The Nigerian experience is physical, emotional, and sometimes international. No one knows it better than our features on #TheAbroadLife, a series where we detail and explore Nigerian experiences while living abroad.
When today’s subject on Abroad Life got tired of waiting for over a year for Canada to give her a visa, she decided to try the UK instead. She got her UK visa in three months. Now, she’s there but doesn’t like a few things — like too much electricity and over-politeness.
Tell me about the time you decided to move abroad.
2020. Before then, moving abroad wasn’t on my mind. It’s not because I love Nigeria o, I just thought I’d never be able to afford japa. I come from a poor family, studied law and was earning peanuts throughout my five years as a lawyer. The only thing on my mind was progressing my career, getting a new job and starting a business.
Then one day, my friend brought up Canada during a conversation. First, I laughed. Who has Canada relocation money? But she persisted and told me it wasn’t as expensive as people made it out to be. I didn’t have to have all the money at once. All I had to do was plan well.
You don’t have to pay at once?
When people talk about Canada, they say, “It’s expensive because you have to pay for credentials assessment, English proficiency tests, proof of funds and application fees.” It sounds overwhelming when you put it like that. You don’t have to pay all of those fees at once.
I paid $220 for my credentials assessment, and ₦79k for an English proficiency test. That’s all I needed to enter the pool of applicants. I then built on my proof of funds and paid my application fees over time.
I started the application process, but COVID happened and I just forgot about it. I spent most of the year trying to start my own law-related business.
When did you pick it back up?
October 20, 2020. When I saw the things that happened that day, I promised myself I had to leave the country within a year. I felt like my life was worth nothing in this Nigeria. I started the application again, got in the applicant pool in February 2021 and waited for my name to be selected.
By September 2021, I concluded nothing was going to happen. Thousands of people around the world were waiting for their Canadian visas, and I didn’t think it was going to be my turn any time soon, so I gave up. I discussed it with a friend and they told me to try the UK instead. This time, however, it would be for a master’s degree.
Was the application easy?
It was easy but more expensive than Canada. I started my application on September 6th and got my visa on December 6th. For studying in the UK, once you provide everything they require, you’re sure you’re going to get your visa. The process has a checklist with points. For everything you have on the checklist, you get the corresponding points. Once you pass their points cut off, you get the visa. I even booked my flight for December 31st, 2021 before I got my visa. I booked a flight that’d land in the UK on January 1st because I wanted to start the new year on a clean slate.
Expectation vs reality: UK edition.
I tried my best to have zero expectations coming to the UK. I just wanted to come here and do school. Perhaps the only expectation I had in some corner of my mind was that it would be difficult to survive financially in the UK because I’m sponsoring myself through school.
The first thing that stood out to me when I got here was the orderliness of everything. Everything working so perfectly is constantly battling with the chaotic Nigerian in me. The craziest thing for me is that they’ve never taken light. How? Sometimes, to make it feel like I’m in Nigeria, I turn off my lights and everything electrical in my room and just lie down in the dark.
LMAO!
The train is always on time too. It’s just weird to me.
But when I say everything is working, I’m not talking about the weather. That one isn’t. It can go from sunny to rainy to absolutely gloomy in a matter of minutes. Most times though, it’s gloomy. And when you add that to loneliness, it’s depressing.
You’re lonely?
Many of the Nigerians I’ve met here are either in school studying or just busy with work and trying to pay bills. People don’t have time for each other. If I was to have time to make friends and socialise, it would mean I have to relax on school stuff, and that’s impossible. School here is so, so difficult.
Why?
The schooling system is generally rigorous, but when you add the fact that I’m studying a tech-related course after I’ve been a law student and lawyer for the past 11 years, it’s a bit more difficult.
You didn’t say anything about the people.
They’re polite to a fault and I don’t like it. Even when they’re mad at you, they say stuff like, “my love” and “darling”. Like, please let me know if you’re angry at me. Stop smiling. They can be smiling with you and drafting your resignation letter.
Do you think you can solve the loneliness?
I think I just have to get used to it. I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. People are always going to be too busy to hang out and commit themselves to building communities. It’s very fast-paced here.
What’s your plan for when you’re done with your master’s?
If I don’t have a job then, I’ll apply for UK’s two-year post-study visa. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll start the Canada application again. If Canada doesn’t work out, I’ll return to Nigeria. No wahala.
Hey there! My name is Sheriff and I’m the writer of Abroad Life. If you’re a Nigerian and you live or have lived abroad, I would love to talk to you about what that experience feels like and feature you on Abroad Life. All you need to do is fill out this short form, and I’ll be in contact.
If you’ve never done something out of the ordinary for food, you can’t call yourself a foodie. These men, however, can absolutely call themselves foodies. Because, ah!
1. “Stolen meat is sweet”
— Habib, 27
Let’s just say I’m never going to steal meat again. When I was younger, I followed my mum to her shop every day. There, she cooked whatever we were going to eat at home that night. If there was still food, we took the rest to the shop the next morning.
One morning, my mum packed turkey stew in a cooler and told me to bring it to the shop when I was coming. It’s not my fault that the turkey looked sexy as hell and was staring at me. First, I used my teeth to trim all the flaps of the turkey wings and kept it back in the cooler. After some time, I said fuck it, and ate the entire turkey, then placed the bone back in the soup. Without cleaning my mouth, I went to the shop.
My mum: Ah, Habib, why’s your mouth shining?
Me: My mouth? Shining? Must be the garri I drank.
My mum: Garri? Okay o.
Two minutes later, she was warming the stew when she saw bare turkey bones in it. Like I said, I’m never going to steal meat again.
