What She Said聽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.聽

The subject of today’s #WhatSheSaid is Nengi*, a woman in her late forties based in Port Harcourt. She talks about losing her husband suddenly in 2010, enduring a full year of Igbo widowhood rites in silence, and the decade-long legal battle she fought alone to keep everything he built for their children.

Can you tell me about your life before everything changed?

I had a good life, a genuinely full one. I’m Port Harcourt-born and raised; I grew up here, had my first job here, fell in love here. My husband and I met in this city and built everything we had right here. He started in trading, moving goods, grinding, and learning how money moves. From there, he moved into shipping, then real estate, then manufacturing. By the time he died, he had shares in oil and gas, energy, telecoms, and car dealerships. He was very serious about his money in the truest sense of the word. A builder who genuinely enjoyed building. And he loved his family with everything he had: our three children and me.

Our oldest was seven when he died. The middle one was five. Our lastborn had just turned one year old.

How did he die?

He collapsed at an industry dinner. He was seated at the table, laughing at something someone had said, and then he was on the floor. By the time the ambulance came, he was already gone. It was a massive cardiac arrest. He was in his early fifties and had never been seriously ill, so nobody saw it coming, least of all me. We had spoken on the phone that afternoon about something completely ordinary; I can’t even remember what now, and that was the last conversation we ever had. You never think the last ordinary conversation is the last one. You just don’t think that way when life is good, and your husband is healthy, and you have a one-year-old at home. You simply don’t think that way.

It鈥檚 worse to stomach the reality and actually say out loud that the worst part wasn鈥檛 him dying but what came after. 

What do you mean?

There are certain rites a woman must endure after her husband dies. Many cultures have their own; I do not know all of them, but because of what I have endured, I would say marrying into a deeply traditional Igbo family is the worst thing a woman can do to herself, whether she herself is Igbo or not. Especially if there鈥檚 nothing in place to preserve her dignity after her husband dies.  

So how did you navigate the mourning process?

I may not be Igbo, but I grew up in Port Harcourt, surrounded by Igbo traditions; I knew what I was marrying into. When you marry an Igbo man of his standing, you understand that certain things come with it. I had seen enough, heard enough. I wasn’t completely unprepared in theory. But theory and reality are very different things.

I made a decision very early. I was going to do everything they asked of me. Everything. Not because I believed in all of it, but because I knew what was at stake. My children. Their inheritance. Their future. The life their father had built for them. I was not going to give anyone a single reason to say I killed him or that I didn’t respect him or his people. Not one reason.

Walk me through what those first days looked like.

They took me to his family compound. That is where the rites happen, not in the city where we lived, but in his hometown, with his people, on their terms. They shaved my head. All of it, completely gone. They put me in a room, and that room became my entire world. I slept on a mat on the bare floor. I couldn’t cook, couldn’t leave, couldn’t do anything for myself. I had to eat from broken plates; I could only wear black clothing. I was given a stick to scratch my own body because I was considered spiritually unclean, like the death had contaminated me.

At dawn and at dusk every single day, I had to wail loudly. It had to be a sustained and demonstrable grief. I was genuinely grieving. I had lost my husband, the man I loved, my protector, the father of my babies. But I also had to perform that grief on a schedule for people who were watching me for any sign of insufficient mourning that they could use against me.

I鈥檓 so sorry. 

That was even okay. As painful as it was, it was okay. What wasn鈥檛 was asking me to prove I had no hand in his death by making me drink the water they used to wash his corpse.

I could not fight or argue. I also did not have my family people with me. I only had his people. They were avidly watching me, like a hawk. Even though every part of me recoiled, I thought of my children, and I did it. 

I drank it. I was not going to let them win because of this. I was not going to give them anything.

Who was watching you most closely during this period?

The Umuada, the daughters of his lineage. It is difficult to explain, if you haven鈥檛 seen it, but they are powerful. They enforced everything. They were the ones who would inspect you, question you, report back. And his family was watching too. His brother especially.

What She Said: My Dad Spent My Mum鈥檚 Pension. Now I鈥檓 Stranded in Canada

Tell me about the brother.

He had come for me when my husband was alive. He was persistent and ugly about it. I didn’t tell my husband at first because I didn’t want trouble, but eventually I had no choice. He became too bold. My husband believed me immediately because this brother had done the same thing before, to someone else, and it had worked. He was furious. He told me directly, ” Look at me, Nkwuchi(a traditional inheritance practice in some Igbo communities where a widow is permanently integrated into her late husband’s immediate family by marrying his brother or a close male relative) will never happen to you. I will make sure of it.鈥� He said he would put it in writing, get it all properly documented. But he died suddenly, and none of that had been done yet.

So the man who had tried to sleep with me while my husband was alive was now the one at the centre of a plan to inherit me like property after his death.

When did they tell you?

After a full year. I had completed every single mourning rite without complaint. Twenty-eight days of intensive confinement, then sixty more days of semi-seclusion, then the remaining months of public mourning in black clothing, no socialising, no freedom of any kind. A full year.

The Agba Okwo, the liberation ceremony, was supposed to mark the end. My mourning clothes were meant to be burned; I was meant to be given new colourful clothes and declared free. Instead, that is when they told me what they expected next.

I know people will say this is old-fashioned, that modern Igbo families don’t do Nkuchi anymore. But when there is this much money at stake, tradition becomes very convenient, very quickly.

What was your reaction?

I was appalled. I want to use a stronger word, but appalled will do for now. This man, of all men. This specific man. After everything I had endured, after proving myself at every single stage of their process, this was their expectation.

I said no. Clearly and without room for misinterpretation. That was the beginning of a war that lasted over a decade.

What did they do when you refused?

Everything. The question should be what didn鈥檛 they do. The estate, his accounts, his properties, all of it was locked away from me and my children almost immediately. The first thing they did was move to obtain Letters of Administration over his estate before I could, effectively cutting the children and me out of everything while the courts processed it. His brother, supported by other family members, led the charge. They challenged the validity of our marriage even though we had a traditional ceremony, a white wedding, and a court marriage. He paid my bride price in full. There was nothing to challenge, but they challenged it anyway, which forced us into proving what should have already been obvious.

Then they filed paternity disputes. Claiming my children were not his.

How did you respond to that?

I did not let that go on for long. I pushed for a court-ordered DNA test immediately. The courts processed it, but these things take time in Nigeria. It was months of waiting, chain of custody arguments, every delay they could manufacture. But it came back definitive. They could not disprove the paternity because the children were his, obviously. They could not disprove the marriage because it was documented three different ways. But in Nigeria, being right and being protected are not the same thing. They had money, and they had time, and they were willing to use both.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

You mentioned being alone. What did that period look like?

I had my own businesses, my own cars, things in my own name. But I did not come from a wealthy family, and what I had was not enough to sustain my children at the level their father had provided for them and fight a legal battle against a very resourceful family simultaneously. And I was isolated in ways that went beyond money. The mourning period had cut me off from the world for a full year, and when I came out, I was already depleted. My friends eventually rallied, but the early period of the legal battle was genuinely lonely.

My family came eventually. My siblings ride hard for me; they always have. But none of them were in Nigeria at the time. It took time for the situation to reach the level where my sister came back first. Then years later, my brother followed. By then things were already deep.

What was the lowest point?

There was a period, a few years into the legal battle, where I genuinely did not know if I was going to win. The courts were slow. The in-laws were filing objection after objection, dragging every stage out deliberately. My lawyers were citing everything available: the constitutional provisions, the Mojekwu v. Mojekwu ruling from 1997, which had already declared customs that denied widows and women inheritance rights to be repugnant to natural justice. The Ukeje v. Ukeje Supreme Court ruling in 2014 added more weight; it reinforced the constitutional argument against discriminatory customary law and helped shift things further in my favour.

The VAPP Act came in 2015. But here is the truth: Rivers State never properly domesticated it. So what it did for me practically, in Port Harcourt, was limited. What actually moved my case was the constitutional argument, the case law that had been building for years, and the fact that some of his most significant assets were in Lagos, where the legal environment had more teeth and where VAPP had actual enforcement. My lawyers were smart enough to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously. We weren’t putting everything in one jurisdiction.

I had three young children, and I was fighting to make sure they could keep their father’s name and their father’s legacy. There were days when I sat in my house and could not see the end of it.

What happened? Did you win?

Strategically and stubbornly. My lawyers were good. Once the 2014 Supreme Court ruling came down and then VAPP in 2015, the legal landscape shifted in my favour. The paternity dispute had already been dismissed years earlier. The marriage validity argument had gone nowhere. What remained was the estate, and by then the courts had enough precedent to move.

I won full access to my husband’s estate. His shipping company, his real estate holdings, his manufacturing interests, his stakes in oil and gas, energy, telecoms. Everything he built. It went to his children where it belonged. I have been managing it.

Where are you now?

I鈥檓 still here in Port Harcourt.  I run my businesses, and I run what he built, and I travel when I want to because I have earned every single trip. My two older children started university in Nigeria, and when things finally resolved properly a few years ago, they moved abroad to continue. My youngest is still in secondary school here with me.

It took more than ten years. My children grew up watching me fight. I hope that is not the worst thing I have passed on to them. I also hope it is the reason none of them will ever accept less than they deserve.

What do you want women to know?

That you are allowed to fight. Enduring something is not the same as accepting it. I endured an entire year of rites that stripped me of my dignity because I understood the game I was in. But enduring it never meant I was not going to fight what came after.

Know your rights. Find your documentation. A court marriage matters. A registered will matters. A lawyer who understands both statutory and customary law matters. These are not romantic things to think about when you are happy and in love, but they are the things that protect you when the unthinkable happens.

