m sure she added another prayer point to her nightly prayers.

Yinka, 18
My parents are Jehovah’s witnesses, and I am not interested in it. My mum expects me to get married as a virgin, but between March and now, I’ve had sex with three different people. I even went to the club this week. The funny part is that they don’t even know this stuff. The only things they know is that I send nudes, and I don’t go to church. If they knew the rest, I would be a dead sheep, not a black one.

Anita
As the first child, I’m expected to train my brothers on morality and religious things, but my principles differ from those of my parents. I’m doing my best in school, but according to my parents, I have character issues. I differ so much from their set standard that I am called deranged and a child of Satan on a daily basis when I’m at home. This is just because I’m feminist, pro-choice, pro LGBTQ, and borderline atheist.

Anu, 25
My stepbrother has a conventional well-paying job and is married with children. I, on the other hand, work a lot of jobs that include me being on my phone or laptop a lot. My mother thinks I am doing fraud. I also left my previous husband, so she is always talking about marriage and settling down.

Sandra, 24
I lived with family a lot growing up. The first time I had a general fight with everyone, I had just gotten back from boarding school, and somehow someone went through my bags and found a picture with myself and some other guys in my class. They called a family meeting on my head. It was weird because I didn’t even have a boyfriend nor had I kissed a boy at this time. They said a lot of things all in the name of trying to make sure that I don’t end up a teen mum like my mother. So, I basically started fighting everyone.

This is a big problem because, in my family, everyone wants to get involved in your life, and they are supposed to not be challenged. Also, I don’t go to church, I wear nose rings, and I like women and men. I never allowed them to tell me what to do with my life. Over time, I think I became invincible to them, or they all just chose to act like I don’t exist. Now, I only meet them at family functions if I choose to show up, and I told my mother to not give anyone my number.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/6-nigerian-women-talk-about-being-the-black-sheep-of-their-family/

It’s easy to call anyone a friend because of how close they are to you, but what does a friend do when you need them most? In this article, we asked eight Nigerian women about the best thing a friend has done for them. Here’s what they had to say:

Funmi, 22
I have Hepatitis B and have been taking drugs for it. One day, I was gisting with one of my male friends and I told him about it. I thought he would stop talking to me but he told me about his family member who also experienced it. He told me about the drugs they used and even got his mum to call me. She often calls me to make sure I am okay and taking my drugs well. It is so sweet how personal he took the information and decided to be there for me in his own way.

Tosan, 20
During my last holiday, I was broke to the core. I had an infection. I had unprotected sex and the dumbass didn’t pull out. I was in a lot of pain and of course, I didn’t want a baby. I told my bestie about it. She was also broke but she asked her boyfriend for money and bought me contraceptives and drugs to treat the infection.

Ayomide, 24
In the heat of the pandemic, when I didn’t have a job, one of my friends sent me 20k every month and also helped me get a job, while another friend housed me for a month free of charge. I did not spend a dime. When I got a place of my own she drove me to check it out and drove me again when I was moving in.

Brenda, 45
Some years back, I was ill and going from one hospital to another. Each one gave me a different diagnosis. I shared it with a friend whose husband is a doctor and she asked me to come over to South Africa. It turned out that I needed surgery to survive. She paid for everything! She stood by me through it all and made sure I got the best medical care.

Two years later, I suffered a life-threatening heartbreak and she was there again. She held my hands through it and paid for a change of environment. Till today, she hovers over my life like a mother hen. I wonder what I did to God to send her my way. I don’t think I can ever repay her.

Temi, 23
As part of my japa plans, I have been trying to get my transcript from my school. I had paid for it but they didn’t send it down. Last week, my boyfriend called me to say he sent me something. Lo and behold, it was my transcript. I was overjoyed and didn’t even know what to do. He has always been very supportive.

Nneka, 24
I once had a job that made me complain every single day. The work environment was so toxic it was all I could talk about whenever I hung out with my friends. I told them I wanted to resign and they all supported me when I did. They sent me money every month until I got a new job. One of them even gave me his ATM to use in the meantime. It was the sweetest thing ever.

Aduke, 18
Right now, I am staying with a friend I met in my first year of university. I got a hostel space in my first year but I didn’t in my second year. One of my friends offered to share her space with me. She takes care of most of my feeding and transportation because I hardly ever have money. It’s the best thing a friend has ever done for me and the fact that we weren’t even close before makes me even more grateful.

Dolapo, 17
Once upon a time, my CGPA was 2.04 and two of my friends found out about it. From that day, they did everything possible to raise my GPA. They made sure I went to classes and explained everything afterwards. They stayed up with me to read the courses I carried over. When it was needed, they forced me to study. Currently, my CGPA is a 2nd class upper.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/8-nigerian-women-share-the-best-thing-a-friend-has-done-for-them/

I’ve often heard of men who gave regular allowances to their girlfriends but had never met one (that I knew of). A friend prompted me to talk to men who “paid salaries” to their partners so I put a call out. I got some pretty interesting responses from six men. Here’s what they said.

Patrick
She’s looking for a job so I decided to give her something monthly for her upkeep till she starts working again. It’s about 7% of my income although I couldn’t send her the full amount last month because of some financial commitments I had and she understood. I try not to let it affect the dynamics of our relationship. When I first started giving her, she felt she had to be submissive to me and agree with everything I say. I had to make her understand that I didn’t want that.

Sucre
I provide bi-weekly support for my girlfriend. I did it because she’s a student and it’s hard for me to watch her struggle with mundane expenses. I want her to be able to focus on her studies so she can graduate in flying colours. It’s never about the money, it’s about the void it fills for her. I’m comfortable and she should be comfortable too. I’m hoping we’ll be married next year.

Jack
I used to give my ex $50 weekly, which was 10% of my income. She’s unable to get a job and I work 3 jobs. We lived together and I paid for the groceries and other expenses as well. I suggested the allowance but she wasn’t comfortable with it. She even beat it down to that amount because she didn’t want to be a burden.

I can’t be comfortable knowing I can help and decide not to. I didn’t tell people because I didn’t want them to think she was taking advantage of me like my best friend did when I told her. It’s important to me that my partners have their allowance, so they don’t have to rely on me. Money is always made back. Imagine a situation where she needs money but we’re fighting and can’t ask for money.

Seyi
I started paying my ex an allowance to help her financially and also seem to portray myself as responsible because she thought I was making a lot of money. When I was in love, it made sense. Eventually, she started feeling entitled and we’d get into huge arguments when it wasn’t constant. She also wanted to determine and control how much I spent and saved from my salary. She also started being entitled too.

Williams
I’ve been with my woman since 2017 but only started sending her monthly allowance in 2019. I already see her as my wife so it’s no big deal. She takes care of me and goes out of her way to do stuff for me so she definitely deserves it. I give her a minimum of 100k on the same day every month but more if I know there’s something she wants to buy, like a gadget.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/man/6-nigerian-men-talk-about-paying-their-girlfriends-allowances/

The subject of today’s “A Week In The Life” is a medical doctor working at an NGO. He talks to us about why he left clinical medicine for NGO work, lessons he has learnt on the job, and how all his experiences add up in helping him achieve his dreams.

MONDAY:
My day starts early because I’m a nightcrawler. I wake up at 3 a.m. to read an email or watch a movie, then I return to sleep when I’m done.

I wake up again by 5:30 a.m. to pray, and I lie in bed after prayers doing nothing till 7:00 a.m. Then I get up to have my bath. A side effect of living outside Lagos is that I spend 45 minutes bathing, brushing, singing in the shower and still get to work by 8 a.m. The roads are free and my house is a 10-minute drive from my office.

I resume my day with coffee to wake me up and I start to mentally psyche myself to face the day. Mondays have one thing in common: meetings, meetings, more meetings.

Yay!

TUESDAY:
I work as a program associate at an NGO providing access to care for people living with HIV. My organisation’s job is to monitor and manage the entire care process in line with the UNAIDS 95-95-95 goal. This states that firstly, 95% of people who are HIV positive should know that they are HIV positive. Secondly, 95% of people who receive an HIV positive diagnosis should be on medications. Thirdly, 95% of people who start treatment for HIV should be virally suppressed.

