Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between.
What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame, about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.
The subject of today’s #WhatSheSaid is Temi*, a 28-year-old data analyst based in Lagos. She talks about the eight years her aunt moved into her room, took over her wardrobe, stole her savings, crashed her car, and refused to leave, and the moment her mum finally said enough.
Can you tell me about yourself?
My name is Temi. I am 28, I am a data analyst, and I live in my family home in Lagos with my mum and my three brothers. I am the second born, so one brother is older than me and two are younger. My older brother is in his early thirties, does well for himself between his creative work and finance, and is saving for a bike before he eventually moves out. The younger two are still figuring things out. We all live at home because it makes financial sense, and my mum is not the type to push her children out. She’s in her 50s; she works; she attends her community events; she has her life, and we have ours. It is a genuinely easy household.
I am saving for my master’s. I want bigger things, better opportunities, and, eventually, to live somewhere I have more room to be fully myself. That is the plan. That has been the plan for a while now.
What was growing up in your family home like?
Good, actually. My mum is social and warm, and as I said, not particularly interested in policing how her children live. My brothers each have their own rooms. The last two are still in school; we do not stress her, and she does not stress us. My brothers have always been able to have their partners over, move freely, and exist comfortably. My mum is chill like that.
I always valued my privacy enormously. Even as an angry teenager who locked herself in her room and wanted nothing to do with anyone, my room was mine, and that felt like everything. I did not fully appreciate how much that mattered until it was taken from me.
As the only girl in the house, did things ever feel different for you?
Within my immediate family, not really. My mum sort of gave up on the whole housewife-coding thing with me early because she realised it was a very useless venture, as I like to put it. I do not cook unless I want to. I do not clean unless something genuinely looks like a mess. My brothers were never held to a different standard than I in that sense. It was actually quite nice. Until my aunt arrived and brought her own standards.
What do you mean? You also mentioned earlier that your privacy was “taken from you.”
My aunt moved in. She is my mum’s cousin, but they are close enough to function as sisters. They grew up together, went through real things together, and have always been each other’s person in that way. Before she moved in permanently, she would visit occasionally, a week here and there. The first few days were always fine. She can be charming, she can be warm, there are moments where I genuinely think, “Why do I dislike you so much?” And then she does something, and I remember exactly why.
She is not a completely terrible person. As I said, she can be genuinely nice. But by day four or five of any visit, I would already be thinking, okay, when are you leaving? That was just how it always went.
When did the visits stop being visits?
I had just turned 19. She came saying she did not feel safe in her own home in Lekki, and we lived on the mainland. She is involved in local politics and has been advised to leave temporarily due to threats. She had a house she had built herself, her own property, but she said she needed to be somewhere safer. That she would stay with us for a few months.
Nobody questioned it. She said a few months. We believed her.
What was the sleeping arrangement?
She moved into my room. That is just always how it works in our house when female relatives visit. My room is the first port of call. It has always been like that since I was small. Also, we have no guest room. So she came into my room, and I thought, okay, a few months, I can do this.
When did you start realising it was going to be a problem?
When she started treating the room as if it were hers. We had a wardrobe big enough for both of us to be comfortable. Within weeks, her clothes had swallowed mine. I would stand there in the morning, struggling to locate my own things in my own wardrobe. Then the smaller things started. She would use my skincare without asking. She would wear my clothes. There is a particular skirt I own that I left unworn for a while, and she started wearing it regularly. She is plus-sized, and it stretched the fabric completely. I am wearing that skirt right now, held together with rubber bands. I confronted her about it a few times, but always kept it light because I did not want a scene. She would just laugh. She never stopped.
What did your daily life start to look like with her there?
Everything became negotiated. I could not work on my laptop in my room if she was sleeping, because any sound would wake her, and she would hit me on the back to wake me and tell me to go to the living room. So I started sleeping in the living room permanently. My brothers, meanwhile, were in their rooms living their lives, having their partners over whenever they wanted, and I was on the couch.
I could not have friends sleep over. My mum once offered to move my aunt into her room for a friend’s visit so I could have my space. My aunt responded by refusing to share my mum’s bed, which is queen-sized and fits three adults, and instead sleeping on the floor. She claimed the bed was too small for both of them. It was a performance, a manipulation, and it worked. My mum reversed the arrangement. My friends and I ended up in the living room.
I could not have partners over either. My brothers could freely, no issue. But I had no room. So while everyone around me was building, exploring, and bringing people home, I was rerouting my entire personal life around a woman who had taken over my space.
After a couple of incidents, specifically that one with my mum’s bed, I stopped inviting friends over to sleep. What was the point? I would have to go to my friend’s place to change before a night out because I could not change in my room with my aunt there. She is very judgmental about how I dress, very loud about it, and I just did not have the energy. I felt embarrassed about my own home for years. And she wouldn’t even contribute financially.
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What did that look like?
