Every week, Zikoko seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.

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What is your earliest memory of money?

It’s from when I was in primary school. During break time, some of my classmates brought food from home, while others brought money. I was among the kids who brought food, and it really annoyed me. 

My friends would have ₦15, ₦20, or even ₦100. Back then, ₦100 was for the big boys. I wished so badly that my parents would give me pocket money too, but all I got was food.

What was the financial situation like at home?

My mum was a homemaker, and my dad was a civil servant. He actually retired while I was still in primary school, but he had his pension, so we were somewhat comfortable.

He drove us to school and picked us up. There was always food at home. The cracks only showed when the pension was delayed a bit, or when the school asked for extra money for things like the yearly class pictures. That was always an issue.

It wasn’t necessarily because we lacked money. My dad grew up without his parents; his dad passed away when he was young, and his mum wasn’t in the picture. In his mind, as long as you had food to eat and were getting an education, you shouldn’t really ask for much again. That’s why it was an issue for him to give you money for pictures or stuff like that.

Do you remember the first time you did something to earn money?

That was in secondary school, when my friends and I decided to do adashi (a thrift contribution). Even though I didn’t usually take money to school, there were times when I’d just have money. For instance, I could collect money to buy a biro, or some days I didn’t take food to school and got like ₦20 or ₦50 — ₦50 was when my dad was feeling really generous.

Anyway, my friends and I kept ₦10 every day for like a month. At the end of the month, we shared the money. It’s not the way they do adashi now, where when you join the money, one person carries it. We were just pooling our money and sharing it equally at the end of one or two months. I mostly used my share to buy snacks and cupcakes.

Beyond these contributions, I didn’t do anything else for money until I left secondary school in 2015.

What came after secondary school?

I got into the university that same year. Uni was in a different state, but my uncle’s kids attended the same school. So, my dad would send money to my uncle to do wholesale provisions shopping for all of us together.

In addition to the shared food, my uncle gave me an allowance of ₦5,000 every week. In 2015, that was substantial money for a student.

Around 200 or 300 level, that arrangement ended, and my dad started sending me money directly. When he was still giving money to my uncle, he was giving him ₦30,000 a month for me. When he started giving me money himself, he started giving me ₦20,000, and there were no provisions. 

Surviving on just that became tough, but by then, I had already started doing business on campus.

What business did you do?

I sold hijabs and shoes. I partnered with my mum: she provided the capital and bought the shoes for around ₦700 each, while I sold them on campus with a nice markup.

She took the capital and the bulk of the profit, but I made around ₦300 per pair. Back then, students were constantly buying shoes. In a good week, I could sell five to ten pairs and clear ₦5,000 in personal profit.

That was really good money then because shawarma was like ₦450 or ₦500. It was a passive business, so it was just nice to have the extra cash.

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How long did the business run?

From 100 level through 300 level. Eventually, friends and relatives started taking shoes on credit without paying back, and that ran the business into the ground.

After that, a friend based in India started sending me earrings to sell and send the capital back to him, but it was only a short stint. I stopped business entirely in my 400 and 500 levels to focus on my academics. I eventually graduated in early 2021.

What came next?

I got married almost immediately, towards the end of 2021. It wasn’t like I planned to get married so quickly. I just met my husband, and I felt like I just wanted to get married then.

My marriage is very chill. He is supportive and lets me pursue what I want. I didn’t work for the first couple of years because I got pregnant right away, and jobs were scarce anyway. But as time went on, the situation with my family back home forced me to start aggressively looking for work.

What was happening back home?

Things had progressively deteriorated. My dad’s pension could no longer support a family of seven children; I’m the second child, with an older brother and five younger siblings.

My immediate younger brother dropped out of university out of nowhere, and my dad refused to spend another kobo on him. My elder brother also finished school but couldn’t find work and was stuck at home. They were all depending on my dad, but the pension could no longer go round, so I had to start supporting them with my allowance.

Your allowance?

Right after our wedding, my husband started giving me a personal allowance of ₦50,000 every month. Because we lived together and he took care of all household needs, I didn’t have urgent expenses. I began sending ₦10,000 home to my mum each month and used the rest for airtime, data, and casual personal spending.

Around four months later, in 2022, the NYSC call-up came. I was posted to the same state I lived in the North, while my husband’s job was in a different state. Rather than staying alone in our house there, I moved into my parents’ home during my service year.

That was when the financial weight truly landed on my shoulders.

How so?

My monthly income was the ₦33,000 NYSC allowance plus the ₦50,000 from my husband.

If they paid my dad’s pension on the first of the month, by the seventh he would say he didn’t have money again. So I’d have to take money out of my own for food. Basically, I was feeding the house throughout my service year.

Around the same time, another nightmare started with one of my younger brothers.