He told me Nkuchi would never happen to me, and I swear, I believe that he meant it. He just didn’t update the paperwork in time. Don’t let your protection depend entirely on someone else’s intentions, no matter how much they love you. Put it in writing. Make it legal. Make it unbreakable.

I had to spend ten years making it unbreakable after the fact. You deserve not to go through that.

罢丑别听聽is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria.聽Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together.聽.

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 Amina*, a 28-year-old woman who moved to Canada at 16 for university. She talks about the pension her father spent, the decade of crisis that followed, and why the road back to Nigeria keeps closing in front of her, no matter how hard she tries to take it.

Can you tell me about yourself and how this whole journey started?

I’m Amina, and I’m 28. I moved to Canada when I was 16, straight out of secondary school, to start university. I was doing a double major, Communications and International Relations, though I had to drop one along the way, and it became more of a major and a minor situation. I made the big trip entirely alone. It was just me, a school dorm, and a plan that felt very simple at the time. Go to school, finish, and come back home with a degree.

I started in a smaller city, not one that people usually mention when they talk about Canada. My mum paid my tuition for the first two years without any issues. She was the one supporting me, along with the agency the school used to help with things like accommodation, visa and so on. Everything felt manageable.

What happened after those first two years?

My mum called me one day and told me that my father, her husband, had taken her pension. All of it. He’s not a working man; he’s a pastor, and he had gone and spent the entire thing. Just like that. She was the breadwinner in our house; she always had been, and the only real cushion we had was wiped out by one man’s decisions. I was so angry because how could she give him that money? He was putting it in a business to ‘duplicate’ it. What? You know this man, mummy and didn鈥檛 think 鈥榟mm, my second & last child, my only daughter is still halfway through school鈥�. No! You squandered all the funds you worked hard for and saved for your children鈥檚 education! I could not speak to any of my parents for a very long time.

What’s your relationship with your father like?

Strained, to put it lightly. He’s always been a very strict and almost unpredictable man. The only reason he’s never hit any of us is because he holds his pastoral title so high above himself that he can’t reconcile violence with who he’s supposed to be in public. He almost has, though. On several occasions, we have watched him physically struggle not to hit us. He’s abusive in every other way. Verbally, emotionally, and financially clearly. I don’t like him. I don’t think there’s a softer way to say that.

When your mother told you the money was gone, what was your reaction?

I refused to drop out. That was the only thing I was certain of in that moment. I had already started something, and I wasn’t going to let his irresponsibility be the reason I didn’t finish. So I started working. Whatever I could get. Call centre jobs, barista work, retail, anything that would let me cover my international tuition fees, which, if you know anything about studying abroad, are not small numbers.

That must have been an enormous shift for someone so young.

It was the beginning of what I now just call the seven years. Because that’s roughly how long this cycle of crisis lasted, one thing compounding into the next, never really stopping long enough for me to catch my breath.

Can you walk me through some of what happened during that period?

There’s so much. I’ll try to give you the shape of it. At one point, I had managed to gather a significant amount of money for my fees, money I’d put together slowly over months. Family members chipping in here and there, strangers being kind, savings from work and even some loans. I was at a bus stop at night, and it was stolen from me. I didn鈥檛 even know when. It was just gone. I remember standing there after, not even fully processing it because my body had gone somewhere else entirely.

How did you cope with something like that happening?

Honestly, not well. I isolated a lot during that period. I pushed people away without even realising I was doing it. By the time things were really falling apart, I had almost no one around me, which I now understand was partly my own doing. When you’re drowning, you don’t always reach for the hands trying to help you; sometimes you just sink quietly because it feels like less work.

Then the health crisis happened. 

You also had a health crisis during this time?

Yes. Emergency surgery for ovarian cysts. I had to go through that completely alone, no family nearby, very little support system left because I’d pushed so many people away. It took some GoFundMe to complete the fee I needed for this. Recovery was so lonely. I don’t think I can fully explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. You’re healing physically, and there’s no one checking in, no one bringing you food, you’re just existing through it by yourself in a foreign country.

It was worsened by the fact that I had taken out loans, and loan sharks were actively looking for me. 

Loan sharks. Can you tell me about that?

I took out what was available to someone in my position, an immigrant who’d come for school. Some bank loans, but also some local predatory lenders, because at certain points, those were the only people willing to give me anything. It got bad enough that they once showed up at my house. A neighbour managed to distract them while I left through the back. I ended up having to leave that entire city because of it.

What She Said: My Dad Spent My Mum鈥檚 Pension. Now I鈥檓 Stranded in Canada

That sounds terrifying.

It was. And it’s strange because in the moment, you’re so focused on just surviving the next hour that the fear doesn’t always register until much later. I think about it now, and I get a delayed kind of terror that I didn’t fully feel at the time.

With everything happening, how did your studies progress?

It starts and stops. I had to pause and retake courses more times than I can comfortably count, four or five at least. Every time I couldn’t clear a semester balance on time, I’d lose progress and have to redo things. I watched people I started university with finish, move on, build lives, while I was still stuck retaking a course I’d already passed once before but couldn’t afford to complete properly the first time around.

What finally brought you to the point of wanting to give up and come home?

It was last year. There was a point where I was very close to actually finishing, and a cost came up again, money I was expecting fell through, and I was told that if I missed a certain date, I wouldn’t be able to complete some courses and would have to retake the entire thing from scratch. On top of that, my visa was expiring, and I needed to renew it, but there was an issue with my student paperwork, something about fees not being paid or the institution not recognising my standing properly.

I went to my advisor, who told me she had no time to apply that same day, and then ghosted me for over a week.

What happened with that visa situation?

This is the part I still don’t fully understand. While I was waiting on my advisor, I went to the larger office that handles visas, just to ask questions, and they told me they’d received my email and everything was being sorted. I hadn’t sent any email. When my advisor eventually responded after that week of silence, I asked her directly if she’d sent anything on my behalf. She had no idea what I was talking about. She hadn’t sent anything either.

I still don’t know how it happened. By that point, I had already mentally prepared myself to just go back to Nigeria, papers or not. And then somehow, legally, I was allowed to stay. All I could do was thank God. There was no other explanation I had for it.

Still, I decided to leave Canada eventually. This was because even with that resolved, the bigger issue never went away. The fees, the debt, none of that disappeared. It’s been over ten years of nothing going right in any consistent way. So I bought a ticket home, told my parents and even sent money ahead to secure my own apartment in Nigeria because I was not going to live with them.

Why was that so important to you, having your own place?

My parents are a huge part of why I went through what I went through. They were very strict growing up, and my father’s financial recklessness is the entire reason this seven-year cycle started in the first place. I love them, in whatever complicated way you love your parents, but I was not going to fly all the way back just to walk into another version of the environment I was trying to escape.

Understandable. What happened next? 

To get from where I was to Nigeria, the route went through Germany. I asked if I needed a transit visa, and they said no. When I got to the airport, someone said to ask again before I boarded the flight, and it turned out I did, in fact, need one. They apologised, said it was their fault for the wrong information, but I still needed the visa to proceed, and they never refunded my ticket money.

How much was that loss?

Thousands of dollars. Money I did not have to lose again. It felt like every road I tried to take back home was either blocked or, in the case of my papers, divinely intervened for me to stay. I don’t know how else to explain a pattern like that.

What happened after the flight fell through?

My parents arranged for me to stay temporarily with family friends while I sorted everything out. I had sent money home some time ago that I requested back. My parents decided to send it to me through said family friends, but they never gave me a dime. They said it was to cover my rent and food. 

What was that experience like?

It was not good. Instead of using that money the way it was intended, they withheld it from me and basically turned me into unpaid help in their home. I was looking after their children, cleaning, cooking, functioning as a nanny in every sense except one. They had a two-year-old and a baby not even a year old yet. The wife worked, the husband just lounged around all day, expecting things to be done for him.

The one line I drew, the only one, was diapers. I did everything else, from cooking, dishes, and taking care of the children all day and when I got a job again, whenever I was home. But I would not change diapers. That was the one boundary I held onto in that entire situation.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

They didn’t even let you eat properly?

No. They claimed whatever money was sent covered my room and board, but somehow that never translated into me actually being fed by them. I was working in their home all day and still had to figure out my own meals separately.

Eventually, they brought up the asylum conversation. 

What asylum conversation? 

They were the ones who pushed it. They said this was the only way left for me to stay in Canada. They contacted people, made connections, and eventually told me that to stay legally and get permanent papers, not the temporary kind I’d already been given through whatever divine intervention happened with my visa, I would need to apply for asylum on the grounds of being queer.

How did you feel about that suggestion?

I genuinely did not want to do that. I want to be honest, there’s a lot I can’t fully say about why. I’m a pastor’s child. Certain things can’t come out, even to myself. I cannot even accept certain things about myself fully. Who says I’m queer? But yes, the suggestion was made purely as a legal pathway, not because I had ever said anything like that out loud to them or to anyone.

What were your actual options at that point?

Asylum or marriage. Those were the two doors left open to me to legally remain. Neither of them felt like something I had chosen for myself. They both felt like things being handed to me because every other option had already closed.

Where are things now with the family you were staying with?

I’ve moved out. I told them months ago I would be leaving, and at the time, they all agreed it made sense. But the week I was actually meant to move, the husband, the same one who lounged around all day while I cared for his children, screamed at me, asking if I knew who I was and where I thought I was going. I left anyway. What else was I supposed to do at that point?

What do you want people to take from your story?

Honestly, I don’t have advice right now. I don’t even know if I want this for awareness exactly. I think I just needed to let it out, to tell someone, because saying all of this out loud made me realise what a ride this has been. What a life.