2. “I shouted at my four-year-old because of plantain”
— Yemi, 59
I shouted at my four-year-old because of plantain. When he was growing up, everyone always called him “Dodo” because he really liked plantain. For me, it was extra nice to see because plantain — the soft, squishy kind — is my favourite food too. Seeing my son take after me was something to be proud of. As he grew older, we started eating from the same plate just so he could eat better. We used to do a “competition” to see who could consume the most food, when, in reality, we were just trying to get him to eat more.
One day, we were eating rice and stew with plantain. The plantain was served on a different plate. Do you know that when we started eating, this boy went for the plantain plate and just started eating only plantain? At first, I thought he’d get tired. But he didn’t. When I saw he didn’t look like he was going to stop anytime soon, I got angry and yelled at him. I may have also snatched the plate from the tray. This happened 19 years ago and it’s something we joke about with the family these days, but at that moment, I was actually terrified the boy was going to finish my soft plantain.
In boarding house, I found out that my best friend couldn’t stand eggs. Me, I love eggs. At first, it was a normal thing for him to give me his eggs whenever we got served. Then he made other friends and they liked eggs too. That’s how I had to start calling dibs first. I absolutely hated it.
You know what I did? I memorised the food timetable, so whenever we were eating eggs I’d wake up at 5 a.m. to go and ask him for his eggs. That means I got them that day. Then the other people started asking by 4 a.m. That’s how we descended into madness until the point where we’d set our wristwatch alarms for 11:58 p.m., so that once it was 12 a.m., all of us would run out of our respective rooms, pushing each other on the corridor to get to his room first and shout, “I book for your eggs!”
After some time, he noticed the madness was too much, so he insisted we trade. One day he said, if you want eggs, give me your meat. Now that I think about it, that just sounds weird. We were so innocent!
4. “Yam and eggs almost made me crash my mum’s car”
— Ahmed, 23
Growing up, my favourite food was yam and eggs. One day when I was seven, my mum strapped me in the back seat of her car and went out. But there was a cooler of yam and eggs in the back front seat. Long story short, I unstrapped myself, went to the front, opened the cooler and started eating. But what I didn’t know was that in that process, I also hit the gear and put the car on neutral, which made it start rolling backwards. Thankfully, when the car started moving, my mum’s friend saw it, ran and came to put it back in parking mode. I just crawled back to the back like nothing happened.
5. “I disguised as an usher to get free small chops”
— Sam, 23
In university, my flatmate’s faculty had some symposium thing where they were going to share food at the end. To attend, you had to be a member of the faculty. I wasn’t. So, while I needed a pass to be admitted, my flatmate told me not to worry. He told me what to say to get in, but he didn’t want us to go together, so he went ahead of me. By the time I got there, the plan casted and the bouncers at the door refused to let me in. I called my flatmate and he said he wasn’t around and he wasn’t going to be there anytime soon.
Next thing, I looked around at the ushers who were also students and noticed we wore the same thing — black shirt, black pants, black shoes. And then I saw where they were getting food packs from to share. The only smart thing to do was go there and ask for my own pack. Obviously, they didn’t know me, so they asked me a few questions: mention three people in your set; what’s our HOD’s name? what’s this course’s code? Me, I had answers to all the questions because my flatmate and I gisted a lot. All I needed was confidence.
After my interrogation, they were convinced I was one of the ushers, apologised and gave me my pack. But when I snuck out of there and opened the food pack, I wanted to fight. It wasn’t food. It was just puff puff. Stale, cold puff puff.
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.
Until 2016, this 25-year-old #NairaLife subject’s financial plan was, “My dad’s wealth will bankroll me forever.” You know what made her start hustling for herself? The sudden fear of poverty.
Let’s start with your earliest memory of money.
My earliest memory of money is tied to my parent’s divorce when I was five. My mum was a twenty-something-year-old university student and couldn’t take care of us so we moved with my dad to Southern Nigeria. When they were together, we lived in our own house in Abuja and had a maid, so I guess things were okay. Till today, I don’t know what happened to the house. When we moved, things became a bit difficult.
We first had to live with my dad’s brother for almost a year before we got our apartment. In that period, I remember my dad going out in the mornings and coming back looking defeated. Then, I didn’t know what he was doing, but now I know he was going to look for work.
What did he do for a living?
He’s a civil engineer. He was going out presenting his portfolio to people and looking for contracts. He didn’t let his reality affect us though. When he came home, he cooked and played with us like nothing was happening.
Shortly after we moved to our apartment, he rented another building on our street and called it his office. There, he hired people and looked busier than I’d ever seen him. As the years went by, things got much better for our family. First, we started flying to other Nigerian states to see family members. By the time I was 8, we were travelling abroad for holidays. One year, we’d go to multiple states in the US, another year, we’d tour Europe.
I also noticed I got way more pocket money than my mates in school. I was enjoying my dad’s new wealth, but money was having a bad effect on me.
How?
I got greedy. Even though I took more pocket money to school than my mates, I spent it all and wanted more. After school, when I was waiting for either my nanny or my dad’s police escort to pick me up, I walked up to shops, picked up whatever I wanted and started eating it before the seller noticed. I didn’t have any money to pay, so whoever came to pick me up would pay. It became a habit. I don’t even know when or how I stopped.
I also got super proud. In addition to his engineering business doing well, my dad’s brother became a new big name in politics in that town, so my dad was getting favours and contracts. What this meant for me was that my surname was popular. Nobody — not even teachers — could speak to me.
The way I thought about money was that my dad would have it and take care of me forever. I thought I’d never have to work a day in my life.
When did that change?
In my final year of university. Throughout university, I got a ₦50k monthly allowance and flew business class to the state where my school was located, so I didn’t have a reason to think things would change.