We try to achieve this goal by splitting ourselves into various teams: the tuberculosis HIV team, the prevention of mother to child transmission team, the paediatric team and the adult team. I work with the adult team and my job involves receiving patient’s data from health workers on the field and using it to guide strategy and program implementation.

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Today, I read through the data of the number of clients in care, their viral load level and drug adherence. From these indicators, I can tell where our strategy is working and where it isn’t. One of the states I’m managing shows a number of patients with a relatively high viral load, so I make a mental note to enrol some of them in an enhanced adherence counselling program. This is to understand their specific challenges and help them work through them.

If that doesn’t work, then we’ll have to switch them to second-line antiretroviral drugs.

I inform my boss of this development and he suggests we travel down to the community for a few days to support the work of the field workers and to observe their process.

I acknowledge his advice and concern, however, the major thing on my mind is food. I need to eat before I can continue thinking. It’s important I help myself first before I try to help others.

WEDNESDAY:
It’s 5:00 p.m and it’s the close of work. Days like this remind me of why I decided to leave clinical medicine. As a clinician, I’d work 48 hours non-stop shifts and still resume work on the third day by 6:30 a.m. Every free time I had was dedicated to either sleeping, catching up on sleep or dreaming about when I’d sleep.

I quickly realised that the 24/7 work lifestyle wasn’t for me and I ran. I was also looking for something mentally tasking with a large scale impact on the population, so the NGO job fit perfectly. The ability to work flexible hours while providing impact? Sign me up.

In addition, the remuneration was very attractive. Suddenly, work went from being miserable to being “fun.”

I’m fortunate to have this job and I don’t take it for granted. I plan to make the best use of my time and that’s why today, I’m meeting up with a few friends for dinner. After all, all work and no play…

THURSDAY:
It’s been a relatively chill week and nothing has broken, yet. That’s why I have some time to reminisce today.

A few things I’ve learned from this job: there are a lot of young people living with HIV in Nigeria. A lot. But it’s also not a death sentence because, with proper treatment and adherence, people live till old age. I’ve seen first-hand how compliant patients who receive HIV diagnosis live with suppressed and virtually undetectable viral load. This means they can carry on without the fear of infecting their sexual partner.

I’ve also seen how people struggle with stigma because of their HIV diagnosis. And how tedious it can be to use medicine at a fixed time every day.

Then, I’ve also noticed that the prevalence of HIV seems more among people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. And that’s why I’m sure that if we didn’t have NGO’s, the HIV burden in Nigeria would have been 10 times more than it currently is.

At the end of the day, everyone needs to understand that HIV is not a death sentence and that people live meaningful lives regardless.

Work has also made me abstain from having multiple sexual partners. Because I understand that the easiest mode of contracting HIV is through unprotected sexual intercourse, I have only one sexual partner. I wish younger people had more sexual education to encourage them to stay safe.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/money/hustle/a-lot-of-young-nigerians-live-with-hiv-a-week-in-the-life-of-an-ngo-worker/

Women are raised differently. These six Nigerian women talk about what it’s like having strict parents.

Christabelle, 20
I had to create a whole new personality especially for them. I have a bunch of interests like photography, video editing, graphic design, music but they don’t know that. like they know nothing about any of my hobbies. Also, I’m not particularly nice to my family because I am always on edge. I can’t introduce my friends to them because unlike me, my friends are openly wayward. There was a period in my life where I never texted people partly because my dad used to randomly go through my phone.

Temi, 20
I’ve learned to keep a lot to myself. I don’t talk about anything, and I stopped asking for permission to go anywhere because it was always futile. My lying skills have been perfected, and they think they know me but they only know the me I’ve shown them.

Tamilore, 18
I have strict anti social parents. My parents don’t have friends and their family isn’t close-knit so I don’t any sort of relationship with my relatives. We’re like an island. I’ve never attended a wedding, birthday party, naming ceremony, stayed at my cousins’, that kind thing. start to lie instinctively around them like you’re a compulsive liar. You don’t think about it too much, it just flows. I pick and choose when to lie and they trust me because they’ve never caught me. My parents don’t think I need fun, so they don’t think I do anything for fun.

Esther, 20
I was warned to never have a social media account from a very tender age, but I was curious so I made a Facebook account and my parents found it. I knew hell that day. My mum kicked and punched me. I couldn’t fight back, so I just sat there and let her beat me. I was 15 at the time. Rebelling was something I had to teach myself because they will control any and everything they can. I got my first phone when I was 17, and I bought it for myself. My dad once beat me up, stripped me, punished me all night and woke up at midnight to beat me again because he found my Instagram. I always tell people, no one can hurt me more than my parents have. There’s no insult that can hurt me cause I’ve heard it all from my parents before.

Omawunmi, 21
My dad’s strictness is him being extremely security cautious, but my mum? I feel like she’s projecting because she knew what she was doing at my age. When my brother does something, suddenly my mum doesn’t remember you can beat someone with a lamp charger.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/6-nigerian-women-talk-about-having-strict-parents/

The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 50-year-old woman who dated her ex-husband for 12 years and was married to him for 14 years. She talks about leaving him after years of being manipulated, the joy that comes from being a single woman again and life as a divorced Christian woman.

How did the relationship start?
I met my ex in 1988, in my first year in university. On one of our first few dates, he invited me over to listen to a Sade Adu record. I really like Sade Adu. So I went to a boy’s quarters he was staying at. When I got there, there was no proper bed. There was just a mattress on the floor. I had heard about the slaughterhouse where guys take girls to sleep with. As I sat on the bed, I saw condoms fall out from under the pillow. Shocked, I ran away. I told him never to come to see me again. That was the end of the beginning of our relationship. After a while, he came and said there would be no sleeping together. Then we started dating again around the end of my 200 level. We soon started living together.

What was the relationship like?
I was very grateful to be with him. I had a bad home situation. He provided the kind of environment that I wanted. He provided a lovely home and was very caring. Anytime I quarrelled with my folks, he stood up for me. I saw a champion in him. It’s only in retrospect that I see it was a perfect relationship for him to manipulate me because he knew the things that triggered me. It was easy for him to switch from being a defender to an aggressor.

Do you think he loved you?
Perhaps, he did. But I also think it was because when he got rusticated from school, I was the only friend that stayed with him.

So how did he manipulate you?
From the beginning of our relationship, he often got upset if I talked to someone else. I didn’t realise until later that this was manipulative. It got so bad that if we were stuck in traffic and someone in a vehicle looked at me, and I looked that way at the same time, he would start saying I knew the person but was only pretending.

He also made it mandatory that I check in with him all the time. One day, I went to work and I left my phone at home; my boss called me because he hadn’t checked my office to see if I was around. My ex then went on about how I lied about being at work because of my boss’ call. It became so bad that whenever he started to talk, I froze, anticipating his accusations.

Did your parents approve of the marriage?
My parents didn’t have a lot to say, because as I said earlier, it was a bad home situation. We went to the registry three or so years after we started dating. We didn’t tell anyone about it.

People always asked when we would get married, and at one point, my dad got upset and asked that we have a proper wedding since we were already living together.

When we got to church, we were told we couldn’t do a proper wedding because we had gotten married before. We had to get the first marriage annulled at the registry before the wedding could be held.

How long were you together before getting married in church?
Twelve years. We got married in the year 2000.

Before marriage, we were sexually active and were not using protection, but we didn’t get pregnant. I wanted children so badly. So, I was like, maybe if we got our parents’ blessings, we’d have kids. That was part of the reason I wanted to have the wedding.

What was it like in the beginning part of the marriage?
Because we had been together for such a long time, getting married was just a formality.

At this time, I had a full-time job, but he still didn’t do much. A lot of the expenses were on me.

Then he went to university in the UK.

At what point did you start having children?
We had our first daughter two years after getting married, and the second was born three years after the first.

But through this time, we were having all kinds of problems.

