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

What’s your earliest memory of money?

When I was six or seven years old, I honestly thought money was something that grew in my father’s home office. 

He had a small safe under the desk where he kept cash for emergencies, mostly for when our domestic workers needed to get things for the house. I was a clingy child, so I was always with my father and would watch him take money out of the safe. 

No matter how many times he took money out of there, it never ran out. Like, there was always money in the safe. He must’ve been topping up the cash at some point, but I never saw it happen, so I really believed the money just grew there magically.

Skrim. When did you realise that wasn’t how it worked?

There wasn’t a particular moment where it clicked, but in secondary school, I began to notice that my family had more money than other people. 

One time in JSS 2, a classmate told me she wanted to get good results in mathematics so her parents would get her a Hannah Montana gift set from the US. The way she said it made it seem like only good grades would make her parents spend that much money on what they considered toys. I remember thinking, “Why do you have to wait for months to see your grades before getting something you want?” 

I experienced something like that a few more times. Friends would talk about wanting something, but not getting it immediately because their parents thought it was unnecessary or expensive. That was the opposite of my situation at home. I just needed to say I wanted new clothes or accessories, and I got them.

For context, I attended a private school with rich kids, so it’s not like anyone was struggling, but those small details told me my family was probably richer than others.

What did your parents do for money?

My mum was a full-time housewife, and my dad was a high-ranking government official. Now that I’m older, I know that my mum not working wasn’t because my dad could provide all she needed; it was because he didn’t want her to work.

My dad was like a god in our house. Whatever he said was final, and no one did anything without his permission. I grew up extremely sheltered and fully dependent on him. He preferred that we (me, my mum and my siblings) come to him to explain what we needed; then he’d have a domestic worker buy it for us, rather than give us the money. As a child, I loved that daddy could get me whatever I needed, but now I know it was a form of control. He wanted you to have no doubts about who literally had your life in his hands. We also never left the house or interacted with anyone outside school.

As I grew older, I noticed that anytime my dad was angry with me for not doing what he asked, or not doing it well enough, he withheld money. I can’t forget how I had to wear an old dress for my secondary school valedictory service in 2016 because my dad refused to give me money for a new one. My offence? I saw him watching a football match and jokingly said I was tired of supporting his team and wanted the other team to win. He didn’t talk to me for two weeks.

That’s wild

I didn’t get as much “punishment” as my mum and siblings because I was sort of the golden child. I was reserved and always tried my best to please him, so my own punishments were few. 

My brother was a real problem child and had it worse. There was one year when our domestic help had to take him to school daily in danfo buses because my dad had angrily banned him from being dropped off at school by car. I’m not sure what kind of privileges he withdrew from my mum whenever she offended him, but I always knew she was in his bad books whenever he ignored her greetings. 

During periods like that, my mum would sometimes get me to ask my dad for things she needed, while pretending I was the one who needed them. If we didn’t do it like that, he would never answer her.

Anyway, my golden child privilege expired in 2017.

What happened?

I was a very naive 17-year-old in my first year at private uni, and I fell in love with a final-year student. He was my very first romantic interest, and I fell hard. Within four months of being in school, I found out I was pregnant.

I didn’t even realise it in time because my periods were often irregular. I was already about two months along when I started feeling sick and went to the uni clinic to complain. That’s when they found out I was pregnant. I was so terrified. They had to expel me because of their policy, but my dad got them to keep it quiet because of his reputation.  

How did your parents react to the news?

They flew down to my school to pick me up and said nothing to me throughout the journey home. My dad just looked really angry, while my mum kept crying and shaking her head.

The moment we got home around 9 p.m., my dad faced me and said I had disgraced him and brought shame to the family. Then he said I had to leave his house that night. He actually said, “Over my dead body will you and this bastard child sleep in this house this night.”

Oh my God. What did you do?

I went out and stood by the gate for about an hour before my mum called and said she had arranged a ride for me. She paid for a hotel room, and I spent the night there. The plan was that I’d return home the following day so we could both beg my dad for forgiveness. She reasoned that he would have calmed down by morning.

He didn’t calm down o. He didn’t even allow me to enter the house. By then, my mum had also rallied his siblings to beg, but he ignored everyone. To paint a picture of how far we took this begging matter, all three of my dad’s younger siblings, me and my mum were all kneeling on the floor by the inner gate (out of our neighbours’ view), crying and begging my dad to forgive me. This whole display went on for four hours, but my dad didn’t shake. He said I was dead to him and he never wanted to see me again.