I studied architecture. In my final year, in 2016, we had a project that I thought I did really well. When it was time for reviews, the lecturer looked at my project and said, “Yeah, you did okay,” and moved on. Ah! I was in shock. I expected him to bring my project out in front of the class and laud it for its excellence and all I got was “It’s okay”. After crying, I started to think about my life and what I would do after university. If I wasn’t good at architecture, how would I make money? To add to my panic, I was hearing everywhere that there were no jobs and the economy was getting worse.
So I decided to make a list. What were some of the things I thought I could do for a living?
What did you come up with?
Four things. Importing a wide range of nude-coloured shoes for black women, selling hair, interior decoration and selling clothes.
Which of them did you do?
I first tried to sell hair. My dad gave me a ₦250k gift for finishing university, so I used ₦100k to buy hair for myself and ₦60k to import bundles of hair from China. Nobody bought the hair. While I was marketing the hair, I decided to sell chokers because everyone was crazy about them. This was 2016, and we’d moved to our own house in Abuja. I bought 30 chokers for ₦10k and sold them on Instagram for ₦1,500 each, That’s ₦45k in total. It was too easy to make that money. People were begging me to restock.
By the time my new stock came, I had to go for NYSC in the south. Nobody wanted them there. I had to send them to someone to sell them off for me. Like that, business was done.
What was your NYSC year like?
NYSC placed me at an oil company for work. They didn’t need an architect, but they accepted me and paid me ₦50k. I saved all my allwaee because I didn’t need it to survive. In my year there, I solved so many administrative problems that made them more efficient as a company, but I had to leave because they didn’t have a role for me.
When I got back in 2018, I told my dad I wanted to apply for a master’s abroad and he said okay. By the time I got my admission, the fees were a total of $30,000. That was the first time in a long time my dad couldn’t pay for something. It was already too late to find a scholarship, so I just forfeited the admission and started looking for jobs.
Were things bad for him too?
They were not as good as before. He was mainly surviving on investments he’d made over the years.
After months of searching for jobs online, I finally found one at a big architectural firm. It was in Lagos, so I had to travel five times for the five interview stages. I spent my NYSC allawee on those flights. By the time they offered me a salary, it was ₦118k. My dad was furious. First of all, he didn’t want me to move states to work, and now I was going to earn peanuts. He eventually let me go sha, and when I was leaving, I got ₦250k from my family to settle.
In Lagos, I lived with my aunt. It didn’t take me long to realise I hated the job. I hated the daily commute in danfos and I hated the pay. I felt like I was suffering. With our ₦118k salaries, they still told us to go out and have drinks every weekend so we’d meet clients. Still, I managed to save between ₦15k and ₦20k monthly.
Shortly after I started too, an interior decor job I’d been applying for reached out to hire me. The pay was ₦75k.
Did you take it?
I was conflicted. Was I to go for a job I really wanted with lesser pay or stay at a job I hated with better pay? I deliberated for a few weeks and chose the money. Six months later, I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore.
I moved back to Abuja to stay at home. I first did nothing for some time, then tried to learn how to code because I was bored. I didn’t have any money, but I didn’t need money for anything.
In late 2019, a friend got me an interior decor assistant gig. It paid ₦30k. I was there for almost a year and got promoted to a project manager with a ₦120k salary, but when COVID hit, they stopped paying, so I quit.
What were your finances like in this period?
When I was in my architecture job in Lagos, I invested ₦130k in an agrotech company. In late 2019, they paid me back with an interest of ₦44k, so I kept some of the money and invested the rest back. When I lost my interior decor gig, I survived on whatever savings I had and my monthly pocket money.
Pocket money?
My dad started giving me money again in 2019 because I moved back home. I think he just feels responsible for me because I still live under his roof. Sometimes ₦15k, other times, ₦30k. These days, it goes as high as ₦50k.
After I lost my job in 2020, I decided to stop looking for jobs and just start my own business. I started by helping a few friends design their apartments, and through referrals, I got extra gigs. My first paid gig paid was ₦400k for decorating a new office. After that, I made between ₦60k and ₦200k every three months from other gigs.
By 2021, I picked up event management. I knew I was good at hosting friends, so it just seemed like a good second hustle to have. At first, I wasn’t charging a fee, all I did was plan the events and charge for transportation. This year, I started a gift concierge business. My family gave me a $3,000 cash gift this year for my business, so I hired a social media manager, bought some interior decor equipment, some crypto, and invested $200 in a Nigerian startup.
How much do these businesses make you in a month?
Between ₦80k and ₦200k in total. It’s not terrible. My three-year goal is to be able to rent my apartment and have a driver. I don’t mind taking on a civil service job on the side to make more money.
Why civil service?
I assume it’s flexible. With a civil service job, I can comfortably do my side jobs, and I’ll be free on weekends. Truth is, I’m 25 and if I can build these three businesses well in the next few years, I’ll make millions from them. People are always going to need all the services I offer.
What are your finances like right now?
I have ₦400k in emergency funds that I never touch, $500 somewhere, ₦120k as my loose cash, $200 invested in a Nigerian startup, and $500 in crypto.
And a breakdown of your monthly expenses?
Is there something you want but can’t afford?
A vacation outside Nigeria and a master’s in business abroad. I want to learn how to do business the right way so I scale up my businesses and make millions.
What’s your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
I’d say it’s at an 8. I’m satisfied with what I have right now because I know there’s more coming.
How well do you know Nigerian geography?
Can you guess the Nigerian state from just eight clues in one minute?
Questions
This is a question
Type “OK” to start the quiz
You couldn’t guess it right!
Look at you. What do you even know about Nigeria? Don’t Google the answer o. Try again!
Best in knowledge!
Let’s gooooooooo! Are you sure you didn’t cheat? Don’t go and shout the answer on social media o. Let them suffer!
The Nigerian experience is physical, emotional, and sometimes international. No one knows it better than our features on #TheAbroadLife, a series where we detail and explore Nigerian experiences while living abroad.