I was in secondary school once. I never thought this would be my life ten plus years later. I’m still in the thick of it; I don’t have a neat ending for you. I’m just still here, trying to figure out what comes next.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

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 Lade*, a 27-year-old PR professional based in Lagos. She talks about growing up with a mother who sabotaged her at every turn, the friend’s mother who stepped in and changed everything, and why cutting off the woman who gave birth to her is the best decision she has ever made.

Can you tell me about yourself?

My name is Lade*, and I’m 27. I work in PR, and I鈥檓 a Junior Account Manager at a firm on the Island. I like my job, I’m good at it, and I have plans for where I want to take it. I just got back from South Africa, where I did my master’s in Communications and Media Studies, and I graduated top of my class while already working, so I came back ready. That’s who I am now.

Take me back. What was growing up like for you?

It was not a happy home. I鈥檓 an only child. My parents were there in the physical sense, but there was no real support, financially or emotionally. From as early as I can remember, I was mostly on my own. My father left us when I was younger than 10. My mother was even worse. She may have stayed, but she was not someone I could rely on for anything. She wasn’t showing up for me, wasn’t providing, wasn’t present in the ways that matter. Especially when I got into uni. I did not get 1 Kobo from her. I just knew very early that whatever I was going to have in this life, I was going to have to get it myself. 

What did getting it yourself look like as a student?

I was running a small business from school, selling clothes, accessories, beauty supplies, and lashes. I also eventually started hairstyling and nails. Just whatever I could do to make sure I had what I needed, because waiting on my parents for money was not a reliable strategy. My mother would say she didn’t have anything when I called. My father was the same. I had one uncle who would help when he could, but even that was not consistent, just whenever he had. So I learned to be resourceful very early out of necessity, not by choice.

Was there a specific moment that clearly showed why you couldn鈥檛 rely on your parents?

Yes. I got an athletics scholarship to a university abroad. I had worked for it, I earned it, and I was so proud of myself. My mother contacted the institution without telling me and had my name withdrawn. She told them I wouldn’t be coming. I found out when I called to confirm my acceptance, and they told me the spot had been released.

Her reason, when I confronted her, was that she didn’t want me to go that far. That was it. That was the whole explanation.

How did you even process something like that?

I don’t think I fully processed it for a long time. When something like that happens, you go through so many things at once. Disbelief, grief, anger. And then underneath all of that is this quiet, devastating realisation that the person who is supposed to want the best for you actively doesn’t. That she looked at an opportunity that could have changed my life and decided her discomfort was more important.

I had to pick myself up and keep going because what else was I going to do? But that moment never left me.

Did the pattern continue through university?

It never stopped. There was significant money that came for me through a relative that she collected and never gave me. I found out years later. There were calls that only ever came when she wanted to disturb me, to dump something heavy on me, to guilt-trip me. I used to dread seeing her name on my screen. I would watch my roommates light up when their mothers called, and I would feel this thing in my chest that I didn’t even have a word for. Jealousy maybe. Grief. Both.

I stopped going home except once in a while, and even those visits cost me. I wouldn’t sleep. I would come back to school carrying more than I left with.

Did things change?

After NYSC, I got a customer care role at a company in Lekki. Entry level, just trying to stack experience and save up before my master’s. That’s where I met Tolu. We worked together, at the same level, just two people trying to figure things out. We started having lunch together, spending time outside work, and eventually, I was spending a lot of time at her family’s place.

There was something about that house. The energy was just different. That’s the only way I can describe it. I would walk in, and something in me would just settle. It was warm and calm, and nobody was on edge. I didn’t realise how tense I always was until I was somewhere that I wasn’t, especially when I started bonding with her mother. 

What She Said: I Would Have Said Yes to an Open Relationship, But She Never Asked

That must have felt amazing after years of feeling unsafe in spaces where you should feel the safest. When did you first properly connect with Tolu’s mother?

It was over food, actually. Mrs Adeyemi* makes fufu from scratch on weekends. Tolu thinks it’s too much stress and wants nothing to do with it. But me, fufu is my favourite, I grew up eating it, and I miss it when I don’t have it. So one Saturday I’m there, and Mrs Adeyemi is in the kitchen, and my eyes must have said everything because she just started laughing and told me to come and sit down.

We spent that whole afternoon in the kitchen together. Just talking. About food first, then about books, because she noticed what I was always carrying around. Tolu is not a reader; she doesn’t have that patience. But her mother and I would exchange books, argue about characters, and recommend things to each other. It just grew from there naturally.

What did she give you that was different?

She asked me about my life like she actually wanted to know. My plans, what I was working towards, what I was worried about. Not in the interrogating Nigerian parent way, but in the way of someone who was genuinely curious about you as a person. I wasn’t used to that from a mother figure, and it took me a while to stop waiting for the catch.

She also just saw things without me having to say them. I never sat her down and explained my home situation in detail. She just watched and understood and made space accordingly.

That鈥檚 beautiful. Were you still in contact with your mum?

Not really. We were never in contact. She just called once in a while to berate me, but I had not spoken to my mother in over a year when a cousin saw me at a birthday gathering Mrs Adeyemi threw. Put everything together and reported back. My mother called me immediately, not to ask any questions, just to accuse. She said I was embarrassing the family by going to beg from strangers. She said Mrs Adeyemi was using me, doing it for show, filling my head with ideas. When that didn’t land, she went further.

How far did she go?

She got Mrs Adeyemi’s number somehow and called her directly. I don’t know the full details of that conversation, but I know it was ugly. She accused her of trying to steal her daughter, of interfering in family business, and she threatened her. Then she started calling aunties and uncles, turning it into a whole family matter, telling everyone that I had abandoned my mother for a stranger and that I was being manipulated.

She showed up at my office in Lekki one day. I wasn’t even there; I found out from a colleague that she had come and caused a scene in the lobby. I do not even know how she found out where I work. She dropped voice notes in family group chats. It was relentless.

What did Mrs Adeyemi do when all of this was happening?

She didn’t move. When I came to her completely mortified and apologising for something I hadn’t even done, she sat me down and told me that nothing my mother said changed what she knew about me. She didn’t badmouth my mother, not once. She just made it clear that her door was not closing.

And when it became obvious that I couldn’t comfortably go back to my own home, or rather family, after everything, she shocked me with her next steps. She didn鈥檛 really say anything, just had the housekeeper clear out a room and told me this was my home for as long as I needed.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

What did that feel like?

I cried for a very long time because I was grateful, but I was also grieving. I was 24, 25 at this point, and I was receiving something for the first time that I should have had my whole life. You don’t realise how heavy you’ve been carrying something until someone lifts it. That’s the only way I can describe it.

I鈥檓 happy for you. How did life change after that?

Mrs Adeyemi funded my Master’s in Communications and Media Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa. She sat me down and told me she had been watching me, and she wanted to invest in where I was going. She didn’t frame it as charity; she framed it as belief. She told me she expected to watch me do something with it.

I graduated top of my class. By my second year, I was already working remotely for a PR firm in Lagos that had taken me on. I came back to Nigeria with a degree, a job already running and a plan. I think about the scholarship my mother pulled me out of, and I think about this, and I feel things I don’t have words for.

Did you ever decide to cut contact with your mother?

Of course. The office incident was the final thing. I had spent years managing her, absorbing the chaos, trying to maintain something because she was still my mother, and I had been taught that meant everything. But standing in my office and hearing that she had come there screaming in the reception, at my place of work, was so heartbreaking and humiliating that something just permanently closed in me.

I didn’t say anything to her. I just stopped. I stopped picking up, stopped responding to her emergencies, told the security at my office to never let her in, moved out of my house so she couldn鈥檛 reach me and because I was truly welcomed by the Adeyemis. I just stopped engaging. That was how we cut things off. 

How has the extended family responded?

Every angle you can imagine. She carried you. Blood is blood. How can you be living like this and leave her suffering? How can you be going abroad and not taking her with you? You will regret this. She’s still your mother, no matter what she did.

I used to cry when these conversations happened. Now they just make me tired. Because none of the people saying these things were there. They didn’t see what I saw, they didn’t live what I lived. And most of them didn’t show up either, so the audacity is ridiculous.

How do you feel now?

Free. It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made because no matter what she did, she is still my mother, and there is grief in that that doesn’t just disappear. But I have never felt lighter. I have never felt more like myself.

I now have a mother who chose me. I have a home I can walk into and breathe. I have a career I’m building on my own terms with someone in my corner who believes in where I’m going. I have peace. And I spent so long not knowing what that felt like that I don’t take a single day of it for granted.

What do you want other young women in similar situations to take from your story?

That blood does not automatically mean love. And the absence of love from a parent is not a reflection of your worth; it is a reflection of their limitations. You did not deserve it. I did not deserve it.

And if someone shows up for you, let them. Don’t talk yourself out of being loved because it’s coming from somewhere unexpected. Mrs Adeyemi did not have to choose me. She chose me anyway. And I chose myself when I stopped waiting for my mother to become someone she was never going to be.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

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. 

Kemi* is a 30-year-old tech sis and real estate investor split between the UK and Nigeria. She talks about meeting the woman she thought was her person, building something real across countries, and the moment a hack exposed a double life she never saw coming. This is What She Said!

Can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Kemi, and I’m 30. I work in tech, I have a remote role in the UK, and I take contract and consulting gigs in Nigeria as well. I also run real estate in Nigeria, so I’m constantly in and out. Lagos, Abuja, London, sometimes elsewhere. It’s a life I’ve built deliberately, and I love it. My family are mostly in the UK. I’m close to them, and they know I am a proud lesbian. In Nigeria, I’m more careful, but I’m not hiding. I also just ended a 2-year relationship.

What does being careful in Nigeria look like for you?

It means I don’t make public announcements. Like, if I don’t tell you myself, you will never know. The people in my life know me. I’ve never been someone who lives in shame about who I am; I just pick my spaces carefully. Nigeria requires a different kind of navigation, and I’ve learned how to do that without losing myself in the process. Also, the queers back home are constantly creating safe spaces for all of us to feel welcomed, loved and accepted for who we are.