What kinds of problems?
When we first got married, he was not the problem. It was the fact that we were living in his mum’s house. She didn’t live in Nigeria, but she would come one month in a year, and I would be miserable throughout that month. She was mean and nasty in a very subtle way; she would be nice when people were around, but she was mean about everything when nobody was there. It wasn’t so much him as it was her, but him not being able to caution her was the problem.

It was after I had my first daughter that my ex relocated to the UK. He was living with his mother there. He wanted me to leave my job and join him there. I told him I was unhappy about living in his mother’s house in Nigeria, so I couldn’t move to the UK, where I didn’t have any job and live with her again.

I would visit him with my daughter once or twice a year. It was on one of those visits I got pregnant with our second child.

Did the experience ever get settled with his mother?
No. It was a big part of why the marriage ended. She was also manipulative and said I was proud. One night I woke him up in the middle of the night and complained about how his mother treated me. He begged me, but nothing changed.

When did you realise that things were going bad?
I had low expectations from him, so I didn’t know things were even bad in the first place. I was also the one doing a lot financially.

Then I got an American grant to go to the US. Before I left, I kept my ATM card with him for my kids — he was already back in Nigeria at this point. Every time I got paid, he would remove money from my account and lie that he wasn’t taking my money. This was my first introduction to the fact that he could lie. If anyone had told me anything about him before, I would have insulted them. Once when he was in London, someone called to tell me he was doing nonsense, and I told them to shut up.

While I was away in America, my mum passed, and he was very mean to me during the time. He even accused me of cheating on him because he called me once, and I was on a Skype call with a student.

He began his accusations again without leaving room for me to talk, so I switched off my phone. After that, he didn’t speak to me for a while. Anytime I called, he would give the phone to his daughters.

Wow.
On the morning of my mother’s burial, he called from a service being held for my mum in Nigeria and he excitedly told me about all my family members who were present and kept giving them the phone to speak to me.

It was my sister who picked up the phone when he called. My sister was confused because I had told her we were not on good terms. We put the phone on speaker, and I told him I was the one on the phone. He kept up the excitement. This was when I realised that he was playing me.

What did you do next?
I called a friend who had been his best man at our wedding and told him what was going on. I asked him to find me a place I could stay in when I returned to Nigeria. I was ready to move out, but he convinced me not to do that, and I said alright.

When I got back to Nigeria, my ex was nice for about a month. It didn’t take long for things to return to to status quo.

He regularly checked my phone. Once he saw a contact he didn’t know, he would call me ‘ashawo’. He would call my daughters and tell them that I was a LovePeddler.

One day, I checked his phone for the first time and saw that he was cheating on me. I then realised that was why he was constantly angry.

I told him I wasn’t angry, that all I wanted was just for him to stop being constantly mad at me. He was getting progressively worse and verbally abusive.

In 2014, I lost my junior brother and an aunt. I took my girls on holiday to get over everything, and he said, “When you come back, you have one month to move out.”

How did you take it when he said that?
It was pretty clear by then that the marriage was over. Before then, he had gone to my dad to tell him I drank, smoked and followed men all over the place.

My dad asked him this: “When you came to marry her, was she like that?” He defended me and said that he (my ex) might be the problem. My ex tried to insult him.

Afterwards, my dad sent for me and asked me about everything. I told him everything that had been happening. When he asked why I kept everything to myself, I told him it was because he said to keep our marriage private. Then he said he was not an outsider. He said I shouldn’t leave by myself, but anytime my ex asked me to leave, I shouldn’t hesitate to pack my things and move out.

Did you move out?
After he gave me the one-month ultimatum to leave, my ex began to threaten me with a countdown. He threatened to kill me, so my dad insisted I go to the police. The police said they would invite him in for questioning, but that was a bad idea because if they invited him and he was allowed to leave, I better not be at his house.

So, I didn’t make a statement at the police station, and my dad was angry. I eventually found a place and moved. Immediately after moving, his attitude towards me got better. It was so strange people thought we were back together.

Did he also send your daughters away?
Yes. But in the first filing, he did for the divorce, he stated very clearly that he didn’t want our daughters. It was later he changed his mind.

There was an incident where his girlfriend, who moved in after I moved out, went to my younger daughter’s school, picked her up and did her hair. The school apologised for allowing it and asked that I provide legal documents to enforce a rule on who has access to my child.

He went back to court to file for custody with the divorce, so I was simultaneously dealing with divorce and custody. Luckily, I got custody at the end.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-im-divorced-and-living-my-best-life/

It all began in June last year. One afternoon, bored and in need of something to occupy my time apart from writing and doing voice-overs, I called my sister and asked her to give me a “seed”, which could have been anything — a car, a sum of money or a house — and I promised to triple the seed before the end of the year. I wanted to test how industrious I could be with resources, but my sister didn’t see it that way. She thought I was talking strangely and spoke to my family about my request. Her report to my family threw them into a panic. They already were concerned I was spending time by myself.

***

I guess it didn’t help that I had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital the previous year due to a drug addiction problem. Depressed and unemployed in 2018, I had developed the habit of using marijuana often. One time, I ate too much and was knocked out for three days. My family admitted me to rehab in a psychiatric hospital in Abeokuta. My time in the ward was harrowing. I witnessed hospital staff regularly assault patients who didn’t do what they asked. I returned home after three months with a fear of psychiatric hospital wards.

***

I was alone in the house I shared with my brother, listening to music when my brother and sister came in to tell me they were taking me to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling like they were overreacting, I refused. The argument became heated, and I left to lock myself in my room. To my surprise, they broke down the door. I was worried about how violent the scenario was getting, so I tried to fend them off. My sister, who’s also a doctor, held me down alongside my brother and injected me with sedatives. I yelled weakly that I was fine and didn’t need to see a psychiatrist as I faded out of consciousness.

Sometime later, I became conscious again, groggy and with a heavy cloud in my head. My hands and feet were bound behind my back, bending my body in an uncomfortable position. I was in a car speeding through a busy road. A rage I have never felt before washed over me. I asked why the Bleep my hands were bound, yelling at them to untie me and take me home and insisted that I was fine. I jerked at the knots, but they were tight. They didn’t respond to my angry questions, driving on in silence along Lagos roads.

We arrived at the psychiatric ward of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. I was enraged and exhausted, but I thought it was wiser not to struggle in the presence of the hospital personnel to avoid making them think I was violent and getting sedated again. The doctor examined me and told my family that I seemed fine. However, because they mentioned that I used marijuana, he insisted I had to be admitted. That was the last time I saw my family for the next three months.

The daily routine at the ward went something like this: we were woken up at 5.30 a.m., we’d shower, get our vitals taken and then eat breakfast by 7 a.m. Morning pills were served at 10 a.m. After that, we watched TV or slept till 1 p.m., when lunch was served. You could hardly find someone to talk to because we were pumped full of medication that left us dull.

My drugs made me very sleepy and groggy throughout the day. I was unable to think properly and had an increased appetite, making me gain a lot of weight. After breakfast, I was resigned to staying in bed the whole day with no activity whatsoever. A lone TV constantly tuned to one channel droned above my bed. We were never allowed to step outside.

The sleeping conditions were another problem. Mosquitoes flew through the poorly installed net to sing in my ears every night as I tried to force myself to sleep in the sweltering ward. For some reason, there were no fans installed.

After some time, I decided to stop taking some of the medications I was prescribed because they always made me sleep through the day and night. I was feeling a lot less sharp and unable to do things I did easily, like songwriting or recalling things. I would put the drug under my tongue and spit it out as soon as the nurse left. The nurses began to notice that I was more active and alert. I became more interested in playing table tennis on the table in the recreation room by myself, and they suspected that I was no longer using my medication. They reported to the doctors, who decided to prescribe a much more powerful antipsychotic. I hated every minute of it. I’d seen them force-feed patients with tubes through their noses, and I didn’t want that to happen to me so I cooperated.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/man/family-forced-me-psychiatric-hospital/

There are a lot of reasons someone might feel they settled for less than you deserved in a relationship. So, these five Nigerian women talk about the times they settled in their relationship.