Today’s subject on Abroad Life moved to the UK in 2018, but immediately wanted to return to Nigeria — people told her to go back to her country and others mimicked her accent. She’s finally moved to a new town and, for the first time, is excited about living in the UK.
First things first, when did you decide to move abroad?
In 2016, people were crazy about moving to Canada. My older brother jumped on that craze and decided to move there too for school at 16, so I thought, “Me too I have to leave Nigeria.”
My plan was to go to the US for university, but a mass shooting happened in the US, and I just became paranoid. It seemed like something bad would happen to me if I went to that side of the world.
Thankfully, in 2018, a family friend finished their sixth form in the UK, and because I was just finishing secondary school, my parents decided I should go to the UK to do my sixth form too. When I moved, I was 16.
Was that your first time travelling?
Oh no. I’m a UK citizen. My parents travelled to the UK to have me and moved back to Nigeria one month later. Every year since I was a kid, we travelled to either the US, UK, Dubai or Ghana. Honestly, I don’t know why we didn’t think of the UK first when we were considering my university options. When we did decide, it seemed like the most sensible option.
How did leaving Nigeria to go stay elsewhere feel?
Exciting. My mum spent about 15 years of her childhood up in the UK, so she brought us up on UK stories and slangs. Whenever I tried to say those slangs to my Nigerian friends, it seemed like I was speaking another language. They just didn’t get it. Moving to the UK was meant to be an avenue for me to explore who I thought I was at heart.
Okay so, expectations vs reality?
So, I moved to a town called Stevenage to live with a family friend, her husband and two daughters. I thought I was going to get there and meet a nice, sexy town with a great social scene and people I could relate well with. But omo, that town wasn’t giving “abroad” at all. The roads were bad and the buildings were ugly. I wanted to run back to Lagos.
My school was a bus away in another town called Hitchin. That place wasn’t great too, but what stood out in both towns was the absolute whiteness of it. I rarely saw any black people. And the white people I encountered were people with thick accents who couldn’t even speak correct English, but occasionally told me to go back to my country.
In school, people would say stuff like, “Oh my! How can you speak and write so well?” I was also introduced as, “Lisa* from Nigeria” every single time. Like, what happened to just saying my name? Why did they have to add “from Nigeria” every single time? I didn’t enjoy my two years in sixth form at all.
That sounds awful.
The only thing that helped me survive was the family I lived with. They treated me like their own daughter, and their kids treated me like their own sister. On my mum’s birthday, I was sad I couldn’t be in Nigeria for her party, and the people I was staying with went out, got food, and started a mini party in the house just so I could feel better.
I finished sixth form in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, so I took a break before university. I just felt like.
What did you do for that year?
I got a job at a store in Stevenage. I arranged stuff on counters, cleaned and did some other administrative tasks. It was the ghetto. I worked with older white people who mistook me for a dissimilar-looking black colleague and mimicked my accent. It was a store, so there was no HR I could report to. I just moved on whenever anything like that happened.
How long did you work there?
Exactly one year. After that, I moved to Coventry for university. Again, my first thought when I moved in to my hostel at my uni in Coventry was, “Am I really abroad?” The walls were cracked and the hallways were dirty. I thought I’d hate being here too.
But when I went into the campus, things looked much better. First, I saw diversity like I hadn’t seen in Stevenage or Hitchin. There were people from so many different countries — especially Africa — that just seemed like they would make cool friends.
One thing I noticed was that people from other countries know about Nigeria and Nigerians more than Nigerians know about other people. As I settled in, I started making friends. And yeah, all my friends are black.
It’s not like I don’t speak with white people o. I just don’t have them in my close circles because there’s not a lot we can relate to.
How long is your uni course?
It’s three years. I don’t know what I’m doing when I finish here, but I know I was born to enjoy my life and have plenty money, so that’s probably what’s going to happen.
I’m also considering returning to Nigeria for NYSC, but when I get to that river, I’ll cross it. Right now, I just want to enjoy uni and enjoy my life.
Hey there! My name is Sheriff and I’m the writer of Abroad Life. If you’re a Nigerian and you live or have lived abroad, I would love to talk to you about what that experience feels like and feature you on Abroad Life. All you need to do is fill out this short form, and I’ll be in contact.
If you grew up in Nigeria, you’ve probably had to kill a chicken at some point in your life. I’ve done it too. It wasn’t fun. However, your reaction to killing a chicken for the first time says a lot more about you than you think.
See for yourself.
1. If you were excited, we’re terrified of you.
No, for real. Who hears that it’s time to commit murder and goes, “Let’s fucking goooooooooooo!?” Serial killers, that’s who. People who didn’t hesitate the first time they heard it was time to kill chickens are the real problems with society. Yes, we know they’re chickens and they’d die anyway, but at least show some sympathy.
2. If you chickened out, you’re a dead guy.
Is it not ordinary blood? Blood and screams of horror from a flightless bird. That’s what you cannot handle? The people that are killing birds and cows and goats for a living, do they have three necks? Please my friend, collect that knife.
3. If you were easily convinced, you’re easily peer pressured.
So because someone convinced you to kill a harmless bird, you too you now went did it just like that? If that person told you to put your hand inside fire, would you do it?
4. If you had to be convinced a lot, you’re selfish.
So, your friend or family member is asking you to assist them with a task and all you can think about is your own future trauma? As if you’ll not follow and eat the chicken. Hmmm. Sounds like selfishness to me.
5. If you became a vegetarian afterwards, you’re a hypocrite.
Vegetarian that’s buying insecticide to kill mosquitoes? Vegetarian that’ll kill a snake if it attacks them? #AnimalLivesMatterEvenIfThey’reTryingToKillYou
After you read this article, go and have a random conversation with a Gen Z person. Preferably if they’re a Twitter user. What you’ll see is that they’ll use at least seven of the words in this article. Do we know why? No.