She never paid bills. Never bought food. My mum never asked her to, because that is how my mum is with family. But food started disappearing faster. Before she arrived, a pot of food lasted three days. After she moved in, it was gone the next day. She would carry a large portion out with her every morning and eat very heavily at night. Nobody said anything, but everyone noticed.
What made it worse was that she actively worsened my financial situation. When I was 24, she came to me and said she needed to borrow money for a professional course. She needed 5,000 dollars. I had been saving carefully, had been gifted by my parents and their friends, and I also earned well. So, I had the money. She said she would pay it back. My aunt isn’t broke. As I said, she had some political dealings, so I gave it to her.
You can, of course, guess right that she never paid it back. Not a cent of it, not in the past four years. That money was the beginning of my master’s fund. I have had to rebuild it from scratch. That is partly why I am still here, still saving, still waiting. Nobody said anything about all of this, but everyone noticed. On top of that, she also had very specific expectations of me around the house.
What do you mean?
This is what particularly got under my skin. She had no issue sitting in the kitchen while my brothers did nothing, but the moment I was at my laptop working, she would come and say, look at what you’re doing, you’re supposed to be in the kitchen helping out, you’re so useless, you don’t cook, you don’t clean, what do you do? She never said any of that to my brothers. Not once. She was completely male-centred in her thinking, and she decided I was everything she was not, and she detested me for it. I am outgoing, I do not believe in doing things simply because society has decided girls should do them, and I have always been clear that marriage is not something I am interested in. She took all of that personally.
Before she arrived, my mum had already given up trying to make housework a gender thing in our home. Then her cousin shows up and brings all of that energy back in. It felt like a dystopia had arrived in my utopia.
On top of all of this, she also crashed my car.
What?
My dad bought me a car when I turned 25, as he did for my brother. He lives in the UK now, but he has always financially looked after us from there. When I was 26, my aunt borrowed the car. She said she needed it for one day. She crashed it. Not a small scratch, actual heavy damage. She said she would pay for the repairs. It has been two years. She has paid some of it, not all. The car sat with a panel beater for weeks while I was using Bolt to get to work.
Then she had the effrontery to ask me for money again.
What happened?
I was in the parlour working on my laptop because I could not work in my room, as usual. She walked in, sat down, and asked me for money. That she needed it urgently. Just like that. Like the first 5,000 dollars did not happen. Like the car repairs were not still ongoing. Like she had not been living in my room for years, while I slept on a couch.
I looked at her. I did not say anything. I just looked at her, and then I looked away.
She lost her mind. She started shouting that I was disrespectful, that I had no home training, that she was my elder, and I was sitting there ignoring her. Then she hit me on the head. She actually hit me.
I stood up. I held her wrists. I looked her directly in the eyes, and I started listing every single thing. The money she borrowed and never returned, the car she crashed and never fully repaid, the room she took over, the couch I had been sleeping on for years. I said all of it clearly, and then I asked her, “You still have the audacity to ask me for money and then hit me on my head when I do not respond?”
My mum came out. I looked at her too. I said everything again, in front of her. I needed her to hear it. All of it. Out loud. And this isn’t even all of it.
What do you mean?
There was a period when my aunt started having little conversations with one of my close friends. The friend used to visit the house sometimes. My aunt would pull her aside, be warm and charming the way she can be when she wants something, and start saying things. That I was difficult, that I was secretive, that she was worried about me, that she did not know what I was up to. That she once smelled something funny in the room/house. That have I started smoking? She said my friend can trust her, she’s just looking out for me. My friend eventually told me what had been happening. I was not particularly surprised. That is how she operates. There was also a moment that showed me exactly how little she respected me.
One night, I ran out to the street to quickly buy something. I was not gone long, maybe ten minutes, but while I was out, a group of boys started following me. I panicked and ran back home. I came in breathless, genuinely shaken. She looked at me, listened to what happened, and started laughing. She said, “You, this girl, why are you always so dramatic?” Then she said, by the way, do you have any money you can give me? Same breath. This was before the 5K loan. I just walked away.
We have moved houses three times since she moved in with us. The most recent move was three years ago, and everyone was excited, choosing rooms, making it a whole thing. She ran ahead and claimed a room I did not want. And she knew that we were stuck together. There were only 5 bedrooms. One for my mum, one for each of my brothers, and 1 for me. And who gets stuck with female relatives? ME! She did not ask. She just claimed it, moved in, and that was that. The fact that she just assumed it was hers to take while she was living in someone else’s home was so typical of her. And then she chose the paint colour for the walls. The colour I woke up to every morning while I was in there was not one I would have chosen. That was her colour. In my room and my house.
Did anything change?
Well, at some point, she started dating again. All of us at home felt collective relief. I am genuinely anti-marriage, but I was personally praying for this woman to find a husband just so she would leave our house. That was the one exit strategy everyone pointed to. Get married, leave. So when she started dating someone, everyone was quietly hopeful.
What happened?