Joy, 21
In the first two months of the relationship, I was smitten! We shared similar interests in things, and he used to shower me with attention and gifts. Sadly, the reason I was even in a relationship with him was that I was dealing with a lot of things, and he was the only person that could understand me.

I’m very big on physical fitness because I’m a big enthusiast, but he on the other hand was very lazy and rarely ever worked out. We’re also from two different socioeconomic worlds. I’m very used to classy people and things due to the people I grew up with. He on the other hand was judgemental towards my friends.

Most times I wish I didn’t even allow it to get that far, I should have just friendzoned him, but I was emotionally dependent on him.

Cynthia, 20
There was this guy I had a thing with and the first red flag should have been the fact that he was friends with my exes. At first, we liked each other as friends but, when he broke up with his ex, we became closer.

When our thing started, uncle was doing rotation with me and the ex, but I was trying to be the good and understanding babe. He said he was comforting his ex. Whenever I’m unavailable, he was with her. He’ll now come and say she was the one that called him and he didn’t know how to say no. He came up with excuse that she was always crying and his mum said he should check on her.Whenever i talk to him about it, he always said ‘put yourself in her shoes. Everyone warned me, but I was forming let love lead.

He never smelled nice, and was just plain with no swag. Well, the scale fell off my eyes and when I saw that I had settled, I ran!

Aminat, 25
I started working in like 200 level because my dad was not having sense, my mum’s finances weren’t really good anymore, and I needed to keep up with my baby girl lifestyle. I got a well-paying job, it was remote and I was able to live up to my standard.

I’ve always dated very rich, wealthy, and generous men. Due to that reason, I always got really expensive gifts and lots of money unwarranted. I even got about $25k on my birthday from my ex-husband, but before my ex-husband, there was this man I dated briefly.

This man didn’t have a good-paying job but didn’t want to do better. I even tried to use my network for him, but he just didn’t want to make an effort. He lived in a 1 bedroom apartment with just a mattress on the floor and he turned down so many opportunities that could make him have more money. I think he felt comfortable because he was getting money from me. I wasn’t used to that kind of life.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/5-nigerian-women-talk-about-the-time-they-settled-in-a-relationship/

Modern-day fatherhood is no mean feat. Have you met children? Raising daughters is doubly difficult because of a culture and society that’s mostly unfair to women. Still, being a father to girls has its rewards in the small, unexpected moments. I discussed with five young fathers about their favourite things raising daughters.

Ken
Daughters aged 2 and 4.

My favourite part about raising them is observing them play and listening to the conversations they have with each other. I love reading with them because I like to teach.

My babies are young so the hardest part about raising them right now is settling their incessant squabbles when they fight over toys, getting them to eat and lulling them to sleep, which is the hardest. On a broader level, it’s difficult raising children right now because they need to play outdoors and with other children but can’t right now because of the pandemic. I don’t think there’s a significant difference in the challenges in raising girls compared to boys that can be pinpointed on their gender.

Zaid
Daughters aged 5 and 6.

They were born so close together, they look like twins. I’d always wanted daughters because I grew up without an older sister. Raising them has been fun and I have a very tight bond with them. They’re thoughtful, inquisitive and always need attention, like their mother. I’m only afraid of bad habits they might pick up when they’re older.

Tex
Daughters aged 13, 11 and 7.

It has to be the hugs, kisses and “I love you’s”. It’s warm, open and expressive. I also love when we spontaneously gather around the piano to sing together. It’s really cute.

I feel like the world is kinder to boys and men so I feel a constant tension between letting them be and feeling like I have to make them tougher for the challenges ahead.

Bruce
Daughter aged 2.

I love the fact that having daughters has given me the chance to understand women’s growth and dynamics from the onset. It’s been a powerful and insightful experience. Girls are forced to grow up too fast. Their childhood is cut short earlier than boys’ because, from an early age, we have to teach her not to trust strangers. I’m avoiding forcing adulthood on my baby by being part of her growth as possible to ensure we can always talk about anything. I run a community of Dads who are looking to exchange ideas on how best to navigate fatherhood.

Osas
Daughter aged 2

My daughter likes to talks a lot and very well for a two year old. She’s always making conversation with me at her young age. She loves music and is very vocal about her choice in music.

There’s this unadulterated, raw feeling of love in the eyes of my daughter when she looks at me. There’s absolutely nothing I won’t do for her when she looks at me that way. It’s difficult to disappoint them. It is very difficult keeping up with daughters. What they want is what they want and they won’t let you be until they get it.

Source: www.zikoko.com

My father’s greatest dream was to see his four daughters get a good education. Back when I was young, he told me that I was going to be a doctor. I don’t know how much he earned as a soldier in the Nigerian Army, but he had a separate savings account for me and my sisters’ school fees. We were one of the first people to pay our fees every term.

He was killed in action in 2011. He was in Maiduguri, fighting Boko Haram. And his dreams died with him. I was only 16.

One of the last things he said to us as he left the house to report for duty was that we pray for his return. We prayed, but it wasn’t enough. I was in the living room watching TV with my mum and my sisters when the phone rang. The person on the other end informed my mother that my father had been among a group of soldiers that was caught in a Boko Haram ambush. They wanted her to identify his body.

He was interred alongside the others who died with him in a mass burial.

He died in active service and was entitled to benefits. This was where things got tricky. My mum wasn’t his next of kin because she was battling some health challenges. His next of kin used to be me and one of my sisters. However, a few months before he passed, he removed my name and included his younger brother, my uncle.

My sister was still a minor when they started processing his benefits. So my uncle, who was the co-signatory, was the next in line to sign before his benefits would be released to us. He took advantage of that. At first, it was about how we couldn’t be entitled to the money because none of us was a boy.

It was more than that, though. My uncle wanted to marry my mother. She refused and that hurt his ego, so he thought he could make life hell for us. After a while, he and the rest of my father’s family agreed to release half of the money to us.

But that wasn’t the only problem we had to deal with.

We were living in the barracks when my father died. After some time, the authorities asked us to move out of the apartment. Why? There were men in active service who needed accommodation. Now this shouldn’t have been a problem because my father had built a house in our village in Benue state. My uncle stood in the way of getting that too. He kicked us out of the house.

I don’t know how much my father’s family gave us, but it wasn’t going to be enough to send all of us to school. My mother used part of the money to build a new house, too, so all of us had to make sacrifices. We agreed that my eldest sister would go to university. The rest of us would find our way.

I started learning hairdressing in 2014. On the side, I also learned how to make soap. Whatever hopes I had of returning to school died when my eldest sister — the one in university — fell sick. What remained of the money my father left was used to nurse her back to health.

There was a little glint of hope for me in 2015. The Nigerian Army was recruiting, and I applied. I was invited to write an exam at one of the barracks in Abuja. I had ₦20k in my savings and my sister supported me with ₦5k. However, this was only enough to get me to Abuja and back. Not anything else.

I arrived in Abuja on the eve of the exam. The best option for me was to sleep at a chapel in the barracks if I hoped to meet up with the exam the following day. Sometime during the evening, the catechist at the church sent me on an errand to buy a drink for him. He called me into the vestry when I returned. I handed the drink to him and made to leave, but he asked me to sit down. I thought he wanted to pray for me or have a short conversation.

Minutes later, he started making advances at me, and I got uncomfortable. As I stood to leave, he blocked the exit and didn’t let me leave until he had his way with me. This man sexually assaulted me. He knew there were people in the church that could catch him, but that didn’t stop him. It didn’t save me.

I wasn’t prepared to let the incident go without a fight. On the morning of my exam, I looked for the Major-General in charge of the church to tell him what had happened to me. I found him but the queue of people who wanted to see him that morning was long. I had an exam to write and was hungry. My heart boiled with rage as I left. I wasn’t going to get any form of justice.

The moment I finished writing my exam, I left the barracks. I couldn’t go back home to Benue immediately, so I went to stay with my sister at her school. I didn’t tell her what happened. I didn’t tell my mum either. I was scared that they would blame me. I still remember the man’s name and haven’t gotten over the fact that he got away with what he did to me.