Alright. Can you tell me about how you met your ex?

Sure. I was in the UK, give or take two years ago. I was out just having a good time, and this woman walked up to me. Just approached me with this confidence that I immediately respected. We started talking, and about twenty minutes in, I caught the Nigerian accent in her voice, and I asked where she was from.

We both just lit up immediately, you know how it is when you find your people somewhere unexpected. Turns out she was on vacation. We spent the rest of that evening talking, and something just clicked.

What happened after that?

She went back from her vacation, and I eventually got back to Nigeria, maybe a month after that interaction. I called her. That’s how it started, just a phone call that turned into something neither of us was fully planning for.

What was she like?

She’s 28, but then she was about 26, I believe. She鈥檚 very creative, and she鈥檚 into photography, videography, and DJing. Very talented, very magnetic. She makes any room feel more alive just by being in it. She’s pansexual, which I knew from early on, and that was never an issue for me. I’m polyamorous by nature, though I鈥檝e never been the type who needs or prefers multiple relationships. I am often very content and happy with just one partner, but I am just aware that I am able to love and be with multiple people at the same time. So, I’d been very happily monogamous in this relationship. She was enough.

What was the energy like between you two in those early days?

Electric. It started electric and became warm, and that warmth is what made it feel real. We were building something, not just a relationship but a whole intercountry life. She’d come to me, I’d go to her, we had our rhythm. It felt genuinely good.

How did you both contribute to the relationship?

We were both present and invested. I have more financial resources than she does; that’s just the reality. I work in tech and real estate, and I’ve built well for myself. I am also considered a 鈥渘epo baby鈥�. I am aware of my privilege. She earns from her creative work, and it’s good money for what it is, but it’s not the same level. I spent millions on her over the course of our relationship, and I did it because I wanted to. Because she was my person, and that’s what you do for your person.

I did notice things, though. She was consistently able to afford certain trips, certain things that I couldn’t fully account for on a photographer and DJ’s income. I’d wonder sometimes. But she didn’t like discussing money, and she showed up in other ways, so I let it go. I told myself I was being ungenerous, that maybe I just didn’t fully understand her finances.

What She Said: My Husband Wants a Child. I Don鈥檛

When did things start to shift?

About a year in, I started getting calls and texts. Things were being sent to me that were clearly meant to alert me to something. A lot of it was this person implying that my partner was cheating, but not in so many words. I noticed. I wasn’t blind, but I also didn’t have the full picture yet, and I loved her, so I kept moving. Which I now understand was me not wanting to see what was right in front of me.

What eventually brought everything into the open?

She was hacked this year. Her social media, her contacts, everything. And whoever hacked her used that access to send out her nudes and photos of her in compromising positions with various men, to her entire contact list. And posted publicly on her socials. I was among the people who received them.

Whoa. That is a lot. What was that moment like?

I can’t fully describe it. It was like the ground just disappeared. You’re looking at images of someone you love, someone you’ve built with, someone you trusted completely, and you’re seeing a version of them that was apparently always there and you just never knew.

And the thing that hit me hardest wasn’t even the betrayal in isolation. It was the volume of it. It wasn’t one person, one mistake, one moment of weakness. It was a whole parallel life. A string of men who had been consistently financing her trips, things, and lifestyle, and she had been paying them back in kind. This had been happening the entire time.

Did you know any of them?

That’s the part that still makes me feel sick when I think about it. One of her close friends, someone I had gotten close to myself over the course of our relationship, someone I considered part of my circle, was one of them. I had welcomed this person. Sat across from this person and had genuine conversations. And the whole time鈥�

How do you even begin to process that?

I haven’t fully processed it, if I’m honest. The intimacy of that betrayal is different. It’s one thing for there to be strangers. It’s another thing entirely for it to be someone you yourself had let in. That requires a kind of audacity that I’m still wrapping my head around.

I鈥檓 so sorry. You mentioned you’re polyamorous. How does that sit with everything you found out?

This is the part I keep coming back to. I am polyamorous. I had been genuinely, happily monogamous in this relationship because she was against anything open or poly. She made that very clear early on; she wanted monogamy, and I respected that because I wanted her.

But here’s what I now know. She wasn’t living monogamously. She was living a version of the life I would have been completely open to, multiple partners, different connections, except she was doing it secretly, funded by men, while telling me she needed exclusivity. She knew I was poly. She knew I would have been open to a conversation. She chose deception anyway.

I would have said yes. If she had just been honest, I would have said yes. That is the thing I cannot get past. Not having other people. It鈥檚 her choosing to lie about it when she didn’t have to.

What did you do when you found out?

I ended it.

How did she respond?

She’s not really letting it be over. She keeps reaching out, keeps trying to find a way back in. Which I understand on a human level, two years is two years, and feelings don’t just stop. But I also know what I know now, and I can’t unknow it.

And on top of that, get this. The bitch is pregnant. She doesn’t know who the father is. And she wants me to stay. She’s asking me to make it work. I have been laughing since I found out, again through social media. What does she want me to say? 

How are you sitting with that?

I genuinely don’t have words for what it is to be asked that. To be asked to stay by someone who maintained a whole secret life, whose nudes were sent to your phone, who let a man you considered a friend be part of her deception, who is now carrying a pregnancy she cannot even attribute. And to be asked to make it work.

I loved her. I really did. I’m not going to pretend that’s disappeared overnight because it hasn’t. But love is not the only thing that matters. What you do with someone’s love matters too. What she did with mine is something I have to sit with every day right now.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

Looking back, were there signs?

That’s one of the most disorienting parts of a betrayal like this. You start reviewing everything. Every comment she made that you laughed off, every time money appeared from nowhere, every moment where something felt slightly off, but you chose to believe in her instead. And you realise you weren’t oblivious because you were stupid. You were oblivious because you were in love, and you were happy, and you trusted her. And she knew that, and she used it.

The male-centredness of it is what gets me the most on reflection. Because looking back, there were signs. Things she said, ways she operated around men, certain dynamics I clocked but didn’t sit with long enough. She was very comfortable with a particular kind of male attention, and I understand now what that was funding. I just couldn’t see it because I was too busy genuinely enjoying what we had.

What do you want other women to take from this?

Trust yourself. That’s the only thing I know for certain right now. When something doesn’t add up, when your body is telling you to look closer, when the little things are quietly accumulating, trust that. Not in a paranoid way. Just in a self-respecting way.

I was happy. Genuinely happy. And I don’t regret that happiness because it was real for me, even if it wasn’t fully real for her. But I also wish I had given more weight to the things that didn’t sit right. I wish I had asked the questions I was afraid to ask.

You can love someone and still demand the truth from them. Those things are not in conflict. I just forgot that for a while.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

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. 

Adaeze* is a 36-year-old Chief Product Officer based in London who also runs a business in Lagos. She talks about knowing since she was a teenager that she never wanted children, building a life and a marriage around that truth, and losing the person closest to her because a doctor decided a woman’s body was her husband’s business.

Can you tell me about yourself?

I’m Nigerian, born and raised, though I’ve lived in the UK for about ten years now. I did my master’s here, stayed for work, and honestly never left. I’m a Chief Product Officer at a tech company in London. I also run a business back in Lagos because Nigeria never really leaves you, no matter how long you’ve been away. The business also made more sense back home than here.

In terms of who I am as a person, I’ve always been focused and driven. I knew early what I wanted from life, and I went after it doggedly. I’m not someone who does things by accident.

I turned 36 this year, and I am married. We鈥檙e mostly happy. I don鈥檛 feel like I can really complain. I have been lucky in life.

That鈥檚 nice. How long have you been with your husband?

We’ve been married for five years. We met when I was 26, so we dated for five years before that. He’s a good man. A really good man, actually.

Tell me about your upbringing. What was your family like?

I’m an only child, which has shaped a lot of things about me. My parents were present, hardworking, and all of that. But because I had no siblings, my cousin was essentially my sister. We grew up together, spent every holiday together, and called each other about everything. She was my person. My first call for anything, good news, bad news, random Tuesday energy. She鈥檚 only 2 years older, and we were inseparable.

What was growing up as an only child in Nigeria like?

Oh, there were constant expectations around marriage and children. You know how it is. Nigerian families don’t really ask if you want something; they just assume and begin planning. Marriage was always a given. Children were always a given. Nobody sat me down and said, “What do you want your life to look like?” They just assumed they already knew.

But I was always watching. Even as a young girl, I was very observant. And what I observed growing up didn’t quite match the picture everyone was trying to sell me.

What do you mean?

I mean, I was watching the women around me. Aunties, family friends, neighbours, women in church. And I could see something happening to them that nobody was naming. This slow erosion. Who they were before motherhood, their personalities, their ambitions, their energy, just quietly disappearing. Not all of them. But enough of them that I noticed. They became a shell of who they were. A mother and a wife. Almost nothing else. 

And then there was something else I was watching. The children were carrying their parents’ unresolved pain around like it was their own. Trauma passed down like an inheritance nobody signed up for. I saw that too, and it sat with me.

How old were you when you started putting this together in your head?

Honestly, early. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. I know people hear that and they say oh you were just a child, you didn’t know. But I knew. Some things you just know about yourself, and this was one of them. I did not want to be a mother. Not because I didn’t love children, I genuinely do, but because I could see clearly what it would cost me, and I didn’t want to pay that price.

You say you love children, but you don’t want them. A lot of people struggle to hold those two things at the same time.

People find it very convenient to use that against me, actually. I volunteer at orphanages, I donate to schools, and I show up for the children in my life. And people look at that and say, “But you’re so good with them, you’d make such a great mother.” As if the only valid way to love children is to produce one of your own. I find that exhausting.