She sabotaged it. She has a bad attitude everywhere. With her family, with her friends, with the men she dated. She self-destructs in close relationships. She is not entirely a bad person, as I have said, but she is not a good person either, and you can see it most clearly in how she treats people she is supposed to be close to. That relationship ended. Then another one started. That ended too. And she was still in my room. She chased them all away with her rudeness, controlling manner, lack of accountability, always picking fights, and never contributing.
When did you stop believing she would ever actually leave?
I never fully stopped believing, but I adjusted. I started thinking, okay, maybe she will still be here when I finally save or earn enough to comfortably move out myself, and then her leaving will just be someone else’s problem. That was where my hope had gotten to. It got so bad that I started working out of cafes more often. I have goals and a life to live. A very demanding job and side gigs. She cannot be my problem.
So you continued to endure?
Yes, it took 9 years after she moved in for my mother to finally stop fearing her reaction and ask her to leave. It was because of a combination of things that had been building for years. Complaints from visitors about being physically woken up at night had piled up. Multiple women, multiple occasions, all the same story. My mum’s friends had started asking why her grown daughter was sleeping on the couch when they visited early in the mornings. That embarrassed my mum.
Then my aunt made the comment that broke it. In a conversation about something unrelated, she said, very casually, that she valued her privacy. My mum looked at her and thought, ” You are living in my house, in my daughter’s room, using my things, eating my food, and you are telling me you value your privacy.”
But the moment that truly ended it, the detail that nobody in the family saw coming, was when my mum discovered that my aunt had quietly been subletting her Lekki property this entire time. The house, she said, was unsafe to live in. The house she had abandoned for eight years for safety reasons. She had tenants in it. She was collecting rent. My aunt had been collecting rent on her own property this entire time while living with us for free, contributing nothing, borrowing money she did not return, crashing a car she had not fully repaired, while my mum funded her life and while I slept on the living room couch. When my mum found out, something shifted permanently. There was no coming back from that. When everything came out, we also found out that the money I had borrowed from her had gone toward completing the upgrade of the Lekki flat for new tenants.
She had also been talking to my dad in the UK. Calling him with stories. That my mum was treating her badly, that my mum had changed, that the house had become hostile. He had started calling my mum with questions based on things he had no reason to believe were anything other than what she told him. It took my mum sitting him down properly, walking through the full picture, dates, receipts and details, for him to understand what had actually been happening.
When all of it came together, there was no more conversation to be had. My mum called her and asked her directly: ” You are in your forties, do you plan to stay here forever? She told her to be out within a month or two.
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How did your aunt react?
She cried. She tried the guilt trip. She gave my mum the silent treatment for days, hoping my mum would soften. My mum did not give a fuck, genuinely. Once my mum sets her mind on something, it is done. She just started giving my aunt the coldest of cold shoulders and did not relent.
How did she actually leave?
Very abruptly. I was sick at the time. I went to sleep one night, woke up, and she was just gone. Her things were gone. I did not watch her pack. I did not get a goodbye. She just disappeared.
What was the first night like?
Quiet. The house was so quiet. I walked into my room, and it felt lighter, physically lighter, like the air had changed. The walls were still painted the colour she had chosen, not the colour I wanted. That was the first thing I noticed. And the first thing I did was repaint my room. My room. My colour.
What has life been like since?
So much better. The house is quiet in the way a home should be. Before, if you walked in, you would always hear noise because she expressed her discomfort very loudly and constantly. Now you can walk in and think nobody is home, and then realise someone is just calmly existing inside. That is new. That is good.
My relationship with my mum has also improved. My mum understands privacy. She has always understood it, and now that her cousin is not here to complicate everything, the natural ease between us has returned.
Where is your aunt now?
She went back to Lekki. Between her place and her most recent boyfriend’s house, from what I understand. Whether that relationship will survive her remains to be seen.
Do you still have a relationship with her?
No. She still talks to my mum, but with me, we are blank. She never apologised, repaid anything, or acknowledged what those years cost me. She believes my mum had it out for her. She has rewritten the whole thing in her head.
Looking back, what do you wish had been different?
I wish my mum had set boundaries earlier. Not because I blame my mum, because I understand that her cousin is her sister in every way that matters, and that is complicated. But if there had been clear expectations from the beginning, maybe it would not have stretched into eight years of me sleeping on my own couch.
I also wish I had been louder about what I needed. I kept quiet to protect my mum’s family relationships. I did not want to be the difficult daughter who caused drama. But I think that silence taught me to tolerate things I should have refused. I am unlearning that now.
Has this changed how you think about family and what they are entitled to?
Yes. Family does not entitle you to someone else’s space, comfort, or peace. It just does not. I told my mum, after everything, that if any relative ever asks to come and stay for longer than a week, the answer is no. I do not care who it is. I am not doing this again.
What do you want people reading this to take away?
Set the boundary before you need to fight for it. Because once someone is comfortable, once they have decided that your home is their home and your things are their things, it takes years to undo. And those years cost you more than you realise while they are happening.
Also, check on the only girl in the house. She is probably sleeping on the couch.
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