In 2020, Lekan* (31) thought he’d finally made it, until the pandemic left him broke overnight. In this story, he recounts his gritty climb back to financial independence. Spoiler alert: it was marked by long hours, smart investing, and a few strokes of luck.
As Told To Boluwatife
In early 2020, right before the lockdown, I thought I had finally made it.
In January, after about four years of working as a photographer/graphic designer for multiple employers, I transitioned into freelancing full-time, travelling across Nigeria for gigs and taking home what felt like a substantial income.
The final push to venture out on my own came after my 9-to-5 job cut my salary from ₦120k to ₦80k for no apparent reason. I realised I could make my salary in three days just from shooting portraits. I was already taking on photography gigs on the side and knew I could make more money if I dedicated more time to it.
My bet paid off. By February, only about a month after I quit, I had almost ₦1 million sitting in my account.
For the first time, I wasn’t thinking about survival. I was thinking about growth. So, I took a huge chunk of the money and bought a drone.
Then the world shut down.
I’d just returned from a work trip when the government announced it would be locking down some states because of COVID. I’d heard about the virus going around in China, but I didn’t know it had hit home so quickly.
At first, I wasn’t worried. I had ₦200k left and thought the lockdown would only last a few weeks. That was a stupid error on my part. I had no idea how much the lockdown would affect the creative economy.
Everything came to a standstill, even after the lockdown was eventually lifted.
No events.
No travel.
My gigs evaporated overnight.
By May, I was down to my last ₦500, surviving on one meal a day and trying not to panic. Noodles and garri became my go-to food options.
At this point, I was living alone in Kwara, far from my parents, who were in Lagos. I’d moved there because of my 9-to-5 job and a desire to be independent. I didn’t know how to start asking them for money again. Besides, my parents were also dealing with the effects of the pandemic on their finances.
So, I tried to survive on my own, waiting for the next gig to come.
The Breaking Point
My breaking point came in June. I woke up to the sound of my cleaner sweeping the floor. It was the end of the month, and her ₦8,000 salary was due. I didn’t have it.
That was the day I broke down and cried. It hit me that I was truly broke; I had no backup plan, no savings, and no idea where my next meal would come from.
Later that day, I got a call from an old client. He worked at a really big firm, and I’d shot a project for him the previous year. He told me he was visiting my city and asked to meet. I scraped together transport money and went.
We talked for hours. I told him how I wanted to “make it on my own” instead of moving back to Lagos. He listened quietly, then said something that stuck with me:
“Lekan, the easiest way to make money is to be close to where the money is. The most money you can find in Nigeria is in Lagos. The closer you are to the money, the higher your chance of finding opportunities.”
He told me Nigeria was too unstable for entrepreneurs and encouraged me to return home and find a job. At least, my parents had a house, and I could figure things out while I looked for opportunities.
Before I left, he gave me ₦10,000 for transport. That small act of kindness became the bridge between my breakdown and my comeback.
I took his advice and started looking for a job. Two months later, I’d found one and was back in Lagos.
I Decided I Would Never Go Broke Again
My new job was also in photography and paid ₦250k/month. I made myself a promise: I’d never go broke again to the point where I don’t know where my next meal would come from.
My strategy to fulfil that promise was to work till I dropped and network hard enough to find as much work as possible. Rather than spend my free time after work playing video games or partying, I spent it working on side gigs.
Luckily, my 9-to-5 was remote, and I only had to go to the office when we had shoots. When I wasn’t at the office, I filled my time by shooting for other people, taking on graphic design gigs, and seizing any opportunity that came my way. Most of the time, I earned the equivalent of my salary from these gigs.
This strategy allowed me to live 100% off my side gigs and save the entirety of my salary. I clocked into dollar investments around that period, so I saved all my money in dollars through an investment platform, using their real estate and fixed assets options. Then, the exchange rate was about ₦450 to $1 and after converting my salary, I was saving around $500 monthly.
For about a year and a half, I grinded every day and didn’t touch a single kobo of my salary. I worked up to 18 hours a day, slept for only four hours, and just kept going. My body suffered, and I even developed high blood pressure that I still manage today, but I kept stacking money. I was addicted to seeing the figures in my investment app go up.
By 2022, I had saved over $8,000.
My First Lucky Break: Arbitrage
That same year, I started paying close attention to the dollar-naira exchange rate. I had noticed how quickly the naira fluctuated in that period — one week ₦580, the next ₦620, then back again. I thought I could make some money from it if I made close enough predictions.
I had this bureau de change guy whom I called almost every day to check the rates and compare with the rates I saw online. I started to notice a pattern that implied the rates were about to fall again: ridiculous differences between the buy and sell rates.
I’ll paint a scenario using 2022 rates: If the dollar moves from ₦500+ to ₦700, more people want to buy dollars. However, if it drops to ₦620, most people start to sell off their dollars because it appears the dollar is losing value.
The bureau de change guy also doesn’t want to hold on to more dollars, so if you try to sell to him, he’ll offer to buy at a ridiculous price. The Central Bank can say the dollar is ₦620, but he says he’ll buy a dollar at ₦550.