But will it happen? Yes.
1. “Like” (At least 100 times)
It’s like, Gen Zs just like, really like using the word “like”. Like, how can you like, talk about all your daily problems and like, challenges and stuff, without like saying, “like”. Get to the fucking point!
2. “Literally”
Gen Zs and being literal about everything is like Lai Mohammed and lying. You know it’s going to happen but you can’t do anything to stop it. You’ll be texting them ,and next thing you see,, “I’m like literally dying of laughter.” You know the crazy part? The whole time, their face is like this:
3. “I’m dead” or “dyingggg” or “dead!”
Speaking of dying, why are Gen Z’s always dying? Why? Do they know which angel is passing when they’re saying these things? What if it’s the angel of death? May we not attract curses and untimely deaths to ourselves o. Hmm.
4. “Toxic”
Everything bad, annoying, irritating, dangerous, wicked, abusive, etc, can be blended into one word for Gen Z’s — toxic. Do they overuse the word? Yes. Do they misuse the word? Yes. Should they expand their vocabulary? Please, yes!
Eminem would be proud that the main character in his song about a toxic, abusive and murderous fanatic — who killed his pregnant girlfriend while throwing a tantrum about Eminem not responding to his letters — has become a Gen Z phenomenon for liking someone/something.
6. Bestie
When Gen Z’s started saying this, I didn’t think it would catch on, but now everyone is calling literally everyone“bestie”.
Me: But we just met today.
Gen Z person: Oh bestie, please!
7. “It’s giving…”
What is giving? Where did this come from? Who started it? I have so many questions.
8. “And that’s on *insert literally anything*”
Gen Z’s will make a point, and to hammer their point home, they’ll say something random like, “And that’s on Shola Shobowale’s left knee. Purrrrr!” And then all the other Gen Z’s will start jumping and celebrating. Why?
9. “Ate”
No this is not the type of ate you think. “Ate” here is a compliment you give someone when they do something really good. It’s mostly used to compliment someone’s looks/dressing but you can use it in any situation. If you don’t have anything to say to a Gen Z, just walk up to them and say, “Bestie you ate,” and watch them have the best day of their life. What did you eat?
10. “Snapped”
Snapped is similar to “ate”. If someone snaps, it means they were excellent and the thing they set out to do.
11. “Purrrr”
I can’t lie, I don’t know what this means. But they say it a whole damn lot.
12. “Not gonna lie”
If it’s not that guilty conscience is chasing all of them, why are they all prefacing their sentences with a disclaimer. Hmm. May God save this generation.
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.
When today’s subject on #NairaLife was 8 years old, he wanted to be a fraudster. Now, he’s managing projects for financial institutions and growing his career. But he’s not satisfied yet — not until he has four full-time jobs.
Tell me about your earliest memory of money.
I’m the last of four children. When I was about 8 or 9, my eldest brother had friends who had much more money than they should have had. Here’s how I reached that conclusion — my dad was a banker, and he couldn’t afford all the things they were affording so easily. They lived flashy lives, had cars and bought pizza often, and they didn’t have jobs. As I got older, I started going to cybercafes that doubled as game centres to play FIFA. Whenever I went there, my brother and his friends were there. I also knew that they used to pay ₦250 to stay there for overnight bowsing.
With time, I realised they were fraudsters who made a living by doing love scams. I wanted to be like them so bad. I started asking them to teach me and the answer I got was always, “When you get older.”
Did you ever learn?
Nope. I started hanging out with my immediate older brother who had converted from Islam to Christianity and was now playing the guitar in the choir. I only wanted to learn the guitar, but I ended up converting to Christianity as well. This was in 2007 and I was 14 and in SS 1. Because I was hanging out with a different group of people and going to church where they preached against things like fraud, I lost interest.
What did your family think about your conversion at such a young age?
For a brief period, my dad was against it. But because he was concerned about my eldest brother’s lifestyle and friend choices, and he saw that my other brother and I were well behaved, he left us alone. If changing religions meant we would turn out better, then he wasn’t against it. His family members slated him for it. They said he wasn’t man enough to take care of his children.
And your mum?
She left Nigeria for the UK to find greener pastures for us when I was a kid — sometime in the 1990s. At some point, her papers expired and she couldn’t come back to Nigeria, so she just stayed there illegally. She sent money, games and clothes from time to time, and we spoke almost every day. I guess she was also okay with my conversion.
So things were good at home then.
My dad’s job at the bank meant we lived a modest life. It wasn’t as great as people in our community thought it was, but it wasn’t bad as well. My dad paid our school fees and gave us money to survive, and that was it.
However, things changed in 2008 when the restructuring in the banking sector happened. He lost his job. He’d been working in the banking sector for over 25 years and was soon going to become a manager.
Ouch.
It was also during that period that I had to go to university. My older siblings had gone to private universities, but now that it was my turn, there was no money. My dad suggested a public university, but the suggestion didn’t fly with my mum, so we decided on a private university.
It was difficult for my dad to cope with the payment of fees, but he managed. Sometimes, he had to sell an asset — a car, land — for us to survive. In addition to this, he was giving me ₦10k every month as allowance. My mum also gave me ₦10k most months. I didn’t think surviving on ₦20k a month in university was bad until I heard my mates were collecting ₦120k from their parents.
LMAO! Did your dad find work after?
Nope. He tried to do “business” by giving different people money to start their own businesses, but they either ran away or duped him. He hasn’t worked since he lost his job in 2008 till today.
People can say, “Yeah, but he managed to give his children a good education. He has tried”. That’s valid, but you can also look at it from the angle that his not working means he became a financial responsibility for his children much earlier than he should have. And it’s not because he couldn’t avoid it.