You can love something without wanting it for yourself. I love the ocean. I don’t want to live in it.

So you carried this knowing into adulthood, into relationships. When did it first come up seriously with someone you were dating?

Always immediately. I was never going to hide something that fundamental. In my early twenties, I was in a few relationships where I said it early, and the men either disappeared or tried to convince me I’d change my mind. One guy literally said, “You just haven’t met the right person yet.” I was done with him after that.

But when I met my husband at 26, something was different. He was different. And I still told him, within the first few real conversations we had, I don’t want children, I have never wanted children, and this is not something I’m going to change my mind about. You need to know this now before either of us gets any deeper.

What did he say?

He said it didn’t matter. That I was what he wanted. And I believed him completely because he meant it. I genuinely think he meant every word of it in that moment because of how he treated me in the following years. He also never brought it up or tried to convince or hijack me with it.

What was it like building a relationship with someone who accepted that part of you so fully?

It was everything, honestly. Because it wasn’t just about the children question. It was about being known. He saw me, all of me, and he wasn’t trying to edit any of it. No one had ever loved me quite the way he did. So patiently, so completely, so specifically. He knows me in a rare way, and I don’t take that lightly.

We dated for five years and then got married when I was 31. And the first two years of marriage were just genuinely good, like bliss.

What changed after two years?

He came to me and said he’d been thinking, and he thought he did want children after all.

I want to be fair to him here because this is a public conversation and he’s a good person who deserves that fairness. People change. Life shows you things you didn’t know about yourself. He was watching his friends become fathers, his siblings, people all around him. Something had shifted in him, and he was being honest with me about it. I respected the honesty.

But I was also very clear with him. I said, 鈥淚 have never lied to you. I told you from the very beginning exactly where I stood, and I told you that would not change. It hasn’t changed. Not even slightly. I have a full life. The lack of children doesn鈥檛 make me feel like anything is missing in my life.鈥�

How did he take that?

He heard me. He wasn’t aggressive about it or manipulative. But I could see the sadness in him, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t. It became this thing that lived underneath everything. We weren’t fighting; people always imagine it must have been this explosive conflict, but it wasn’t. It was quieter and in some ways harder than a fight. Just the same conversation on a loop with no resolution. His pain on one side, my frustration on the other.

What were you frustrated about specifically?

That I had been so clear. From day one. I gave him every opportunity to walk away before either of us was in too deep, and he chose to stay, and now here we were. I wasn’t angry at him for having feelings, but I was frustrated by the situation. Because I hadn’t moved. I was exactly where I said I would always be.

And he was frustrated too, not at me exactly but at himself, at the situation. Because he knew it was unfair to ask me to change. He knew that. But he also couldn’t help what he was feeling. We were both just trapped in this very honest, very painful loop.

While all of this was happening in my marriage, something happened with my cousin.

What She Said: My Husband Bankrupted My Businesses Until My Friends Helped Me Build One He Couldn鈥檛 Find

What happened?

She got married a few years before me to a man whom her family approved of. They seemed happy. She had her first child a bit earlier than she wanted, but she loved her baby. Still, she intended to keep the minimum 4-year gap she always wanted between kids. So she went to the doctor and asked about birth control.

What happened at the doctor’s?

The first thing they asked her was, “Does Oga know?” Meaning her husband. That was the first response to a grown married woman asking her doctor about her own reproductive health. Not, 鈥榳hat are your options鈥�, not, 鈥榟ere’s what we recommend鈥�, not, 鈥榣et’s talk about what works best for your body鈥�. But 鈥淒oes your husband know you’re here?鈥�

They told her to wait. Have a second child first, and then come back.

Did she have the second child?

Yes, she did and only 2 years after. Still, she tried to go back but she got pregnant again before she could get there, just months after the second child. So now she had three pregnancies back to back.

That’s an enormous amount of strain on a body.

It is. And after the third child, she went in immediately and asked for the implant. She wasn’t waiting this time.

What happened?

They told her husband.

He was completely against it. He blocked it entirely. Wouldn’t hear of it. And he also refused to use condoms. So she had no protection and a husband who wanted more children and doctors who had already shown her whose side they were on.

What did she do?

She stopped having sex with him for over a year. Just trying to hold the line around her own body because nobody else was holding it for her.

That must have been incredibly isolating.

I can only imagine because she didn’t tell me what was happening. Not the full picture. I knew bits and pieces but not the whole truth, and that is something I will carry for a very long time.

She could feel him pulling away from her during that period. She thought he was cheating. And she was terrified of losing him, of losing her marriage, of what it would mean. So eventually she gave in, and they had unprotected sex because that was the only version on offer. And she got pregnant with the fourth child. Her body was not ready for it.

This was a pregnancy she did not want. A pregnancy she had spent over a year trying to prevent. A pregnancy that led to serious complications.

When did you find out how bad things were?

Too late. That’s the honest answer. She didn’t tell me until it was too late. I think she didn’t want me to go into warrior mode; she knew me, she knew exactly what I would do. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she thought she could handle it. I don’t know, and I’ll never know, and that not knowing is its own grief.

By the time I understood the full picture, I was on the first flight to Nigeria.

What did you do when you got there?

I went to that hospital, and I was very clear. What they did, disclosing her request for contraception to her husband without her consent, is a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. It is a violation of her rights as a patient. I told them I would pursue every legal avenue available if they did not take her care seriously from that point forward. I am not someone people easily dismiss. I made sure they understood that.

And I spoke to her husband. I won’t repeat exactly what I said to him, but he understood me.

Were you able to get her any protection going forward?

They agreed she would get the implant after this final pregnancy. I even started pushing for her husband to get a vasectomy since the idiot would not use condoms. I was fighting on every front I could find.

How did your fight end?

She died. The baby died too. Her body had been through too much: four pregnancies, back to back, no real recovery time between any of them, and a fourth one her system simply could not survive.

She was my sister. The person I called first for everything. And she is gone.

I’m so sorry.

The thing I keep coming back to is how preventable it was. At every single point, there was an intervention that could have changed the outcome. The doctor who asked “Does Oga know?” instead of just doing their job. The hospital that told her husband instead of protecting her privacy. The husband who decided his desire for more children was more important than her life. Any one of those moments, if it had gone differently, she might still be here.

How has losing her shaped the way you think about your own choices and about not wanting children?

It didn’t change my mind. I want to say that clearly because I think people expect me to say it did, like losing her was some kind of lesson that pushed me one way or the other. I had already decided long before any of this happened.

What it did was show me in the most devastating way possible what is at stake when women don’t have control over their own bodies. This is not abstract. This is not a debate on Twitter. Women are dying. My cousin died. Because she could not access basic healthcare. Because the system around her treated her body as something that belonged to her husband rather than to her.

My grief needed somewhere to go. So I’m building an NGO focused on women’s reproductive rights in Nigeria. Specifically, around access to contraception, patient confidentiality, and the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies without requiring anyone’s permission.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

Coming back to your marriage. You’re building this NGO, you’re carrying this grief, and you’re also navigating something very personal at home. Where are things with your husband now?

We’ve arrived somewhere. It took a long time and a lot of honest, painful conversations, but we got there together.

He wants a child. He has wanted one for a few years now, and that hasn’t gone away. I don’t want one. That hasn’t gone away either. And we love each other too much to keep asking the other person to be something they’re not.

So he’s going to have his child. Surrogacy or adoption, he hasn’t decided yet. And when that baby comes, we’ll live separately.

Wow. How did you arrive at that decision?

By being honest. About what we both needed and what we could and couldn’t give each other. I don’t think I should stand in the way of him having the thing he wants most. Just like he doesn’t think it’s fair to ask me to have a child I don’t want. So we’re trying to find the most loving version of a situation that has no perfect answer.

That’s an enormous thing to agree to. Are you scared?

Of course I am. I’m terrified of what it means, of whether we can actually make it work, of losing the version of us that has existed up until now. I love this man. I love our life. And I’m watching it change shape in real time.

But what’s the alternative? Watch him grieve something for the rest of his life that I could have stepped out of the way of? Stay in something that starts to curdle because we were too afraid to be honest? That’s not love. That’s just two people being afraid together.

Do you think it will work?

I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. What I know is that we love each other enough to try. And if it doesn’t work, it won’t be because we lied to each other or because one of us pretended to want something they didn’t. We will have been honest every step of the way, and that matters to me.

To be loved is to be known. He knows me. I know him. Whatever comes next, that part doesn’t change.

What do you want women, especially Nigerian women, to take from your story?

That your body belongs to you. Not your husband. Not your doctor. Not your mother-in-law. Not society. You.

My cousin was a grown woman and a mother who walked into a hospital and asked for help, and the first question she was asked was whether her husband approved. That question cost her everything. It set in motion a chain of events that ended with her dying over a pregnancy she never wanted to carry.

No woman should have to negotiate access to her own healthcare. No woman should have to choose between her body and her marriage. No woman should die because the people around her decided someone else’s opinion of her body mattered more than her life.

She deserved better. They all deserve better. And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing, because if I can’t bring her back, the least I can do is make sure fewer women end up where she did.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

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.

Adanna*, 36, met the man she would spend ten years with in university. He was gentle then, attentive, and always had a way of making her feel chosen. What followed was a slow erosion of everything she had built and everything she was, driven by an addiction that grew from something she barely noticed into something that swallowed him whole and nearly took her with it. This is what she said.

Can you tell us about yourself? 

I’m Adanna, I’m 36. I work in brand management, been doing it for about eight years now. I come from a comfortable family, we were never struggling, so I always had a foundation. I started a hair business on the side a few years back that was doing well, then I tried to open a salon. Neither of them made it to where I wanted them to go. I’m based in Lagos. I’m single. 