It was all for nothing, too. The exam results came out a few weeks later, and I didn’t make it to the next stage. There was nothing to show for my trip to Abuja and everything that happened there.

There was also nothing in the village for me, soI left sometime that year and moved to Lagos. One of my people in the village had moved here earlier and she took me in. I stayed with her and looked for work. I found one as an office assistant in a job agency. My salary was ₦15k.

I was at the job for a couple of months. I had to quit because the person I lived with was moving out. Like that, I was homeless. However, I was fortunate to find another friend who agreed to house me. The only problem was that she was married and only agreed to take me in because her husband was away at the time. We both understood that I would leave the moment her husband returned.

I found another job with some vegetable farmers at Ojo. Every morning, a vehicle would come and transport the produce to Oyingbo market. My job was to weed the farm and apply manure. I woke up early every morning to cover as much ground as possible. It was a stressful job, but it brought ₦25k-₦30k every month.

After about eight months of living with my friend and working on the farm, her husband returned and I had to move out agan. Thankfully, I had about ₦200k in savings. It was more than enough to rent a house. I moved into a small room in Oshodi and the rent was ₦37k.

I met the man that would become my husband in 2017, and we fell in love. We got married later that year. Our first child was born in 2018.

It wasn’t my happily ever after — at least not yet. The government had demolished his shop in Oshodi, where he repaired electronic devices in 2016. I couldn’t sit idly by. I wanted to do something, anything to support him while he figured out how to get back on his feet. I went back to the farm at Ojo. I was pregnant with my second child at the time.

2020 ended up being one of the worst years of my life. There were complications during childbirth. The doctor said it was because of all the stress I’d put my body through on the farm. When it became clear that I couldn’t deliver the baby by myself, I was wheeled off to the theatre for the Caesarean section procedure. This alone cost ₦200k. That was money we didn’t have, but we managed to raise it.

The operation didn’t save my baby, and I never got to meet him. He died inside me.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/money/my-father-wanted-more-for-me-but-then-he-died/

The subject of this week’s What She Said is a woman in her early thirties who has been a reverend sister for twelve years. She talks about life before service, how she got called to join the convent and adapting to life at the convent.

What is your earliest memory of your childhood?
It was when my father married a second wife and abandoned us. I was about 12 at the time, and I remember feeling devastated. When the woman started living with us, my mother was so welcoming towards her, which shocked me and my three siblings. Everything was going well until the second wife decided to show her true colours.

The woman used to determine if we would eat or not. The day she did not bring out food, we did not eat. She was the desired wife, and so my father put her in charge of overseeing the house.

I remember how my dad used to beat up my mother and pull her hair. There was a day I tried to intervene, but he pushed me away and I fell. In fact, my father’s siblings used to join in the beatings.

Why? What was their problem?
Hatred. They hated my mother, and once my father started beating her, they saw a way to express that hatred and kick her out. The hate for my mother also extended to us the children. I remember travelling with my mum sometime in the past. When one of my aunts came home and was told when I ran to hug her, she pushed me away.

Initially, I thought the hate was because my mother was not an Igbo woman, but then the second wife was also not Igbo. They just hated my mother.

Did your mum ever leave your father?
Yes, we ran for our dear lives. We ran to my mother’s side of the family.

I don’t remember how long we stayed there, but I know living there was tough. Eventually, my mother got a job as a cook in a restaurant. She worked in shifts, and it was from the job she was able to pay for rent and our feeding. Then, we could make soup with two hundred naira. The money also paid our school fees including the numerous JAMB fees I paid.

How many times did you write JAMB?
So many times I lost count. My dream was to be a medical doctor because I loved the ‘doctor’ title, and I wanted to save lives. I however was not lucky with the results so I had to change my course to law, I eventually ended up getting English and Literature. In all this, there was a guy who was trying to get my hand in marriage, and that was when the dreams and visions started.

What dreams and visions?
In one of the dreams, I saw myself following Christ as one of his disciples. In another, it was a vision of the cross. My passion became uncontrollable when I saw a car with the name of a religious institute on it. Then, afterwards, I met one of the sisters of that Institute in my church parish. With the help of a Reverend Father in my parish, I became a sister.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/i-have-been-a-reverend-sister-for-twelve-years/

My dad was physically abusive to us growing up. There was a time he stripped my mum naked and pushed her out at night. Another time, he gave her a black eye. The area around the eye is still black to date. I’m not saying my mum didn’t have her own issues but my dad was worse. My mum paid the bills while my dad preferred to spend money on his second wife and his friends. Both of them beat us for any offence we committed. My dad would strip us naked and beat us. I used to tell people they were not my real parents, and that I was adopted.

When I was 5, the rent at the house we lived in expired so my parents decided to move into their own house which was still under construction. They felt it wasn’t safe for us to stay in an uncompleted building so they took us to live with our grandparents for a while. There, my uncles always had visitors over. One of them was a man named Tawfiq* — he lived on the same street as us. Whenever my uncles wanted to go out, they would leave me at his house. Tawfiq would take me to the uncompleted part of the building and make me do things to him. Sometimes he would make me suck his penis. At other times, he would rub it on my labia. He would finger me and do other things that I shouldn’t have known at that age. Afterwards, he would threaten to beat me if I ever told anyone. Beatings were regular — I knew I would definitely get beaten if I reported it, so it continued for months.

My father took a second wife when I was in JS 3. He would send me to her house to help with housework, and she would use me like a rag. Eventually, my parents decided to split and we had to pick whom we wanted to stay with. I picked my mum and my dad promptly disowned me. When I was about to enter the university, my mum introduced me to the Dean of student affairs in my school. He was my mentor — I even called him daddy. One time I was having issues at school and my mum fought me a lot about it. She reported me to the dean and he asked me to come and see him in Osogbo where he lived. He picked me up from the park and he was talking about school and what my mum had told him so I was relaxed. He said he wanted us to have privacy as he had guests at home so he drove us to a guest house. I didn’t even think of how he knew the gateman’s name, and how the front desk person had set up his usual room for him. He was a father figure to me. There was no need to suspect anything. Anyway, he raped me. I begged him. I reminded him that I am his son’s age and classmate. When I threatened to scream, he laughed. After struggling for a while, I gave up and let him have his way. I just stayed there and stared at the ceiling thinking about Tawfiq. When he finished, he said he didn’t know I was a virgin because I looked like a big girl. I cleaned up and went back to school.

I knew nobody would believe me. After all, I went with him to the guest house. I tried to tell someone about it and she said it wasn’t possible, “He doesn’t need to do that to get girls to sleep with him.” When I told my mum, she asked what I was wearing. Nobody gave me the support I needed, so the rest of my stay at the university was a blur. I sought solace in drinking and eating heavily. I told myself that if I looked unattractive enough, then no one would want to abuse me. I used to say, “People will betray you but food won’t.” I could count on filling my stomach to make me feel better. After eating, I would feel bad because I had eaten so much, then I would eat some more to comfort myself.

Of course, it didn’t work. I tried to kill myself but that didn’t work either. Sometime in 2020, there was an uproar on social media about sexual abuse. There was a protest happening at the time. I remember waking up one morning to see a picture of Tawfiq and his daughter on Instagram. He and his family live abroad. He looked like he was balling, and the only thing I could think about was how karma is all a big lie. He is living his best life and I am here, stuck with nightmares and a shitty mental health. I messaged him and confronted him about what he did to me as a child. Though he admitted to it, he said he wasn’t that much older than me when it happened. I was so angry, I sent the screenshots to my extended family’s WhatsApp group. I wrote an epistle about how they needed to create an enabling environment for kids in the family to report abuse. One of my uncles kept talking about how he would kill Tawfiq. I knew it was fake outrage because when my cousin said she was also molested as a child by one of our uncles, everybody kept quiet. I messaged her privately and she told me the whole story. He would tell lies to get her beaten whenever he sensed that she was about to report him, to prove to her that his word would always be taken over hers.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/im-not-suicidal-but-if-i-get-a-chance-to-die-ill-take-it/

I’ve always been utterly fascinated by people who cheat on their partners and have always wondered what happened or why they decided to. Luckily, my job allows me to explore this curiosity and ask questions and get to the root of things like this. So I did just that. I spoke to several people I knew personally as well as people I met over the internet who have cheated on their partners and here are some of the most interesting answers I got from six Nigerian men who cheated on their partners on why they did so.