He also forbade my siblings from speaking to me and told my mum that if she kept trying to beg him or kept in touch with me, he would send her out too. By this time, it was clear my dad wouldn’t change his mind, so I left with my aunt. Later that week, I also had to leave her house because he was pressuring her to cut me off. She had no choice but to send me away because she, like his other siblings, also depended on him for financial support.

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Sigh. So, where did you go?

My mum arranged for me to go live with her distant relative in another state, much farther away from where we lived. 

That was one of the toughest periods in my life. It felt like my entire life had ended. My mum’s relative lived in a small town where they only got electricity for 30 minutes every three days. I went from having my own air-conditioned bedroom and en-suite bathroom to sharing a small room in a face-me-I-face-you with my relative and her two daughters. The “bathroom” was a dirty structure made of rusted roofing material, located outside the main house. 

It was the first time I had ever seen a pit toilet, and initially, I was so scared of falling while using it that I’d hold my stool for days to limit how often I had to go there. There was also no running water. We had to fetch water from a well down the street.

I cried every night for the first six months. I was pregnant, abandoned by the father of my child — who disappeared the moment he found out I was pregnant — and disowned by my dad. I went from being a rich kid with a bright future to a pregnant dropout living in a town I had never heard of before.

I’m sorry you went through that

Thank you. I have to say, though, adapting to my circumstances was the hardest part. My mum’s relative was very nice to me. She treated me like one of her own daughters and never shamed me once. She would even be the one asking me if I had pregnancy cravings, encouraging me to tell her so she could cook what I wanted to eat.

My mum couldn’t visit because of my dad, but every month, she would secretly send ₦30,000 to ₦50,000 to her relative’s bank account for my antenatal care and baby needs. When I gave birth to my daughter in early 2018, my mum secretly sent ₦150,000 for hospital bills and baby clothes. 

To this day, I’m not sure where she got all that money because I know my dad never gave her cash. I’ve asked her several times, but instead of answering, she starts feeling guilty, saying she should have done even more for me. Without my mum and her relative (whom I call Aunty), my daughter and I wouldn’t have survived. I would have definitely suffered depression and considered suicide if not for them.

I’m glad you had that support. Did you continue staying with your mum’s relative after giving birth?

Yes. I had nowhere else to go. However, when my baby was about six months old, I realised I couldn’t keep relying on my mum’s secret handouts forever. Aunty ran a small provisions shop, and next to her shop was a beauty salon.

I started hanging out at the salon, watching the girls do hair and nails. I took a particular interest in nails, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to learn as much as I could. I told the salon owner I wanted to learn, and she agreed to take me on as an apprentice for ₦35,000, which Aunty paid. For a year, I walked to the salon every day with my baby on my back to learn hairdressing, manicures and pedicures, regular nail polish, and how to work with press-on nails.

What was that like? Trying to learn a skill with a baby?

It was surprisingly quite easy. My daughter is just as reserved as I am and was such a happy baby. Once I fed her, she was content to stay on my back and quietly watch everyone. If I ever got too busy, I could just drop her at Aunty’s shop.

Towards the end of 2020, I started making money with my skills. I would charge at least ₦1500 to do hair for people in the neighbourhood and ₦500 – ₦1k to paint their nails. I also befriended a neighbour who was studying at the university in the next town, and she often referred me to her friends. 

I’d carry my baby on my back and travel to the university almost every weekend to do hair and nails for clients. In a good month, I was making up to ₦20k. I was also saving like mad. There was actually nothing even to spend on, so saving was easy.

In early 2022, I decided to upgrade my skills. Ladies were now doing acrylic nails and gel polish, and I was tired of telling people I didn’t know how to do it when they asked. 

So, what did you do?

I paid a nail tech ₦30,000 for a three-week training on acrylics, gel polish, and nail art. Next, I bought a basic starter kit: a small UV lamp, acrylic powders, liquids, and a few gel polishes. I think the whole thing cost me about ₦40,000.

Then I started telling everyone I was doing acrylic nails now. I charged really poorly in those early days, like ₦4k – ₦5k per set. Most of the time, I wasn’t making a profit after covering material costs, but I just wanted to practice and become really good. I was also still making little money here and there from hairdressing.

Later that year, I withdrew ₦82k from my savings to buy an Android phone. Did I mention my dad took my phone and laptop when he disowned me in 2017?

He did?

Oh yeah. He took everything. I didn’t even get to pack my clothes. Anyway, I had been managing a small torchlight phone all those years, but I now needed a smartphone to post my work on social media.