You reached out to talk about a relationship that took a lot from you. How did it start?

We met in university. He was in my department, we had a few of the same friends. He was genuinely gentle. Soft spoken, attentive, remembered small things you mentioned in passing. He always made me feel like I was the most interesting person in the room just by how he listened to me. I fell for that version of him completely. We started dating in our second year and by the time we finished school I could not imagine my life without him in it.

That sounds sweet. When did things start to change?

It started very slowly. There is no single morning where I woke up and everything was different. It really crept up on me, I think even him. In our mid twenties we were in Lagos, both trying to build careers, and the social scene around us was what you would imagine. It started with regular parties and clubs we would frequent, then we kept running into the same people, certain crowds, and eventually we started noticing certain things that got passed around. He tried Molly first, at a party we both attended. I was there. It didn’t seem like a big thing then. A lot of people around us were doing it. I didn’t think too much of it. I later tried it myself but quickly stopped because the trip wasn鈥檛 was for me. 

When did you start thinking about it?

When it stopped being a party thing and became a regular thing. He was using every blessed day. Then LSD came in. He was curious about everything, that was part of who he was, and he framed it as exploration. Expanding the mind. I was not completely naive but I also loved him and he was still functional, still showing up, still the person I knew underneath it all. Or so I told myself.

What came after that?

I smoke weed recreationally so I once tried to wean him off all he was doing and transition to weed since he needed to use so badly and I felt it was a safer option but it backfired and he started doing Cocaine. That was when I felt the ground shift properly under my feet. 

Cocaine is expensive and it is hungry. It asks for more of you faster than the other things did. His personality started changing in ways I could see but struggled to name. He became more erratic. More defensive. Small things would set him off. The gentleness that I had fallen in love with started having gaps in it, moments where someone else was looking out of his eyes.

How did it start affecting you practically?

The main thing was money. That’s where it always shows up first. He started borrowing. Not large amounts at first, just here and there, I’ll sort you back by the weekend. He never sorted me back. I kept lending because I kept believing him. Over time the amounts got bigger and the timelines got vaguer and I stopped seeing any of it come back. I think in the first three years alone I had given or lent him close to two million naira that simply disappeared.

Did you talk to him about it?

Many times. He always had an explanation. He was between jobs, a deal had fallen through, he just needed to get through this one rough patch. He was a convincing person, that was one of his gifts and eventually one of his weapons. He could explain anything in a way that made you feel like the unreasonable one for questioning it.

Did it ever escalate beyond borrowing?

Yes. One payday I came home and my card was not where I left it. I turned the whole apartment upside down. Eventually I checked my account and the money was gone. Nearly everything I had been paid that month, withdrawn in chunks from different ATMs across two days. I confronted him and he denied it, then admitted it, then cried, then promised. He said he owed people, that things had gotten out of hand, that he was going to fix it. He came back three days later with flowers and an elaborate apology and I, God help me, I stayed.

Why did you stay?

Because I remembered who he was before. Because I genuinely believed the person I had fallen in love with was still in there and the drugs had just covered him up. Because leaving felt like giving up on someone who was sick. I had read enough to know addiction is an illness and I kept applying that framework to justify staying inside something that was hurting me. Also, I will be honest, I was ashamed. My family knew him. Our friends knew us together. Starting over at that point felt enormous.

Did it happen again, the stealing?

Several times. He got better at it. Sometimes it was cash from my bag, small amounts, something you might think you miscounted. Once he took jewellery, gold pieces my mother had given me and he sold them. It broke my heart. When I found out he said he had been desperate, that he hadn’t known what else to do, that he was going to replace everything. He never replaced anything. 

There was a period where I started hiding money in places around the house, in books, in pockets, in a small envelope taped behind a drawer. I was living with someone I loved and I was hiding my own money from him in my own home. I didn’t let myself sit with how absurd that was until much later. Even when the gambling started.

Gambling?  

It came with the cocaine era and got worse when heroin entered the picture. He was trying to multiply money quickly to afford the habit and he thought he could gamble his way there. He could not. I found out about the gambling debts when people started calling his phone at strange hours, and then calling mine when he wouldn’t answer. Men I had never met, asking me where he was, telling me he owed them. I paid some of those debts because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn’t. Looking back I was also funding the problem by doing that but at the time it felt like protecting him.

What happened next? 

He started getting physical when I started trying to protect my money more seriously. Once I began refusing to hand over cash or lend when he asked, he would get frustrated and it would tip into anger. The first time he grabbed me I told myself it was the drugs, that he would never do that sober, that it wasn’t really him. 

The second time I told myself the same thing. By the fourth or fifth time I had run out of that excuse but I was so deep in by then and so tired that leaving felt harder than staying. He always came back afterwards with something, a letter once, handwritten, pages long, telling me all the ways he knew he had failed me and all the ways he was going to change. I kept those letters for a long time. I don’t know why.

How was all of this affecting your work and your businesses?

My 9 to 5 I managed to hold onto because I needed it, it was the one thing I kept a wall around. But the hair business I had started, it was doing genuinely well, I had supply chains, regular clients, things were building. The money I should have been reinvesting kept going elsewhere. Into him, into his debts, into replacing what he stole. I couldn’t grow it past a certain point because every time I got to that point something happened and I was set back. I eventually let it go quiet. The salon I tried to open a few years after that, I had saved carefully, I had a location, I was ready. He found the account. I still don’t know exactly how. By the time I was due to sign the lease the money was significantly short. I had to walk away from that one too. Those two things, what they would have been by now, I don’t let myself calculate it too often.

Was there ever a moment where you almost left before you finally did?

Many moments. I packed a bag once and went to my sister’s place and stayed for two weeks. He called every day. My family, who only knew part of the story, encouraged me to think carefully before making a permanent decision. He showed up at my sister’s door one evening looking so diminished, so genuinely broken, that I went back. I went back and things were better for maybe three months. Then they weren’t.

What finally ended it?

My younger sister. She had come to visit me for a weekend and he was in the house. I had run out of some things and stepped out briefly to get them. I came back and she was shaken. She didn’t tell me immediately what had happened, she just said she wanted to leave. Later she told me he had cornered her in the kitchen and asked her to lend him money, and when she said she didn’t have any on her he got aggressive with her. He didn’t touch her but he frightened her. My little sister came to visit me and she left frightened.

Something in me went completely still when she told me. Not angry, not sad, just still. Like a decision had already been made somewhere inside me before I had consciously made it. I called him and told him to come and get his things. He came with another apology. I listened to the whole thing and then I told him to take his things and go. He did.

How was the aftermath?

Harder than I expected and easier than I feared, at the same time. The first few months I kept reaching for my phone to call him because ten years is ten years. Habits don’t care about good decisions. I also had to properly look at what I had lost, financially, professionally, in terms of time and choices and doors that had closed while I was busy managing someone else’s crisis. The number, when I finally sat with it, was staggering. Not just money. Years.

Do you have regrets?

About staying as long as I did, yes. About loving him, no. I think I loved a real person, the person he was at the beginning was not a performance, he was genuinely that man. The drugs just ate him. My regret is that I kept trying to save someone who at a certain point had stopped wanting to be saved, and I paid for that with things I cannot get back.

Do you still keep in touch?

Not at all. It took me a long time to leave him so when I finally did, I cut all access. I even moved a few months later because he kept showing up at my door. He kept calling so I had to change my sim and even requested for a transfer to a different branch because he kept showing up at my office as well. It is very difficult to unravel 10 years of entanglement. But eventually I did. I do not seek him out. I know nothing about how he is. I genuinely don鈥檛 even know if he鈥檚 alive. It鈥檚 okay. It鈥檚 better like this. He鈥檚 done enough. 

What do you want someone reading this to take away?

That love is not enough on its own. It is necessary but it is not sufficient. You can love someone completely and still be completely wrong to stay. And the longer you stay trying to rescue someone from themselves, the more of yourself gets lost in the rescue. Get out before you have to rebuild from nothing. I got out with something left. Not everyone does.

*Names have been changed.

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. 

A few years ago, Naya*, 24, met someone online who felt like the friend she had always wanted. Same interests, same energy, easy to be around. By the time she realised something was very wrong, the friend had already worked her way into her family, her relationships, and her daily life. This is what she said.

Can you tell us about yourself?

I’m Naya*, I’m 24, based in Lagos. I’m a cosplayer, professional gamer, model, and voice actress. I do a lot of things. I’m someone who would rather avoid a problem than fight it, which is relevant to basically everything I’m about to say. So yes, I am an avoidant.聽

What made you want to talk about this now?

I haven’t really talked about it with people. I don’t usually do that. But it’s been sitting with me, and I think putting it somewhere makes it easier to process. Also, if someone else is in something similar and they read this, maybe it helps them clock it earlier than I did. Having a friend try to steal your life is really quite the experience. 

Interesting. How did this friendship start?

We met online a few years before we ever met in person. What drew me to her was that we had a lot of the same interests, cosplay, gaming, and she was unapologetically herself regardless of what anyone said about it. That was attractive to me. I respected it. When we eventually met in person, it felt natural. She fit in with my siblings easily, they thought she was cool, and she became part of the regular rotation pretty quickly.

What was the friendship like?

Like you had finally found that one friend everyone talks about wanting. Someone who gets your references, moves in the same spaces, genuinely feels like your person. As I said, she’s also a cosplayer and gamer, so there was a lot of overlap, and it felt like we were building something together in that world. She introduced me to things, opportunities and people. It was good for a while.

When did something start feeling off?

The first things I noticed were small. There was an entitlement that showed up early, like if I helped her with something once, she would just expect it going forward without asking. And she had this thing where she was clearly upset about something, but if you asked, she would say she wasn’t, then continue being upset. Passive-aggressive to the core. And she bragged. A lot. I noticed those things, but I just ignored them. They felt minor at the time. No reason to end a whole friendship.