Charles, 24.
I’ve been in a relationship for over a year and I haven’t been faithful for about half of it. I know it’s a dick thing to say and do but after a while, people lose that special allure and you just want something different. I may cheat but I love her and treat her right. I just don’t think I can stay away from all the other many options of babes out there and I don’t want to open the relationship because I can’t imagine her being with someone else.

Abel, 31.
I honestly feel people are mostly lying when they give plenty of excuses as to why they cheat. For me, it was a decision – a bad decision but still a decision. I was at a party and met this girl and we clicked. I knew this was a bad idea but I took her over to mine. I know I was aware enough and made that decision, there was no reason other than I was Hot and saw an opportunity to have sex with someone attractive.

Harry, 29.
For me, it was actually simple. I wanted it to be an open relationship but when she refused, I simply went on to have an open relationship without her. I don’t have feelings for any of the girls I sleep with and I make sure they are people that are far removed from both of us to avoid drama. I don’t want to ruin our relationship but a closed relationship just won’t work for me so this is the best.

Derek, 27.
It happened when I was in my penultimate year. I cheated on my girl with this lady – let’s call her Lilian. I had been friends with Lilian longer than I’ve known my girl. And I’ve been trying to have sex with her since the first day I saw her. We would make out, she would talk and I’ll listen. We became close but didn’t have sex. All this while I was single and she was in between relationships. But on this faithful day, I went to see Lilian. Long story short she said ‘I need you now.’ We had sex but there was a problem, I didn’t nut. She came over to my house the next day and we had sex again and this time I was determined to nut but still nothing. The trippy thing though is I went back to school on Monday. Everything was sweet and smooth with my girl. When we tried to have sex, she went ‘did you cheat on me?’ I lied and said no because she had an exam that day. And the next day. Immediately after the exams, I told her and she was like ‘I knew.’ She goes 'why?' and ‘can I see her pictures?’ I showed her and she goes ‘oh, you want bigger boobs or what’ or ‘is she freakier than me?’ I tell her ‘yes but that was not the reason I cheated’. Then she tells me she needs a reason and till today, I don’t have one.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/man/nigerian-men-talk-about-why-they-cheated-on-their-partners/

Ethiopia has awarded one out of the two private telco licences it intends to award to a consortium that includes the Vodafone group. The consortium, which made a winning bid of $850 million, comprises Vodafone, Nairobi-based Safaricom Ltd, CDC Group Plc and Sumitomo Corp.

The licence award is a big step for Ethiopia as it marks the opening of its telecom sector to foreign investors. For years, the state-owned Ethiotel has held a monopoly but will now have competition.

Beyond competition, it will have a significant economic impact, considering that the consortium will create 1.1 million jobs and invest $8.5 billion in the next ten years. According to a tweet by the country’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, “it will be the single largest foreign direct investment into Ethiopia to date.”

The country also announced that it would not grant a second telecoms licence after rejecting a second bid from MTN.

MTN’s bid is not good enough
The prospect of a market with 112 million people is as good as it gets for many telcos, so it wasn’t surprising that all the big names initially planned to make bids. Etisalat, Orange Telecoms, MTN and Saudi Telecom Company were some of the companies that registered interest.

In the end, only two companies put bids forward; the Vodafone consortium and MTN. Safaricom, one of the consortium companies, had announced prematurely in March that it had won the bid.

Regardless, MTN also made a bid of $600 million which was considered not good enough, and now the second telecoms licence will now be retendered for new offers.

One interesting point is that MTN’s bid was financed in part by a Chinese investor, while a newly created US foreign-aid agency backed the Vodafone consortium’s bid. It is a continuation of what some observers call a competition on the tech front in Africa.

A similar situation played out in Kenya as Safaricom rolled out its 5G service initially with Huawei providing support. The US reportedly had concerns with the decision to use Huawei, in line with a strategy of using its diplomatic might to dissuade African governments from buying into the technology solutions from the Chinese company.

In the end, Safaricom stuck with Huawei but also included the Finnish company, Nokia. Despite this, it is clear that this is not the last we’ll see of the continuing competition between the US and China in Africa’s tech space.


https://techcabal.com/ has more tech and business stories from around Africa. Go see for yourself.

The internet can be a dangerous place especially for the women who use it. I asked eight Nigerian women about the worst thing that has happened to them on the internet. Here’s what they had to say:

Tinu
One day, I was scrolling through my explore page on Instagram when I saw a missed video call from a username that I don’t interact with. I went to check my dm and I saw that the guy was saying he wants to do sexual stuff with me. He called again while I was trying to figure out what was going on and I picked. The next thing I saw was his dick. I ended the call immediately. He was still in my dm asking me to show him my ass. I blocked him with the speed of light.

Ayomide
When I was 21, someone sent me a picture of his dick with a message saying he would use it on me. He got my number from a group chat. We had never interacted before that day. I told him I didn’t like it and if he didn’t stop I would report him to the admin. He started insulting me. He said he will deal with me and make sure he destroys my reputation in school. I blocked him but before I did I noticed he used my profile picture at that time as his. I was so scared. I kept waiting to hear someone say they saw someone using my picture to do something bad but I never heard anything. Since then I don’t use my pictures as my profile picture.

Tiffany
Sometime between 2014 and 2015, I was in secondary school and very active on Facebook. One day, my Facebook account started sharing porn links with my friends. I don’t know what happened to it but the links were on my wall for everyone to see.

When school resumed, my schoolmates insulted and laughed at me for watching porn. Luckily, my family members believed I was hacked. After that incident though, I dumped Facebook.

Esi
One day in 2019, one man called me. The first thing he said was, “Is this Dream?” I said, “Who is Dream?” He ended the call and texted me saying he had been talking to me on a dating website. When I said I wasn’t on any dating website, he sent me a screenshot of the profile. Some of the pictures there were pictures I had only sent to my boyfriend. I confronted my boyfriend — I asked him if he was using my pictures to take money from people and he started apologizing. I was distraught. I couldn’t take pictures of myself or post them on the internet for a long time.

Bemigho
I met this hot woman on Twitter sometime in 2017. She was quite interactive on the timeline but not with everyone. I became interested when she started tweeting gay stuff. We started flirting on the timeline and then one day, I slid into her dm. We started texting a lot and somehow that began sexting. She would tell me she was wet and it was so hot I would get off on it. This happened a couple of days before she became inactive. One day, someone else on the timeline exposed the account to be a catfish — it was a man running the account. I was scarred.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/8-nigerian-women-talk-about-the-worst-thing-that-has-happened-to-them-on-the-internet/

The subject of today’s What She Said is a 34-year-old Nigerian woman who grew up getting everything she asked for. She talks about constantly pursuing enjoyment, and how that led to her leaving her cheating husband and raising her two children independently.

What was it like growing up?
I had a pretty happy childhood. I am the 12th child out of 21 and was the last girl till I was 12 years old, so I was kind of everyone’s favourite. I grew up with a lot of people in the house: cousins and aunts inclusive. I was never short of people to play with.

The earliest memory of my childhood is from when I was about four years old. My daddy’s important friends came, and they gave me two bundles of five naira notes. I made my mum take me to the shopping complex to buy a red spaghetti strap dress with a fancy bolero jacket.

Your mother did not “hold” the money for you? Must be nice.
Whenever I got money like that, I sometimes gave my parents to keep it for me, but I have always loved being responsible for my own money.

The downside to being responsible for your own money is that sometimes you’re deprived of things other people have. If I protested, my parents told me those people used their savings to buy it. There was a year I almost did not get Sallah clothes because I had used all my savings at the snack woman’s place. After crying for hours, they finally gave me the clothes.

The thing is, I was adorable, smart and liked. I was everyone’s little bride at their wedding, always the house princess for inter-house sports, and always represented the school at primary school events. I was spoilt, overindulged and was used to having my way with almost everything. I loved it, and it did a lot for my self-confidence and self-esteem.