But then, if you want to buy dollar from him, he’ll tell you ₦680. Why? Because he’d bought those dollars when they were more valuable, and he doesn’t want to lose money.
So, whenever I called my bureau de change guy and saw a ridiculous difference in the buy and sell rates, I predicted there would be another fluctuation. So, I started making some crazy moves.
I did the opposite of what everyone else was doing. Instead of holding onto dollars when the value increased, I’d take out my savings, convert it all to naira and then wait for it to dip over the next couple of days. Then buy the dollars back to make some profit.
Those moves were risky gambles, but I thought, “the worst thing that can happen is that I’ll lose some value. I won’t lose the whole thing.” I did that at least once every two or three months, whenever the exchange rate started its thing.
I made small gains here and there, as well as a few losses. Sometimes I didn’t even make anything. But the thing about arbitrage is, you need a lot of capital to make a substantial profit.
So, in mid-2022, I sensed a massive fluctuation coming and withdrew all my savings of just under $10k and converted it to naira. I’m not sure how much the dollar had risen to then, but it dropped back down by about ₦100 a few days later, and I bought the dollars back.
I made almost $1k in profit from that move; $1k without doing anything major. That was my first proper money from arbitrage.
I did it a few more times, but I don’t think I made up to that amount again. I also didn’t have really crazy losses. The most I lost on a move was ₦400k.
My Second Lucky Break Came From the Government
In late 2022, I decided to pursue a master’s degree abroad. Most of my friends were moving abroad, and I didn’t want to be left behind. The master’s was my opportunity to do that and also take a chance on myself.
I had the money and didn’t need to worry about working multiple jobs to afford tuition. I applied to a school, got in and used my savings to pay tuition.
The tuition wasn’t in dollars, so I converted my savings to naira — it was ₦8.5 million — and used Form A to pay my fees. Form A was the Federal Government’s allocation that allowed citizens to pay for tuition abroad at official exchange rates; you didn’t have to pay the black market rate.
After I paid my fees, I think I had about ₦1 million left. I still needed to hustle for proof of funds, so I started talking to family and friends. While doing that, I realised I didn’t know much about what relocating to that country entailed.
Apparently, if I didn’t find a job willing to sponsor my visa within two years after my master’s program, I’d have to leave. Additionally, job sponsorships were becoming increasingly difficult to find.
The math didn’t make sense to me. I was paying so much money for tuition, and it didn’t even guarantee me a place in the country. It felt like too much of a gamble. Around the same time, I landed a new job that paid almost three times my salary. It felt like a sign from God to stay put. My fiancée also wasn’t ready to move with me as she didn’t have the necessary funds. I considered all that and decided to cancel the relocation thing and take the new job.
Next, I looked into the school and tried to see if they’d give me my money back. I called them, provided a lengthy explanation as to why I wouldn’t be attending anymore, and asked if I could receive a refund. To my surprise, they agreed.
Now, this was in 2023, and I paid my fees around 2022. During the six months between when I paid and when they refunded me, the exchange rate had almost doubled. By the time I received the naira equivalent of my tuition (approximately $19,000), it had increased to nearly ₦15 million.
Essentially, I “put in” ₦8.5 million and grew it to ₦15 million in six months. That one decision not to relocate unintentionally became my second big break.
After that, I still made small arbitrage moves occasionally, but I stopped risking too much. I had more to lose, so I converted currencies strategically while holding on to my core savings.
Present Day: I Can Finally Breathe
My approach to making money, saving and investing has changed. I still work a 9-to-5 job, and my monthly salary has grown to ₦1 million. I don’t work myself to the ground anymore, trying to live off side gigs.
I now save around 35–40% of my monthly income. I’ve stopped taking risky arbitrage bets. I could gamble like that because I was single. Now that I’m married with a child, I need to think about tomorrow differently.
That said, on the investment side, I’m now long on the naira. I noticed in 2024 that some policy changes meant money markets were returning almost 27% on investments steadily. So, I converted all my forex to naira funds instead. I just had faith that the ROI on money markets would be much more than whatever the naira devaluation would be. The naira has also been stable for a while.
Today, I have approximately ₦25 million invested in naira funds. I use a Nigerian bank’s fund manager for this, and make 18% per annum. It was 27% when I first started, so it’s dropped, but it’s still solid and safe. I also have an additional $5,000 in dollar investments that bring me just under 6% per annum. That’s a total portfolio of around $23k.
My finances have been stable for the most part, and it feels like I can finally breathe. Sometime last year, I went on my first real vacation. I felt like I had too much money saved up, so I took out close to $9,000 and took a trip across 10 countries. It was good to see the world after working 18-hour days for almost 3 years.
Sometimes, I remember that day in 2020 when I woke up crying because of ₦8000, and it feels like an entirely different life. I no longer feel that intense pressure. Even if I lose my job today, as long as I don’t do anything foolish, I can survive and pay my rent for at least three years.
I’m glad I made those early sacrifices and risks. They set me up for where I am today.
*Name has been changed for the sake of anonymity.
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