Did your mum return at any point?
She returned in 2012 when I was in my third year in university. She was deported. She came back with nothing. She’d been doing menial jobs in the UK, so she didn’t have the work experience to get jobs in the Nigerian market.
Wow.
I tried selling hair products briefly in university to make more money but stopped almost immediately. I bought a pack of 12 hair sprays for ₦300 each and sold them at ₦1,500 each. Good money, yes, but the stress of going to hostels to advertise was too much. I stopped after that one pack.
I chose to study economics because I was good at economics in secondary school, but what I met in university was different. In secondary school, all I had to do was read my notes and that was it. In university, I had to do extremely complicated math, and I was terrible at math. I eventually managed to graduate with a 2:1, but my plan after uni was to drop economics and just do a graduate trainee program in an oil company. I heard oil companies paid a lot of money.
Is that what you did?
Yes, but I failed every exam I tried my hands at because they had math in them. After many failures, my dad linked me with his friend who had a company that sold discounted flight tickets. I worked as the man’s “PA” and got paid ₦10k monthly to run errands. After three months, I tried another exam and passed. This time, it was for an insurance company. My job role was deputy sales manager, and the pay was ₦45k.
Five months into the job, I decided to do a cold call, so I walked into a company’s building and said I was there to see their “oga”. By the time I was done pitching to him, he said he was impressed with the way I convinced him to get insurance and purchased a year’s insurance worth ₦600k. Apparently, he hated the concept of insurance because, “How can someone be telling me to insure my life?” He was amazed that I was able to convince him.
One month later, the head office thought my branch wasn’t profitable, so they fired everyone and closed the branch.
This one must’ve hit close to home.
LMAO, it did! I went back to the man I sold insurance to and told him I was out of a job, so if he needed me, I was available. Shortly after, his company reached out to me and said they needed a project manager. When they asked me how much I wanted, I told them it had to be more than my previous salary, and then lied that my previous salary was ₦90k. They couldn’t afford more than ₦70k, so they persuaded me to accept it, and I did.
Me, I was happy I was earning that much, but my dad didn’t like it. He didn’t send me to an expensive school to be making peanuts. My mum, on the other hand, had moved to the US in 2015. She wanted to keep hustling and sending money home. She’s been there since then.
What did the company do?
They were a private consulting firm that helped the government reach their revenue goals for different states by making sure companies paid taxes. Three months after I started working there, they started owing salaries. In fact, I worked there for almost two years and only got paid for about a year in total. In the middle of owing salaries, they even increased my salary to ₦80k, and still didn’t pay.
Why did you stay?
Shortly after I started working there in 2016, a friend told me a bit more about project management and made me do an online course on it. From what I read online, I saw that if I stuck with it, I could make a lot of money. I also knew that I was terrible at getting jobs through exams, so my best bet was having job experience as a project manager on my CV.
A strategic man.
In 2018, my fiancée introduced me to a friend who linked me with a company that sold IT solutions to banks. With my CV showing I had both certification and job experience in project management, I aced the interview. When we got to pay, I lied once again that my former job paid ₦300k, and that if they wanted to poach me, they needed to pay more. We eventually agreed on ₦120k.
From ₦300k to ₦120k?
They didn’t have ₦300k to throw at someone with my experience level. But there was an unwritten clause — after my three-month probation, we would renegotiate. ₦120k was a good raise. It was the first time I wasn’t flat broke at the end of every month. I didn’t tell my dad my pay this time, but I was much more comfortable. Because the job was far from home, I moved in with a cousin.
Two months into the job, I sent a message to someone on LinkedIn to mentor me and he accepted. He was a big shot project manager who had just moved to Canada. In that same month, he got me a project management teaching gig that paid ₦70k for seven classes four times a year.
Sweet.
After three months at the job, I met my boss to discuss my confirmation and the raise. She was happy with the work I’d done and confirmed I was now a full staff. However, there was going to be no raise.
Why?
According to her, the company wasn’t profitable in that period so there wasn’t any sense in giving me a raise. After some back and forth, she looked me in the eye and said, “You’re not getting a raise. If you don’t want to continue with us, you can leave.”
Ah!
I couldn’t believe my ears. Immediately she said that, I weighed my options. If I continued at the company after that, I’d lose every power I had to bargain for a new salary going forward. I’d also lose every sense of personal dignity I had working for someone who spoke to me like that. Right there and then, I quit.
I didn’t have any savings, and I was going back to live in my father’s house, but it was better than working for someone who didn’t honour their word.
What did you do after?
That experience changed me. I decided after that that I was going to go hard at making mad money. I hated that someone had treated me like crap because I was at their mercy. I went on LinkedIn and sent DMs to over 50 companies to hire me. They all said no.
Thankfully, my mentor had a job offer at a bank that he couldn’t take, so he referred me. It was a project manager role too. I lied about how much I earned too, but they were only offering ₦245k, and then a ₦200k bonus at the end of every three months. The offer sounded good to me, so I took it. I resumed there exactly a month after I quit the ₦120k job. October 2018 to be precise.
Lying seems to be working for you.
LMAO. At this point, my satisfaction levels were low. My experience with my former boss taught me to look out for myself wherever I went. I also learnt, from job-hopping, that the best way to increase your salary quickly was to change jobs. Loyalty gets you nowhere. I wasn’t looking to stay anywhere for too long.
In addition to my changed mental state, I got married in 2018, and my parents and siblings were also demanding more, so I absolutely needed to make more money.
Less than a year later, another bank reached out on LinkedIn to poach me and I left. It paid ₦330k. In 2020, I got a job at yet another bank. It was an operations manager role, but I did project management functions. This one paid ₦500k. By 2021, they increased it to ₦550k.