What’s it like being a confident adult?
I look at people who don’t like me like they don’t have good taste.

When I was younger, I did not handle being rejected well. There was a time a guy said he liked me but didn’t want to date me. I was stunned. Like how dare he? Why would he allow common sense to derail him from enjoyment? I am a big believer in enjoyment, so this did not make any sense to me.

LOL. What do you consider enjoyment?
Food is my kind of enjoyment, but I despise cooking. I love food cooked by other people. That was why when I started making money, the first thing I did was hire a cook. After a few months, I sent him away because he was doing nonsense. Now, I have someone that does well and cooks for the house.

The house?
The house includes me, my children’s minder, the help, my two children, and my nieces.

Tell me about your kids.
They’re amazing children, and I love them very much, but I don’t recommend children to anybody. They take your body, your energy and your money. All for small hugs and kisses? The return on investment is poor.

But then you have not just one, but two. Why?
I was 23 and so very young and foolish. I felt that having children was expected of me after getting married, so I did just that. I got married and pushed out two children without putting much thought into it.

I had my first child for my ex-husband and the second for my first child because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life entertaining her. Now they can entertain themselves and be friends.

Did that work?
Yes. They do everything together and love one another so much it gets me upset sometimes. The boy who is two years older than his sister said to me the other day: “I get upset when I see my sister crying, and I feel like slapping someone, but since you are the one making her cry, I will just go and tell her sorry.”

She was crying because I scolded her for finishing some paper in the house and not letting me know to replace it.

The thought of them gaining power and throwing me out of the house has crossed my mind, but I know they love me too much. They also understand that sometimes I love one child more than the other, and they don’t mind.

One day, my children told me, “You can’t love two people the same way at the same time. There are times when you love my sister more, and times you love me more, but we don’t care. We know you love both of us and will always take care of us.”

Stuff like this makes me feel like I’m winning in the parent department.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/choosing-enjoyment-meant-leaving-my-husband/

There are some things people do that automatically turn us off. The problem is that when explaining these things to people, they come off as weird or ridiculous. These nine Nigerian women share with us their weirdest turn-off and some things that just give them an ick.

Ada
If I see a good looking man and his shoes are dirty, I immediately lose all sense of attraction I had towards him. Why will you as a grown man have dirty shoes? It really gets me irritated.

Bisi
Light skinned men are usually a turn-off for me. There’s something about their features that makes them seem like children. When I see a light-skinned man, I see a child that needs to be babied and taken care of, and I am not attracted to children. Although there are a few exceptions, light-skinned men, in general, are a huge turn-off.

Bose
People dragging their feet is such a turn-off. The sound is extremely irritating and it grinds my gears. It gives me a certain ick I cannot explain. Why can’t they just walk normally?

Clara
Chest hair, guys who spit, have long nails, call me baby unprovoked and are rude to waiters. Why will a grown man just be spitting in public? When you are not a pregnant woman in a 2003 Nollywood movie.

Princess
I don’t like when people lick my ear. Why? It’s dirty and it tastes bitter, what are you looking for there?

Odion
Men that are “one of the boys”. If a guy is constantly shouting “gang, gang” and “slime”, it’s a big red flag and a huge turn-off.

Hafizat
Men doing too much in the name of dancing is a huge turn-off. Nobody wants to see all of that Chris Brown dancing. Also, when men tell me they wish I was shorter. I’m tall. Get over it.

Bimpe
SoundCloud rappers turn me off. Especially because most of them listen to artistes like Kendrick Lamar, Jcole, Chris Brown, Brymo etc. Once Ithey send me a playlist with any of those artistes or their counterparts, I’m immediately turned off.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/9-nigerian-women-share-their-weirdest-turn-off/

The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 56-year-old woman whose parents sent her to live with her half-sister at the age of seven. She talks about going to Benin city, moving schools, and suffering from abuse at the hands of her half-sister and her family.

What is your earliest memory of your childhood?
I do not remember much of my childhood, but I remember being seven.

Why just being seven?
Seven was when my parents told me I was going to live with my half-sister in Benin City. I come from a polygamous home in Edo State, my father married three wives. I had a lot of siblings and half-siblings. One day, one of my half-sisters who was probably in her early thirties came to complain to my father about not having help around the house. She needed help to nurse her child after her maid left. My mother was ill and had travelled for treatment when this happened.

Would your mother being around have changed anything?
No. My mother was uneducated. She would not have said anything because of the fear of being accused of discriminating against her half-daughter. Plus, my father was very autocratic. He told my mother that he wanted my half-sister to train me in school because he had trained her. No one asked about my opinion. My father just called me and told me that my sister would be taking me to the city. I was excited. I was still a child, and I wanted to explore the city.

What was it like at your half-sister’s?
Well, I learned to speak English. Before then, I spoke only Esan. A year after I came to the city, I started school. I never stayed with her child alone because I was too young to watch over her.

My half sister’s sister-in-law was living with my half-sister as well, and they both seemed to be around the same age. I am not really sure because they were a lot older than me, and it was not common for children to know the ages of their older siblings.

Her sister-in-law was very wicked and insensitive. She would beat me up, my half-sister would beat me up, and her husband would also beat me up.

That is absolutely terrible.
It was, and being beat up was on the lighter side of the things that happened to me. I was battered, ill-treated, starved and even molested.

My aunt had a kiosk where she sold things like cigarettes. One day, I broke a stick of cigarette by accident. I was told that it would be my food for three days. The first day I had drank only water, then a neighbour advised me to run to my aunt’s place.

My aunt came back with me and warned my sister never to starve me, but that did not stop her. With the amount of times they starved me or just didn’t feed me enough, I developed a stomach ulcer that I still have to deal with now.

I also used to take sweets and cigarettes to the cinema near the house to sell till late in the night. If I didn’t sell most of the things, or a sweet got missing, I would be seriously beaten.

What about school, did you like school?
I did. Back in 1973, schools in Benin had two sections. There was a morning and an afternoon session. My half-sister was a teacher, so I was automatically in the afternoon session when she was teaching during the morning session. This was the arrangement so I could take care of her baby while she worked.

Each day, I missed a period or more because she always took excuses from the teachers to let me leave class. For the morning sessions, all she had to do was tell my teacher she wanted me to leave class. For the afternoon sessions, I would be late because I had to wait for her to get home before I left.

When I completed primary school, my sister wanted me to learn sewing, but my brother wanted me to go to boarding school. They eventually decided I would go to a day school because my sister still needed someone to take care of her children. It was my brother that paid the tuition.

Did the missing periods not affect your education?
It did, but what affected it more was having to change schools all the time. Whenever she was transferred, I automatically changed school. It was hard having to cope with the new environment. I went to four primary schools and three colleges to complete my secondary school.

I was in all-girls schools in class two going to class three when my sister needed to go do a course in a foreign country. I had to leave that school so I could be closer to the house and be able to monitor the children. By that time I was in class 2, my half-sister’s children had become five.

That must have sucked. How did you leave?
Well, when I was 16 I had issues with my eye. I had to travel to Lagos to get it checked.

I used to get beaten up when I slept off in the shop because of how tired I was. One day, I was beaten up in my sleep and my eyes bled because the cane went across my eyes. By the following day, there was a blood clot in my eyes.

A few years later, I started using glasses then eventually my eyes continued having various issues and was one of the reasons my half-sister decided I needed to get my eyes checked.

I stayed with my brother and his wife in Lagos, and didn’t go back to Benin city after. I finished secondary school in Lagos.

I moved in with my brother and his wife — the one that paid my tuition for me to go to secondary school — and his wife. Living with them was so much better. My brother was very supportive because of what I went through in Benin.

My brother’s wife was also a teacher, but she was a lot kinder. She showed so much understanding and helped me a lot.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-my-parents-sent-me-away-when-i-was-seven/

Two weeks after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said it had issued 54 million people their national identity numbers, it is in the process of deploying a Device Management System (DMS).