When did they stop being minor?

Where do I start? Copying things, stealing my gift idea for my sister, and so much more. The main thing that had me so uncomfortable was when I tried to have some time to myself, she would flip. We had spent one morning doing what she wanted, and after, I said I needed some me time, and it became a whole situation. She didn’t shout or make a scene; it was more like withdrawing. She was suddenly so cold. There was no warmth at all. You could feel the tension without anyone saying a word. Some hours later, from nowhere, she started asking me to send pictures and videos of whatever I was doing. For some reason, I still do not understand; my alarm bells rang loud!

Hmm. Did she react the same way when you spent time with other people?

The same energy, yes. There was always an undertone of coldness. It was never too obvious or direct, but pointed enough that you felt it. Just enough to make you feel slightly guilty for existing outside of her.

That sounds like a lot to deal with. You mentioned she copied things as well. What did that look like?

It started with small things. Suddenly liking things I liked when I knew those things were not her at all. Saying the kinds of things I say. I didn’t clock it immediately, and even when I did, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. Then it became harder to ignore. She started buying the same outfits I did. Not similar, exact. Then the tattoos started.

The tattoos?

I have tattoos. She started getting the same ones. Which, fine, people get inspired. But hers were always done cheap and it showed. The lines weren’t clean. Some of them got infected. She kept going back for more anyway. My siblings started noticing and pointing it out before I said anything to them. This made me start going, ” Ha? So this really isn鈥檛 in my head?

Wow. How did your siblings react to her?

They were always polite. She thought they loved her. But after a while, they started quietly disappearing whenever she came over, avoiding certain spaces and keeping their distance. Part of it was her hygiene. She smells badly and seems completely unbothered by it or genuinely unaware. My siblings would try not to get too close and would avoid coming into my room when they had been in there. Nobody said it to her face. We just all knew.

What about the gift you mentioned?

I was buying something for my sister, a customised merch item for something she really loves. I had it in my cart, showed it to my friend because I was excited about it, and then something happened with the app: it went out of stock or dropped from my cart, so I had to wait. Some time later, she came to me and said she had seen the item I was going to get, bought it, and that it would now be her gift to my sister. Just like that. I had shown her my idea, and she took it and wrapped it in her name. And she said it like she was doing something kind.

What did you do?

I didn’t say much. That’s my default. I avoid but I took note of everything.

What else did she do that had you questioning the friendship?

She had a lot of people pursuing her, but she wasn’t honest about any of it. Which I cannot understand. She always presented herself as completely unbothered by everyone chasing her. Men, women, all of it. Constantly saying they were bugging her, she wanted nothing to do with them, God forbid. But these same people kept appearing in her stories. I’m watching her post little clips from places, and I’m recognising some of these houses. Her own sisters, whom I got close to separately, told me things they thought they didn’t know. That she had been seeing her step-cousin. That there were other men she was billing and fucking. She was lying about all of it while performing this whole narrative about being chased and unbothered. I think she had told everyone she was 25, too. She’s 21.

Why lie about being 25?

I genuinely don’t know. She’s 21. She told people she was 25. Maybe she thought it made her seem more credible, more established. I do not understand why.

Did the lying ever cross into something that directly affected you?

She made a move on my boyfriend.

Say more.

It was subtle enough that my boyfriend second-guessed himself at first and thought maybe he was imagining it. But it happened more than once, and eventually he told me. When I asked my friend about it, she did premium deflecting. Complete shock, how could I think that, you know how much I love you both.

How did that change things for you?

That was when I stopped being confused and started being deliberate. I had been slowly pulling back already, but after that, I stopped making myself available. Less response, longer gaps, vaguer answers. My version of ending something is to quietly disappear until there’s nothing left to disappear from.

Has she noticed?

She’s noticed. She keeps trying to pull me back in, reaching out, being warm, acting like everything is normal. She’s threatened to just show up at my house. More than once. I don’t know how serious that is, but the fact that she says it at all is its own kind of message. It doesn’t feel like a friendship trying to repair itself. It feels like a hunt.

Why do you think nobody around her saw this earlier or took it seriously?

Because she presents well at first. Sweet, fun, the kind of person you want to be around. And people have this idea of sisterhood and girlfriends as something soft and safe; nobody really talks about how hard it actually is to find a woman you can fully trust, or how much damage the wrong one can do. When it goes wrong, people minimise it. It’s just girl drama. It’s not that deep. But it can be very deep.

Looking back, what do you think she actually wanted from the friendship?

I’m still figuring that out. I think she wanted to be close to something she felt she wasn’t. Not necessarily to become me, she couldn’t, but to absorb enough of it that she felt more real, more interesting, more seen. The copying, the lying, the performance of a life she wasn’t living. It all points to someone who doesn’t fully know who she is and wants to borrow someone else’s shape while she figures it out. The problem is she borrowed without asking and didn’t know when to stop.

What would you say to someone who recognises their friendship in this story?

Trust the feeling. When something keeps sitting wrong, it’s sitting wrong for a reason.

*Names have been changed.

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. 

Nkem*, 24, grew up in a room and parlour in Bariga with eight children, a father who drank and fought and a mother who stayed and suffered. She thought she understood her family. Then, in January this year, she uncovered the truth about all 8 siblings’ parentage. Now she is in the best relationship of her life, with a man who keeps bringing up marriage, and she cannot bring herself to say yes. This is what she said.

Can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Nkem, I’m 24. I’m the lastborn of eight children. I grew up in Bariga and still live in Lagos. I work as a customer care rep and do some content creation on the side, as well as occasional hostess jobs when they come up. Whatever keeps things moving. 

My relationship with my parents is complicated, to say the least. I have a wonderful boyfriend who keeps talking about marriage, and I genuinely do not know what to do about that. My life on the outside looks fine. Normal even. But there is a lot underneath it that most people around me, including him, don’t know. That’s actually part of why I’m here.

Okay, let鈥檚 get into it. What was growing up like?

We grew up in a room and parlour in Bariga, eight of us plus my parents, in a space that had no business fitting that many people. When it rained, which in Lagos is not a small thing, there was nowhere to go; you just sat in the cold, sometimes, in the slight flood that would get into the house and waited it out. 

My earliest memories of my mum are of her being this light-skinned, full woman when I was very small. She was pretty, warm-looking and very full of life. At some point, that woman was just gone, and the person in her place was thinner, smaller, quieter, and sadder, like something had been slowly taken from her over the years. 

She would tell us it was our fault, that carrying us and living with my father had done that to her. And maybe that was true. But it was hard to hear as a child.

What was your father like?

On days he wasn’t working, he would leave the house and drink all day. Then come back to the compound, talking nonsense, damaging things, throwing our belongings outside, beating my mum, telling us to pack out. I used to pray just to stay sane. I used to dream about what a home felt like because I genuinely didn’t know what it felt like. I had never experienced one.

The whole neighbourhood knew our family. He would beat his wife and children and then go outside and misbehave in the streets and fall into gutters. That was just life. That was just Tuesday.

How did growing up like that affect you around other people?

I became a bully. Specifically to boys. My logic was simple: if I didn’t beat him first, something in my body assumed he would beat me. So I hit first, every time, unapologetically. It took me years to understand where that came from.

You mentioned eight children in that house. Walk me through who everyone was.

This is where it gets complicated, and I’m only now able to explain it properly because I didn’t truly understand it until January this year.

Growing up, I was told those seven other children were my siblings. I assumed some were cousins, and that was only because the way we related didn’t always feel like family. The older five had a different energy towards the younger three of us; there was a bullying that felt like more than just sibling nonsense, it felt like something else underneath it. Like resentment. Only one of the older five was genuinely kind to me. I loved her most.

I also noticed things. One of the girls was extremely fair. I am very dark, and at some point, I looked at my mum, who used to be light-skinned, and I thought, okay, maybe that explains it. I told myself we just came out in different colours. I genuinely believed we all had the same parents.

We didn’t.

So what is the actual family situation?

My mother had children with three different men.

Her first child, I’ll call her A, came from the first man she was with. She left that relationship because of domestic violence, sent A back to the village to live with that man, and moved to Lagos.

In Lagos, she met another man and had three children with him. When the last of those three was about two years old, my mother left. Just woke up one day, took her things, and left all three of them with their father. 

Then she met my dad. She told him she had four children, and he told her he had one child from a previous relationship that he still supported. They moved in together, already carrying five children between them who were not living with them. Then they had my brother, their first child together. When my brother was about two, my mother brought the youngest child from her second relationship to live with them. Then she had my immediate senior sister. Then she had me.

So in that room and parlour in Bariga were: A, who came back at some point, the child my mother brought from her second relationship, my dad’s child from his previous relationship, my brother, my sister, me, and the remaining children from the second relationship who came to join at different points. Eight children. Three different fathers. One very small space. And nobody sat any of us down to explain any of it.

That must have been tough. When did you find out?

It was. I found out in January this year. And even now, nobody has given me a straight explanation. My mother refuses to properly account for any of it. The children she had for other men look at us like we are enemies. I have been asking questions, only to get silence and deflection. It is one of the most disorienting things I have ever experienced, finding out that the life you understood was not the life that actually existed.

How did your mother explain it when you pushed?

She cried. That’s her answer to everything. I’ll call her crying on the phone, trying to talk to her about how we are struggling. Sometimes, we would go two weeks without drinking anything but water before we could see money for noodles, and instead of answers, she would cry and say that if she had gone to school, she would have given us a better life. That is her response. Emotional blackmail, so she doesn’t have to explain herself. Her own child asks her how we became what we are, and she cannot give a reason.

Where is your father in all of this now?

