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.
Teni* (25) didn’t know her father, so when he came into her life as an adult, she was stunned. After an attempt to salvage their relationship, Teni realised she was giving him more than she was getting back, and she cut him off in a way that ended their relationship… and his life.
At the end of this story, you’ll get to answer one question: Did she fuck up or not?
This is Teni’s dilemma, as told to Azara.
“Please don’t contact me again.”
That was the last thing I said to my father. Three months later, he is dead, and everyone thinks it’s my fault.
But 25 years ago, long before I was blamed for ending his life, my father was nothing but a footnote in mine.
I grew up the only child of a single mother, and even when I was young, I understood someone was missing from my life. Initially, I often asked my mum about my dad, but she never answered. Naturally, I stopped bringing him up.
But while he wasn’t a topic of conversation in our home anymore, the impact of his absence was still clear as day. My mum suffered as a single parent. We grew up in my maternal grandma’s house, where I shared a room with my mother. My grandma often ridiculed her for still living at home as an adult, sometimes treating her like the house help. Even though my mum often threatened to move out, I think she stayed so that I could grow up in a nice house and eat three times a day.
Our luck changed in 2016. My mum’s food business took off, and while I don’t know exactly how much she was making or whether she was doing something else on the side, I know it was enough to improve our lifestyle. She started buying me clothes once a month, and my grandma stopped hurling insults at her. A year later, my mum and I moved out.
By 2018, my mum was earning enough to enrol me at a private university to study accounting. She also bought me my first laptop, and I used it to learn graphic design. Before I had even graduated, I had made about ₦400k with the skill. Now, three years later, I steadily earn $700 a month (about ₦927k) from an international client. I give half my income to my mum, and I still live with her because the thought of leaving her makes me miserable.
Everything was going fine, and it would have kept going fine if not for my grandma.
For my mum’s birthday last year, I took her to dinner and invited my grandma since I knew my mum would ask me to. In the middle of our meal, my grandma casually mentioned that my father had been asking about me.
I paused, too stunned for words. My mum, on the other hand, burst into tears. She and her mum started fighting, and to avoid public embarrassment, I had the waiter pack our food so we could leave.
At home, my mother tearfully confessed that she had been in contact with my father for a few months and didn’t want me to know. That was the first time she would talk to me about my father. She explained how he had abandoned her when she got pregnant, moved to a different state and promised to send her money. He never sent any money, and they lost touch.
However, in early 2025, he had suffered a stroke that paralysed one side of his body, and had somehow found my mum again. That’s how my mum began paying for his physiotherapy.
I was enraged. He didn’t deserve my mother’s money or sympathy, but she said God would not be happy with her if she let the father of her only child suffer. She never wanted me to meet him, but my grandma kept telling her I had to make amends with him, which was why she brought him up at dinner.
So that my grandma would leave my mother alone, I agreed to go to Lagos and see my father. This was in October 2025, and I visited him at the hospital with my mum.
I thought I would be angry when I saw him, but I felt nothing. He just looked like a sick, old man in a hospital room. His first words to me were, “Who is this one?” because he had no idea who I was. His face dropped the second I told him I was his daughter.
At first, we talked politely about my job and life, but he soon began to cry, saying he was sorry for leaving me behind. He claimed it was the devil, and now he just wanted to know his only daughter.
I forgave him, and we exchanged numbers. Before we left that day, I heard my mum talking to the doctor about my father’s treatments. Apparently, she had been paying a whopping ₦350k for him to do 12 physiotherapy sessions a month!
There’s nothing I hate more than seeing my mum get taken advantage of, so on a whim, I told her I’ll start paying for the treatments. She initially resisted, but when I didn’t relent, she allowed me.
For months, my dad and I followed a particular routine: I would pay for his treatment, he would call me to bless me, and then he would ask me about my day. I didn’t hate it, but I regretted it. I realised I was spending a massive chunk of my salary on a man who contributed nothing to my life.
Since I still lived with my mum, I wasn’t struggling, but the fact that my runaway father was now enjoying my earnings didn’t seem fair. Slowly, my feelings of indifference bled into resentment.
It only got worse with time. Despite the physiotherapy, my father’s condition worsened, and his other child, my half-brother, would reach out to me, demanding the payments for our father’s treatment if I was even a day late. When I asked my dad why this brother I didn’t know had my number, he said he gave it to him so we could be one family.
They also started demanding I pay for other things beyond his normal physiotherapy treatment: acupuncture, needling, and massages. It was like the more time passed, the more my father became terrified of passing away, so the more treatments he had. When he or his son called me, they were no longer cordial, only demanding money. In the worst month, I paid up to ₦750k for medical treatments.
My final straw came at the end of June. I had just paid about ₦500k for my father’s physiotherapy, and what my brother claimed was the other half of some treatment. A day later, my mum casually mentioned she had paid for my father’s physiotherapy that month because he told her I hadn’t given him any money.
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That was when my anger broke through. Extorting me was one thing, but extorting my mother was too low a blow.
I never told my mum my father lied; I simply called him in a rage and demanded that he never contact me again, or I’d tell my mum he had basically stolen from her. Then I blocked his number.
My brother tried calling, and I blocked him, too. I don’t know what story they told my mum, but she never confronted me about blocking them, meaning she likely didn’t know.
The choice was freeing: I started saving more money again and going out with my friends more. I was also free of the bitterness that had weighed me down for nearly a year.
However, a few weeks ago, things turned sour again.
My mother came crying to me, saying that my father was dead. My half-brother told her, and he also finally confessed that I had stopped paying my father’s medical bills. My mum said what I did was wickedness, and now the family was blaming me for the death of an elderly, sick man.
I didn’t shed a tear for that man, and I think my remorselessness only aggravated the situation. My grandma said I’m not better than my father because I abandoned him, while my brother went as far as saying I killed him. My mum is the only one on my side, even though she doesn’t support what I did.
Now, everyone is trying to get me to pay for the funeral, saying it’ll only make things fair, but they will not see ₦1 from me. I handled that man’s medical bills for nearly a year, and this is the thanks I get? Since spending money is so easy, his son should pay.
My family can say whatever they want, but I don’t think I have done anything wrong. If anything, I should never have paid for his medical bills to begin with.
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