The NCC said in a statement, “To curtail the counterfeit mobile phone market, discourage mobile phone theft, enhance national security, protect consumer interest, increase revenue generation for the government, reduce the rate of kidnapping, mitigate the use of stolen phones for crime, and facilitate blocking or tracing of stolen mobile phones and other smart devices, one of the means to achieve this is through the deployment of Device Management System.”

“The implementation of a Centralised Equipment Identity Register otherwise known as Device Management System will serve as a repository for keeping records of all registered mobile phones’ International Mobile Equipment Identity and owners of such devices.”

Despite the government hinging the policy on fighting insecurity, there are privacy concerns that the government can easily abuse access to such data.

Does this new requirement infringe on privacy?
As of March 2020, Nigeria was one of eleven countries with mandatory biometric SIM registration laws. One of the arguments against compulsory registration is that it allows the government to track SIM card owners and makes it easier to track calls and messages.

A Device Management System will take this step even further, allowing the government even more access to what should be private information. While the argument from the government is that it improves security, there’s the risk that the government can spy on its citizens.

Generalized surveillance in countries like Nigeria with weak security agencies controlled by the executive can become police states where opposition leaders can be tracked and arrested. But with the rise in crime in Nigeria in the past year, it is easy to understand the government’s argument.

Does the government’s argument make sense?
In a 2016 paper, “complete mobile phone registration has many generalized benefits to the society especially in combating crime.”

With increasing reports of kidnappings taking place around the country, a centralized registry may help to find bad actors even quicker, and it could help combat the sale of stolen phones. When there’s a central registry for IMEI, the police could identify the owners of lost and stolen phones thousands of times daily.

A critical part of this paper argues for a central database of mobile phones that law enforcement agencies presumably can access. Yet, it is this central assumption that still provides a problem.

Whether Nigerians trust that the government will not abuse access to such critical information remains to be seen.

Check out https://techcabal.com/ to read other business and tech stories from around Africa.

According to Nigeria’s national broadband plan (2020-2025), broadband penetration should hit 90% by 2025. It is an ambitious goal given that for years, broadband penetration has hovered around the 30% region.

But there has been some recent progress. A tweet from the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, revealed that in 2020, broadband penetration increased to 43.3%. Analysts like Gbenga Sesan have noted that the figures the ministry claims are wrong and that broadband penetration is less than 10%.

Whatever the correct figure is, Nigeria still has some ways to go due to a mix of challenges, one of which is infrastructure and an inability to standardise fees. For broadband access to increase throughout the country, network operators have to dig up roads and lay optic fibre cables.

They cannot install such hardware without a Right of Way (RoW) approval from state governments. But RoW fees are high and it is expensive to lay cables; so broadband connectivity suffers.

While RoW is a source of revenue for state governments, the big picture is that if any of these states reduce the fees, they may attract telcos to make a significant broadband investment. In 2020, MTN requested approval from the Ekiti state government to lay 160km of fibre optic cables after reducing its RoW fees.

[b]Governors agree to slash Right of Way fees
[/b]Standardising RoW fees is one way to encourage telcos to make investments in broadband infrastructure, so in 2020, Nigeria’s 36 governors agreed to an important step – a standardised RoW fee of ₦145/m.

So far, only Kaduna, Ekiti, Katsina, Plateau, Ekiti, Kwara, Anambra, and Imo are implementing the new fees one year after the agreement. States like Benue, Ogun and Lagos charge N2,500, N4,000, N750 per Linear Meter.

It is unclear why these states are not implementing the new fees, but stakeholders continue to mount pressure regardless. There are reports that the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) is looking at signing a Memorandum of Understanding with states to bring down RoW charges.

There have also been discussions on the floor of the National Assembly, but it has not translated into lower fees mostly because the governors reserve the right to fix these fees.

Regardless of this power, the governors of the remaining 29 states must play the long game and lower prices because deepening broadband penetration is a big win for Nigeria as a whole.

Visit https://techcabal.com/ for more tech and business stories from around Africa.

Nigeria-based fintech, BFREE, has raised an $800,000 seed round led by Nigeria-based Beta Ventures alongside Launch Africa Ventures and GreenHouse Capital

BFREE focuses on improving consumers’ financial health through its tech-enabled, credit management solution that makes collection processes more scalable, efficient, and user-friendly.

BFREE’s solution aims to incentivize consumers that have fallen behind on their credit repayments to sustainably clear their balances.

The company was founded in the summer of 2020 by Chukwudi Enyi, Moses Nmor, and Julian Flosbach and manages more than 300,000 customers for the majority of leading lenders in Nigeria.


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Today’s subject on Abroad Life left is a 25-year-old woman who left Nigeria for Dubai in 2013. She talks about living her best life, getting a great job, and then returning home because her husband is a pastor here.

When did you first realise that you wanted to leave Nigeria?
My parents were career parents, so they weren’t always around. They made up for their absence by taking us on trips abroad. We travelled a lot when I was a kid, and whenever we got back to Nigeria, I would realise that things were different.

One thing that stuck out for me was television. I liked cartoons, so whenever we got back, I was reminded that the cartoons showing on our televisions were nothing compared to those I’d been watching in whatever country we just got back from. This made me want to leave Nigeria.

Haha. So it was just the cartoons?
I always knew I was going to leave Nigeria after secondary school to study abroad. That’s how it was in our family. But we still travelled at least every other year for holidays until things got bad for my parents financially.

How did that affect things?
We didn’t travel for about three years. Things started getting better shortly after I finished secondary school, so I could travel for university in January 2013.

Where did you go?
I went to the UAE.

Why the UAE?
The initial plan was Canada, but at that point, if you wanted to go to a Canadian university, you had to do 12th grade again in a Canadian school. I’d repeated SS1, so I’d already spent seven years in secondary school. I didn’t want to spend another year, so I found a Canadian university in Dubai that didn’t require the 12th-grade thing.

Nice.
Admission was pretty easy for Nigerians. Most of the Nigerians in the school were northerners, and they were very wealthy, so the school made it very easy for Nigerians to get admission. The plan was to stay there for one year and then transfer to Canada. That way, I would have successfully avoided wasting a year of my life in 12th grade again.

Is that what you did?
Nope. I got to Dubai and knew I didn’t want to leave immediately. It was so beautiful. I’d been to America a few times before I went to Dubai, and I liked it. One month after I got to Dubai, I had to go back to America. When I landed, I was almost disgusted. It was so ordinary. Dubai, however, was glamorous.

What was it like moving to a different country on your own?
I was prepared for it, so I liked it. It was a chance to be free. I cried when my mum dropped me off at my dorm, but that was it. I moved on quickly.

What was it like at the university?
It was amazing. There was a McDonald’s beside my school, so I ate McDonald’s every single day. I had to get used to the fact that the weekdays are different from what I was used to. In the UAE, weekends are Friday and Saturday, and the weekdays start from Sunday. Church was on Fridays.

How did that affect you?
I went to church two times in my first year and stopped. It was stressful ending the week on a Thursday and going to church on Sunday. Because of this, my lifestyle changed. I became lost. I started hanging with people I normally wouldn’t, and doing things I normally wouldn’t do. We were going to clubs with fake I.Ds and hanging with dangerous people. Looking back, I’m grateful none of us got hurt. Now, I hear stories of people we were hanging out with being in jail and I just thank God.

One day, something happened that just made me stop hanging with them.

Tell me about it.
After we graduated, I randomly decided to go to a church. I can’t remember what was preached or anything like that. It wasn’t a repentance message. It was just a normal Sunday service. Something changed about me in that service. When I got back home, I felt like I needed to stop living that life.

How did your friends take it?
The next day, we were at the club again. We got there at midnight. At one a.m., I decided I wanted to leave. It was so weird to them. They tried to persuade me to stay but I insisted. From that day, they all stopped talking to me. Well, all of them except one, who I’m still friends with.

That was it?
That was it. I became a full church girl. I was the most dedicated worker you’d find in church. My commitment to Jesus Christ skyrocketed. It’s been amazing ever since.

Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/citizen/my-husbands-ministry-brought-me-back-to-nigeria-abroad-life/