Tell me about it

He got entangled in heavy drug use, and he started having these episodes where he would just lose his mind. I still don’t understand what he was doing, but he completely messed up his head.

Whenever he had an episode, he would run around the house where we were all living,  chasing everyone with knives. I was heavily pregnant at the time. During these episodes, I would beg our parents to push him out the gate and lock it, but they refused because of shame. They didn’t want the neighbours to know our brother was running mad. So, we were forced to lock ourselves inside with him, literally endangering our lives.

The breaking point came when he took an axe and chopped down the bedroom door where my siblings and I had barricaded ourselves. We had to scream through the window for help. If he had broken through seconds earlier, he would have hacked someone to death.

OMG. Did your family consider treatment?

After that axe incident, I had to put my foot down and insist we send him to rehab. 

My dad said, “Let’s try traditional medicine.” We went, spent money on medicine, and it didn’t work. When we brought up rehab again, my dad said he couldn’t even afford to feed the house, so how could he send somebody to rehab?

My mum eventually pleaded with one of my dad’s friends, who offered to cover half the cost. The facility gave us a substantial discount, bringing the total to about ₦250,000 per month. He was supposed to stay there for three months. My mum raised ₦125,000 for the first month, and I had to pack my NYSC allawee, the allowance from my husband, and take a loan from someone to complete the money and take him to rehab.

In the first month, he was remorseful and promised he would get clean. In the second month, my dad brought half, and I brought the other half. My dad’s pension was around ₦280,000, so imagine him taking ₦125,000 out of it. Me, on the other hand, was collecting loans left, right, and centre.

Where were you getting the loans from?

I never, ever take loans from loan apps. I have genuine, reliable friends who lend me soft loans with zero interest. I made sure to pay them back within a month or two, even if it meant coming up with excuses to ask my husband for extra cash.

God, I was lying to my husband. I didn’t want to tell him about my family’s problems — it’s a pride thing — so I often had to lie to get more money. I also had my baby while still serving, and my husband increased my allowance to ₦80,000, so that helped.

My brother spent three months in rehab, gained weight, and looked human again. He promised he was completely clean. But a few months after coming home, he relapsed and went right back to the drugs. 

By then, my service year was over, and I had spent every single kobo I made that year on my family and his rehabilitation. I had nothing left to send him there again, so he just continued having his episodes.

Sigh. Did you return to live with your husband after NYSC?

Yes. This was now 2023. There was no more NYSC allawee, so my only income was the ₦80,000 from my husband. Still, I had to regularly send virtually all the money back home because problems kept arising.

Siblings needed money for school, and the house needed support for food. I stopped buying things for myself because I saved every penny I had, knowing a problem would arise.

Then, in 2024, my sister was withdrawn from university at the 300-level.

Why was she withdrawn?

Academic issues. She came home to join my brother, who had dropped out in 2021 and had just been sitting at home doing nothing.

I became so worried about the two of them. My dad said he was done with them; he was tired and wasn’t going to pay their school bills anymore. I had to find a way to put them back in school because I couldn’t just have them sitting there. So, in early 2025, I got them into an open university programme.

How did you fund it?

I told my dad I would pay one person’s fees, and he would pay the other’s. He agreed. Around this time, my husband had increased my allowance to ₦120,000 due to inflation. However, I was now living on my own with my son because my husband worked in another state. 

As a result, I had more household expenses to manage, in addition to my family’s expectations. Sometimes I’d take a loan of up to ₦200,000, send it home and pay it back little by little. My siblings’ education was an extra burden, but I just wanted them to get a degree and at least have a fighting chance.

They got admission, and I paid their acceptance fees, but when it came time for actual registration, my dad flatly declared he didn’t have the money and wasn’t paying anything. And this registration was nearly ₦200,000 per person, about ₦400,000 in total. 

I fell into a deep depression. I had ₦150,000 saved, so I had to take a ₦250,000 loan from a friend to make up the ₦400,000. I became so desperate that, in September 2025, I took up a teaching job at a private school for ₦60k a month. I got that job specifically to put all the money toward my siblings’ school fees and paying off the loan.

Did your husband know you were funding your siblings’ education alone?

When I started, I told him my dad and I agreed to split it. He said, “Oh, okay, cool.” He didn’t offer to contribute, and I understood. He shouldn’t be carrying my family’s responsibilities.

The school fees are paid per semester, twice a year. After the initial ₦400k for the first semester, the second semester cost ₦140,000 each. I tried to beg my dad again, but he refused, and I had to pay it. I also still had to give them about ₦20k each for transport support for exams.

After I paid the second-semester fees, I opened up to my husband about how my dad went back on his word, and he was like, “I know.”

I said, “How did you know?”