I created an Instagram page and started posting pictures of my work there. I also did the same on WhatsApp, and gradually, I began to get both hair and nail clients from social media too. Most of my clients were in the university area, but it didn’t make sense to spend ₦8k on transport fare to and from my town to the university multiple times a week. 

So, I created a schedule. I would travel to the uni campus every Thursday, squat with a friend in the student hostel, and either service clients there or go to their homes. I’d stay there from Thursday to Sunday, then return home on Monday. Sometimes, I took on neighbourhood clients between Monday and Thursday when I had to travel to the school area again. I was literally working non-stop. Whenever I travelled like that, I left my daughter with Aunty.

What was your income like at this time?

By 2023, I was earning at least ₦70,000 monthly. I could save about half of that and use the rest to contribute to food expenses at Aunty’s house. 

That same year, my savings hit ₦500,000, and I rented a mini-flat close to the university since that was where most of my clients stayed. Renting that apartment was the proudest moment of my life. For months, the only property I had was a mattress, but I felt like I had made it. I mean, I was sleeping under a roof I paid for with money I earned with my own hands. It was so surreal. 

My mum also came to visit me secretly for the first time in almost seven years, and we both cried on that mattress. It really felt like after the struggle of the past couple of years, I was finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Love it for you! What’s your income like these days?

I’ve mostly abandoned hairdressing these days because of back pain, so I’m primarily a nail tech. Currently, I make between ₦300,000 and ₦600,000 monthly.

I moved into a spacious ₦600k/year room-and-parlour apartment last year and transformed the parlour into a mini-studio so I can take walk-in clients. A lot of my clients come from Instagram and TikTok. Sometimes, when posts about my designs go viral, or during peak festive seasons like December or Valentine’s, I can make up to ₦800,000 in a single month. 

I work crazily hard. Most days, I’m working from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. I’m pushing this hard because I know where I’m coming from and where I’m going. I need to create a comfortable life for my daughter and make sure she never goes through what I did.

Also, I restarted my undergraduate programme last year.

That’s exciting. How did that happen?

I just kept feeling like university was something I still needed to do. I always got that feeling whenever I saw uni students graduating every year. So, I just decided to do it. I might not need the degree, but what if a job opportunity comes tomorrow? I also didn’t want to rely only on my work as a nail tech. What if people woke up tomorrow and said they don’t want to do acrylic nails again?

So, I’m currently a student at the Open University. I’ve completed my first year; three more to go. Tuition costs me about ₦60k – ₦70k per semester. I study at night after my daughter goes to sleep and after I finish with nail clients.

Another thing I should mention: I got into virtual assistance early this year.

Another skill? Tell me about it

I discovered it while researching online learning. I joined a tech community that offered scholarships for a three-month virtual assistant training. 

After the training, one of the community leaders connected me with a client who needed someone to manage email outreach and calendar scheduling for their agency. It’s not a full-time job, but every two to three months, the client engages my services and pays me ₦100,000 for the month.

Not bad. What do your typical monthly expenses look like?

My mum and aunt are my heroes. I try to send them money every month just to show appreciation for everything they did for me.

Speaking of which, have you spoken to your father since 2017?

No. Not a single word from him or my siblings. He hasn’t reached out to me, and I haven’t reached out to him. My mum tells me that sometimes he says things like, “I know you’re still keeping in touch with your child. Just don’t let me catch you.”

Hmm. Do you think you will ever forgive him if he asks?

I will never forgive him. I was 17 years old, a child who made a mistake. My life could have easily gone left. I could have ended up on the streets, in prostitution, or dead from depression. He threw me away like trash because of his ego and his “reputation.” He abandoned me at the exact moment I needed a father the most. I survived and thrived because of God and my mother’s family, not him.

How would you describe your relationship with money?

I’d say security. Growing up, money was just this thing my dad controlled, and because he did, he used it as a tool to strip away my independence the moment I made a mistake.

Living with my aunt and learning a skill taught me the real value of money. For me today, money is my freedom and my shield. I love knowing that every single kobo paying for my apartment, my daughter’s school, my degree, and even my generator fuel came from my own hard work. Nobody can ever hold money over my head or use it to dictate my choices again.

Because of that, I am incredibly optimistic about my future. When I look back at where I was at 17 and see where I am today at 26, I feel unstoppable. I know that whatever life throws at me next, I have the skills and the drive to handle it and keep growing.

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

8.5. The remaining 1.5 is just for when I finally get my degree and open a luxury nail and beauty lounge. But mentally, emotionally, and financially, I am at peace. I built my life from zero, and nobody can ever take that away from me.

Find all the past Naira Life stories here.