See as your income is flying.
The money was decent. My wife also earns a living, so our family’s finances were strong. However, I decided not to look for Nigerian project management roles anymore. Because we went remote when COVID hit, I went on LinkedIn, We Work Remotely, Dynamite Jobs and started searching for project management jobs online. In August 2021, I got a full-time project management job at a US company that pays $3,500.
Whoa. How do you manage both jobs?
My US job starts at 3 p.m. Nigerian time, so I’m able to do all my Nigerian work before then. I also make sure I don’t have any meetings after 3 p.m. so I can fully focus on my other job.
How would you compare working for a Nigerian company and a foreign company?
In my experience, working for Nigerian companies is trash. You don’t get monetary or other kinds of value for the work you put in. My short term goal is to quit my bank job and secure about four remote jobs that pay $5,000 each. When I do that, I’ll hire someone to help me manage my time and tasks.
What are your finances like right now?
I don’t have any savings in cash. All my money is in USDT. It’s about ₦1.5 million. I want to start trading crypto soon.
What happens if you have an emergency?
I have ₦100k that I never touch.
Let’s look at a breakdown of your current monthly expenses.
Is there something you want but can’t afford right now?
Nothing. I live a relatively simple life, so I don’t want anything that I can’t afford. I have everything I need.
And your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
10. After saving and giving in a month, my loose money is over ₦800k. That’s pretty good. My quest for more money is just a natural human instinct. Maybe in a few months, I’ll get unsatisfied and want to buy a house, but I’m pretty sure when I start making $5,000 from four jobs, I’ll be able to do that in less than a year.
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.
This week’s Naira Life is brought to you by Busha. Thinking of starting your crypto journey and trading the most secure way? Try Busha.
A few fun facts about today’s subject on Naira Life: His dad was an Ifa priest, and he’s a pastor. He’s also an actor, a model and a licensed therapist. He juggles all his jobs, and he’s satisfied with life. Oh… he’s also in his mid-50s.
Tell me about your earliest memory of money.
In the 60s, my father was a traditional high chief. Naturally, our house was always full of people who came to consult the oracle, seek his favour, and people who came to greet him — kings and dignitaries. When these people came, they gave the children money. I can’t remember how much we’d typically get but we would save those coins in our little kolos.
One day when I was 7, a visitor came around and one of my younger half-brothers was waiting for them to leave so he could collect money. When the visitor was leaving, they gave me the money instead. When my younger brother asked for his cut, I didn’t give him anything, so it turned into a big brawl. Because of the commotion we caused, children were banned from collecting money from visitors.
LMAO. What were things like at home?
My mum was the sixth out of ten wives. My dad had at least 40 children. “At least”, because after he died in 1992, people kept coming to say they were his children, and we couldn’t deny it because they looked like him. He was wealthy. He had property all around Nigeria, the UK and South Africa. But he was not a good father. The only thing he did for us was send us to school. Every other expense was handled by each child’s mother.
Every day, before school, we had to line up in front of his room door to collect allowance money for that day. If he wasn’t awake, we stayed in the line waiting. Imagine being the 40th child on that line.
I watched my mum struggle to take care of my four siblings and me. From a young age, I was determined to grow up, make money and take care of her.
What did she do for a living?
Unlike my dad, she was literate, so she juggled being a banker, a cook and a trader. When we weren’t in school, we helped her sell soft drinks in the market. As I got older, I started buying my own drinks and selling them alongside hers without her knowledge. I wasn’t cheating her. I just didn’t want her to know I was making money so I could surprise her if she ever needed money. I was able to successfully bail her out when she needed money a few times.
For how long did you help her sell stuff?
I finished secondary school at 18 and decided I didn’t want to sell drinks anymore because I wanted to go to university. At first, my mum protested, but she eventually agreed. I didn’t get admission into university the year I finished secondary school, so my mum helped me get a job as assistant manager at a filling station. The pay was ₦100. My job was to make sure money wasn’t mismanaged by the fuel attendants. This was in the late 80s, so the money was pretty good. I stayed at the job for a year until I got admitted to study psychology at university.
In this same period, my mum had become a Christian, and my dad thought it was a rebellion against his beliefs. It was hard for me to accept her new religion because I grew up singing songs about Christianity being for white people and Islam being for Arabs. After some time though, my mum was able to convince her children to accept Jesus.
Did Christianity change anything about you?
It made me desire a much better family than my dad’s. More specifically, it made me want a monogamous marriage. With monogamy, no child or wife would suffer the way my dad’s many children and wives did.
What was university like?
Difficult. By the time I was in university, my dad had sent my mum packing because her Christianity had gotten disruptive. She was now openly practising it in the house by praying loud everywhere she went. She also had some family living with her in her new apartment, and still had my siblings to take care of. What this meant was that I had to take care of both me and her.
How did you do that?
Art. I was great at drawing and I turned it into a moneymaker. I started by drawing and framing hyper-realistic portraits of my friends. When they took it home, their parents were interested in getting copies for themselves. Like that, I had clients. And these clients referred me. If I knew a friend’s relative was getting married, I got pictures of them, made a drawing, and took it to their wedding. The trick was to set the drawing up at a place where people would see and be marvelled. When they asked who made the drawing, I came out. Just like that, I got more clients. And the drawing went as a gift to the couple.
What I charged varied based on how I sized the client up, but I made enough money to see myself through school, fend for my mum and occasionally send to my younger siblings.
Mad. Did you continue after university?
I did. But what I majorly focused on was getting my license in therapy. After that, I had a two-year stint doing personal therapy until 1993 when God called me.
To be a pastor?