He said he knew something was going on because I was so frustrated, depressed, and angry all the time, but he allowed it because I didn’t say anything.

Hmmm

I was angry at him, but the anger was unfounded. It’s not his responsibility. I was just upset that he knew and let me be that frustrated, crying every day, thinking about how to get the money.

To be fair, he had increased my allowance to ₦150,000 at some point. It would have been reasonable enough for my son and me. Yet, because of my obligations to my family, I’m starving myself. I buy a crate of eggs just so my son can eat one every day, while I eat nothing.

In all of this, my family is not grateful. 

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As in, they don’t appreciate the financial help?

They feel like I should be doing it, that I should take responsibility for the family. Everyone thinks I’ve got it easy because I’m married. Even the two siblings I’m sponsoring completely messed up their results. One had a GPA of 0-point-something, and the other had a 1-point-something. 

With all the sacrifices I’m making, it’s not yielding any results. I feel like I’m just wasting money, but I can’t stop. I have to try at least to set them up for success.

Are you still teaching at that private school?

No, I left there after three terms. I landed a civil service job in August and officially assumed duty this month, October. The salary is around ₦150,000, though I haven’t received my first salary yet.

What are the plans for that salary when it lands?

It is already gone, basically.

My brother said there’s this fast-tracking thing they do at Open University where he can take an extra semester during the break. He wants me to pay for it so he can do three semesters in a year. That extra semester is going to cost like ₦150k.

Plus, I also have debt I haven’t finished paying for their last school fees. I’m owing my friend ₦200k. So my salary already cannot even cover both.

However, someone recently introduced me to a remote data annotation opportunity. We should have the onboarding call soon. They mentioned that I could earn between ₦50,000 and ₦70,000 a month, depending on how good I am at it. 

If that pulls through, alongside my ₦150,000 civil service salary and the ₦150,000 monthly allowance from my husband, I might finally have room to breathe.

What do your current typical monthly expenses look like?

Right now, I only have my allowance, so it’s:

Whenever I have to pay my siblings’ school fees, I end up in debt. I take loans and pay them off small small. Then maybe after two weeks, I can tell my husband I don’t have money and get like ₦20k or ₦30k from him again.

Do you have any savings?

I do not have any type of savings. I’m just in debt.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t sleep. The debts are soft loans from friends, so nobody is on my neck, but I hate holding people’s money.

How would you describe your relationship with money?

It is absolutely terrible. I’m so scared of spending money on anything for myself.

I see my siblings buying things. My sister just recently bought a pair of shoes for ₦20k, and I’m thinking, the same person I’m trying to scrape money for to go to school is the one buying shoes? She can buy aso-ebi of ₦50k, but I can’t do the same because there are bigger problems at home.

My siblings are buying phones and taking care of themselves, but I can’t. I’m so scared of spending my own money on something that’s not for my family.

Why do you feel you have to be the one to carry everyone?

Right from when I was in primary school, my mum always made sure that, as the first daughter, I knew that I was responsible for my siblings. I can’t shake this feeling of being everybody’s caretaker. If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it? There’s no one.

Honestly, I want to shake it off, but I also don’t want to, because if I don’t do it, everything is just going to be horrible for everyone. The only way I can fight it is to make more money. If I have enough money to go round, then I can do things for myself.

Is your brother who struggled with addiction still dealing with it?

I don’t believe he is completely clean, but thank God he hasn’t had any violent psychotic episodes recently. He got a job last year and earns about ₦100,000 a month.

The best part is that he no longer asks me for money. He spends his earnings entirely on himself, and nobody at home dares to ask him for a dime. All I can pray for is that he doesn’t have any more episodes and that they can just live in peace.

At what point do you think your family will be settled enough for you to worry less?

When everyone is done with school. Our last-born is still in junior secondary school. Once my siblings are done with school and have jobs of their own, I will have so much peace.

Is there an ideal amount you think you should be earning monthly?

Honestly, I just want a job that pays ₦500k – ₦1m per month. It probably wouldn’t solve all the problems at home, but it would solve the bigger problems of making sure there’s food and that everyone is in school.

Do you have any money regrets?

Sometimes I regret getting married. If I hadn’t, I would have had more opportunities to hustle.

I love my husband and my son, but there are things I can’t do because I’m married and have a family to think about. If I wasn’t married, I feel like I would have been able to grow more and make more money.

What is something you want right now but cannot afford?

I want to go for Umrah. It would cost me at least ₦4 million. I can’t think of any way to finance it right now, so I’m just praying that I’ll be able to afford it in the future.

How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?

1. I am not happy with my finances at all. I can’t afford the things I want. I legit can’t do anything for myself. Everything I have goes into family problems. I’m just not happy.

Find all the past Naira Life stories here.