Sometimes, life puts you in messy situations where you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing or not. That’s what Na Me F— Up? is about — real Nigerians sharing the choices they’ve made, while you decide if they fucked up or not.
Pressure can push people into choices they never imagined making. For Ann* (25), going from the comfort of her uncle’s home back to poverty pushed her to make a reckless choice she’s still struggling to recover from.
When you’re done reading, you get to decide if she fucked up or not.
My sister and I grew up with our mum in a house where the roof leaked terribly whenever it rained. We hadn’t had electricity in years, and we barely ate proper food. Some nights, we went to bed hungry. So when our uncle offered my sister and I a place in his duplex in 2022, it felt like we had escaped hell.
I’d just written UTME for the second time, and she had just finished secondary school. For the first time in our lives, we were eating meals we’d only ever seen online. We watched TV every day, had unlimited internet, went on fun outings, and even got pocket money from him. He sponsored my Post–UTME lessons, and when I didn’t gain admission, he paid for my JAMB again in 2023. Living with him felt like stepping into a completely different world.
But, as generous as he was, he also regularly threatened to send us back home over the smallest things, like delaying chores or being sluggish. We lived in constant fear that one mistake would send us back to our old life, so we tried our best to be faultless.
Then, in October 2023, we made a huge mistake. My sister and I went out on her birthday without telling him, and we forgot to cook before leaving. He returned earlier than usual and was furious. He told us to pack out the next morning. We cried and begged until he allowed us to stay, but after that day, things weren’t the same. We knew we’d overstayed our welcome.
By January 2024, he told us he was travelling to Canada and asked us to go back home until he returned in February. Deep down, we knew it was his way of chasing us out. We left, and when he finally returned, he cut us off entirely.
Returning home after two years of comfort was brutal. The economy had worsened, and so had our old living conditions. But what made it truly unbearable was how my mum reacted. She complained constantly about feeding us and pressured us to find money or move out by any means. One day, she called us a burden. Her words cut deeply and made me feel like a failure.
I slipped into depression. I’d written UTME three times and still wasn’t in school. I picked up odd jobs to save for JUPEB, but nothing I earned was enough. That was when my sister told a friend about our situation, and he asked if we were willing to go into Yahoo.
At first, I resisted, but the plan sounded like our only way out. By September 2024, I agreed on one condition: we’d stop as soon as we cashed out enough to rent a small place, furnish it, and pay for my JUPEB. My sister’s friends, who were already in the game, started teaching us.
We tried for months, but little money came in. Meanwhile, we needed money for data, upkeep, and to contribute at home, so we turned to online loan apps, convincing ourselves we’d pay everything back once we finally cashed out. By April, we’d borrowed from over fifteen loan apps and our total debt had crossed ₦700k, with almost double the interest.
When we finally realised that we weren’t going to make big money, we quit Yahoo. But the damage was already done. The interest kept piling up, and the loan sharks wouldn’t stop calling us and the people we knew. I couldn’t save for JUPEB, and with no income at all, I felt completely trapped.
My mum found out about the debt when the loan agents began calling her too. Instead of understanding the pressure that pushed us into desperation, she turned everything on me. She called me a disgrace and said I’d failed her, completely ignoring the fact that she was the one who told us to make money by any means.
Months later, the loans are still hanging over me. I know fraud is wrong, and the way we went about surviving was irresponsible, but at the time, the pressure clouded my judgment. I’m trying to rebuild my life, but it feels like I’m crawling through a tunnel with no light in sight.
Read Next: I Rushed Into A Marriage And Got Divorced at 24