Yep. I told my church, and they sent me to Benin Republic to be a missionary in a remote village. They gave me a ₦5k monthly stipend for the three years I stayed there. I sent some of the money to my mum through someone who visited every month. The rest, I converted to francs and had a comfortable life. I was able to feed and clothe myself, get electronic devices like a home theatre, and help people who needed financial help in the community.
When I came back in 1997, it was to be the part-time pastor of a church in Lagos.
Part-time?
It was a small branch, so there wasn’t a lot to do. They didn’t expect me to be there all the time too. I was just there for Sunday services. The pay was ₦20k a month.
On the side, I taught fine arts to junior secondary students. I started because I found out they didn’t teach arts to junior secondary students in the school I went to. I didn’t like that, so I volunteered to teach for free. It was an instant hit. The students loved the way I taught practically. We drew, made tie-dye, batik, painted, it was great. A neighbour school heard about what I was doing and reached out for me to teach their students art too. I accepted. And then another school. And I accepted. And then another school. But I rejected that third one. I didn’t want to die.
The two extra schools I was teaching paid a combined total of ₦30k, so my monthly income was about ₦50k. As usual, the money was for taking care of myself, my mother and my siblings, widows in the church, and savings.
What were you saving for?
I wanted to have landed property so I could leave something behind for my children. When my dad died, my mum and her children were cut off from the will because of our Christianity. We watched half-siblings get land, millions and houses while we got nothing. Even now, there are family disputes over the will because there’s still stuff being shared. But my mum and her children can’t get anything.
How long did you teach and pastor?
I stopped teaching about three years after I started because the church had grown bigger and I needed to be in charge full-time. I needed to be around for midweek services and to take care of issues. My salary went up to ₦60k, but my monthly income was between ₦80k and ₦120k.
How?
I was now getting invited to churches and radio shows to minister and to speak about counselling related topics.
By 2007 — about six years later — I decided I was going to teach again. This time, it wasn’t fine arts. It was performing arts — acting and modelling. I set up an acting school.
Where did acting and modelling come from?
The older I got, the more it became obvious to me that I was an artist, and art is diverse. I grew up in a household that worshipped Ifa. There were quarterly events where people gathered and danced and acted, and I loved it. It just seemed right for me to go deeper into the arts.
My acting school started slow because nobody knew me, so I decided to go into acting and modelling myself. I was a natural. I walked into auditions and killed them immediately. As I got more popular, people referred me. I got one small role here, one small role there, and got my face on small ads. Things were moving.
I was still a pastor, but because I was the lead pastor, I could delegate. If I had to be somewhere modelling on a Tuesday, and it clashed with midweek service time, I simply told the assistant pastor to stand in for me.
Between 2007 and 2010, my monthly income grew to over ₦200k. I was earning from small commercials and small acting roles. From 2010 to now, things have gotten better and better.
Tell me about it.
I started getting acting roles on bigger projects and TV ads. I was recently on a movie set that paid ₦2m for 11 days on set. Some ads pay ₦500k for just one weekend of shooting.
Some of the TV roles were series that got renewed, and some of the ads got renewed too.
I also got kept modelling for ads. Those paid well too. Because I was fairly popular, people started reaching out to me to train them on acting and modelling. That’s another source of income.
And then there’s counselling. Through referrals, I’ve met a few wealthy people whose children needed therapy. Over the years, I’ve charged ₦500k for 13 sessions for these kinds of arrangements. With counselling as well, I have a long-running retainer with a secondary school where I go there to talk to their students and teachers. That has also been a good source of income for me.
Can you break this down on a monthly basis?
On average, I make between ₦500k and ₦1m in a month. Sometimes, it’s higher. This month is an example. But breaking it down, the church pays me ₦50k monthly. I returned to part-time in 2018 because I realised I couldn’t keep up anymore. Then acting and modelling fetch me about ₦300k to ₦500k. My acting and modelling school is majorly an online mentorship program now, and it fetches me ₦200k to ₦400k on a good month. As a pastor, I get invited to churches to minister from time to time. That brings about ₦100k. The counselling jobs are not regular, so when they come, they come.
How has all this money helped you achieve your goals?
My mum has her own house now. I got it for her in 2018. And all my siblings are in a good place because I’ve assisted them. I’ve also been able to help many children go through primary school, secondary school, and university. I’m passionate about education, so I use my money to help people who can’t afford it.
In 2018 too, I moved my wife and three children to Canada permanently. I think they have an opportunity for a better life there.
Can I get a breakdown of your monthly expenses?
Do you also have property, like you wanted?
The subject of landed property is difficult for me to speak about because, over the years, I’ve been heavily scammed. I have just two pieces of land I can say are mine. But I also have documents for no less than nine properties that have been scams.
How?
Over the years, people came to me at different times and said they had land to sell to me, and because I trusted them, I just sent them money and collected documents. Some of these people were my church members o. I’ve lost over ₦10 million in fake landed property. Property I have documents for, but can’t claim because five other people probably have the same document. In retrospect, I don’t think it was wise to pay for plots of land without going to inspect them first.
Damn —
But I try not to think about these things and instead focus on what God’s done for me. I used to be a stammerer when I was a child. I stammered so bad, it made me develop an anger problem because I thought everyone was laughing at me. I beat up classmates, and even a teacher once, because I suspected they were making fun of my speech. Now, I’m acting, counselling people, speaking in public, and preaching. To me, it’s a miracle.
Love it. What’s something you want but can’t afford right now?
A house on Banana Island! I’m considering moving to be with my family in Canada, but everybody wants a Banana Island house.
LMAO! And your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
11. I’m happy. There’s no stress. I’m not in debt. My family is safe and doing good. Everything’s good.
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You don’t deserve the weekend if you can’t make 10 words out of “Weekend” in 1 minute.
“WEEKEND” can be rearranged into 34 different English words. How many can you get?