The minute I finished secondary school, he quit his job, said he wanted to relocate to the village, and go and eat the fruit of his labour. His plan was that one of us, the one he thought had sense, would go to university and train the rest of the siblings. That one got pregnant before 300 level, wanted to marry, my mother agreed, and that was the plan finished. My brother moved to another state, couldn’t finish university, and started doing whatever jobs he could find to survive. I moved in with my immediate senior sister.

My father is now in the village in a halfway-built house. He used all the money that was supposed to complete it to drink. He is now pressuring us to send money to finish building it so he can move in properly with his new wife.

His new wife?

Yes. After everything, after all of it, he went and married another woman. My mum, who is almost 60, is crying like a child over this man who is now with someone else but still beats her when he sees her, still calls to curse himself and God and whoever else in the middle of the night. And he still expects us to send money. He wants that house completed so he can move his new family in.

My brother and my sister are the ones keeping both our parents alive right now. A man with nothing to his name, being fed by the children he never properly took care of.

I became an aunt twice before I turned 25.

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How are you surviving through all of this?

I just am. Some days are better than others. I try to control what I can control and let go of what I can’t. I’ve had to accept that no one is coming to explain anything to me or take responsibility for any of it. What I know now is what I’ll have to build from.

I am also living with someone, so my most basic needs are taken care of.

Ooh? Tell us about them. 

Yes. Let’s call him Kolade*. We have been together about two years. He is Yoruba and very family-oriented. He is serious about the people he loves and shows it generously. He has a good relationship with his family, and when we are around them, I fall in line, greet properly, sit properly, and behave the way a woman is expected to behave in that setting. He doesn’t see anything wrong with that; it’s just how things are done as far as he’s concerned, and honestly, I have bigger things to worry about than that.

He is funny, though it takes some time to understand him. He will say something completely flat, and it takes you a second to realise he just made a joke. He pays attention, remembers things I mentioned once in passing, checks on me in ways I didn’t know I wanted or needed. He is also financially comfortable, has built something real for himself, and carries that without making it a whole personality.

He is a good man. That is the simplest way to say it.

Sounds like someone worth holding onto.

He is. That’s exactly the problem.

What do you mean?

He brought up marriage at our one-year mark. I laughed and changed the subject. He brought it up again a few months later, more casually, almost like a joke, but I know him well enough to know it wasn’t fully a joke. He’s been planting the conversation in little ways ever since. Recently, it’s started to feel less like a suggestion and more like something he’s actually moving towards. And I don’t know what to do with that.

Why not? You just described him as everything.

Because he doesn’t know. He knows surface things about my family, that it’s complicated, that I don’t talk about them much. He doesn’t know the actual shape of it. He doesn’t know about my father. He doesn’t know about my mother and her three men and the children she left behind and the children she brought together and the lie that all of us lived in. He doesn’t know that my parents are currently both being kept alive by my brother and sister, who are struggling themselves. He doesn’t know that the minute he becomes a more permanent fixture in my life, my family will find a way to make him a resource.

That last part especially. I have seen what my family does. I know how these things go. A comfortable man marrying their daughter or their sister is not just a wedding to them. It becomes access. It becomes requests. It becomes pressure. And Kolade has worked too hard for his life for me to be the door through which all of that walks in. 

Have you told him any of this?

I don’t know where to start. That’s the honest answer. Every time I think about sitting him down, I imagine his face while I explain the family tree alone, and I just close it. How do I begin? Do I start with my mother’s first man? Do I start with January, and what do I find out? Do I start with the fact that my father just married another woman while my mother cries herself to sleep? There is no clean entry point into this story.

What are you most afraid of?

Two things that contradict each other. I’m afraid he’ll stay, and my family will slowly drain the good things we have. And I’m afraid that once he knows everything, once he sees the full picture, he’ll decide it’s too much. That I’m too much. That what comes with me is more than he signed up for.

I find homes in the people I love. I always have, because I never had one growing up. Kolade is the most home I have ever felt. The thought of losing that because of people who couldn’t even be honest with me about who we were to each other, it makes me so angry that I don’t know what to do with it.

It鈥檚 why I lied to him and his family. I told them my parents are dead and that I have only three siblings. I needed the questions to stop, and that was the easiest way to stop them.

You told his family that your parents are dead? Why?

I did. Because the alternative was trying to explain something I didn’t even fully understand myself. And because once his family knows you come from something messy, they look at you differently. I have seen it happen. I didn’t want that.

And Kolade himself? You lied to him to?

Not in so many words, but he knows what I told his parents, and I believe he鈥檚 taken that as fact.

Don鈥檛 you think this lie will drive you further apart? What happens if he finds out? 

He can never. I don鈥檛 think the relationship will survive it, but I am not too worried. I live in a completely different world from my family now. I do not even visit them. I will speak to my brother and sister. The two directly above me, my full-blood siblings. We will make this lie work.

Kolade knows I don’t talk about my family. He has not pushed too hard. But marriage means his family becomes my family officially, and the lie has to hold forever, or it doesn’t hold at all. One visit, one phone call, one moment where something doesn’t add up, and the whole thing falls apart.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

Hmm. Do you want to marry him?

Yes. I think about it, and I want it. That’s what makes all of this so hard. It’s not that I don’t want the life he’s pointing at. It’s that I don’t know how to bring my life into it without breaking something.

So what are your next steps?

I wish I knew. For now, I need to solidify the lie with my immediate siblings and hold Kolade off a little longer. Maybe 

What would you tell someone else in your position?

You can only control what is yours. The dysfunction is not your fault, and it is not your identity, even when it feels like it is. And cutting off people who do nothing but curse you and take from you is not a betrayal of family. Sometimes it is the only way to actually build one.

What do you want for yourself, not for anyone else, just for you?

Peace. Just peace. 

What She Said: I Want My 18-Year-Old Daughter to Marry a Man I Used to Sleep With

*Names have been changed.

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. 

Adaora* is in her early 40s, married, and living abroad. She’s Igbo on her mum’s side and grew up in Enugu. She reached out to us with a story she is not ashamed of. In fact, she is proud of it. She is arranging a marriage between her 18-year-old daughter and a man she herself had a situationship with for five years, a man who is now in his early 60s. She believes she is doing the best thing any mother could do.

Can you tell us about yourself?

I’m in my early 40s. I grew up in Enugu. I’ll always say that first. I’m married, live abroad now, and have an 18-year-old daughter. I’ve had a full life, and I’ve learned a lot from it. That’s the short version.

What made you decide to tell this story? 

I have found my daughter a good husband. Not these small boys, her mates are chasing up and down. A real man who has already built his life and can take care of her properly without her having to worry about anything. And people are judging me for it. I just want to see what your community might think. Either way, I will do what is best for my own child. 

Okay. Tell us more. How did you find this husband?

I already knew him. We were close, many years ago. He’s someone I have a lot of history with, and I know his character very well. That’s actually why I thought of him. I know who he is. I know what he’s capable of. I know he will treat her well.

When you say close, what do you mean?

We had a thing for a few years, when I was in my early twenties. Nothing too serious because he was never the type to be serious with one person, and I knew that going in. He was a serial non-monogamist; I was never under any illusions about what it was. But we had a genuine connection, and he cared about me in his way. He’s not a bad man. He’s just not a one-woman man. Which is actually fine for what I have in mind because my daughter is young and full of life, and she will keep him interested.

How old is he?

He was in his early 40s when we were together. Now, he’s in his early sixties. 61 I believe. But age is just a number. He doesn’t look it, he doesn’t act it. He works out and is very fit. He’s well-travelled, well-kept, and very sharp. These are the things that matter.

And your daughter is 18.

She is 18, yes. She is an adult. Nobody can tell me otherwise. Under the law, she is a grown woman, and she can make her own decisions. I am just helping her make the right one before she wastes her best years on the wrong person.

Does she know about any of this?

Not yet. I will tell her in due time. I’ve already told her I’m looking for a suitable husband for her, so she knows that much. She trusts me. I know my daughter.

How did this idea come to you?

He reached out years ago, actually. My daughter was maybe 14, and I had posted a photo of her, and he sent me a message saying she was very beautiful and that he would marry her. I knew he was joking at the time, but it planted something in my head. I started thinking, actually, why not? Who better? I know this man. I know he likes them young. My daughter is young. I know he travels, he’s generous, and he has money that will never finish. What exactly is the problem? And as soon as she has a baby for him, she鈥檚 protected, loved and looked after, even when she will no longer be as young as he鈥檇 like, she will be financially provided for. I have seen him do it with others. 

Interesting. He likes them young. Doesn’t that concern you at all?

Why would it concern me? My daughter is not a child. She is 18. And yes, he prefers younger women, so what? Many men do. At least he is honest about who he is. I would rather give my daughter to a man I know than watch her end up with some 28-year-old who is broke and still finding himself. What will he give her? Love? Love does not pay school fees. Love does not fly you, business class. Love does not build you a house.

But you had a relationship with him yourself. Does that not make this strange?

That was in the past. It’s been over twenty years. I am married to someone else, and I have built my life. That chapter is closed. What I had with him has nothing to do with what I am arranging now. If anything, it makes me more qualified to make this decision because I know him better than any stranger would.

If he鈥檚 so good, why did you end things with him?

I was young. I didn鈥檛 know any better. I wanted a man that will want only me, which is why I never fully committed to him. Also, my husband came into my life. We met at a party. He was handsome and rich, and he did his best to make it clear he was serious. He was American and decided he wanted me to come back with him and get married. The offer of a green card meant more to me than anything else. I already had 2 other citizenships. Nigerian, and where my father was from, but none of these passports could compare to the American one. The safety of his money was a huge plus as well.

Hmm. When you approached him about your daughter, what did he say?

He reminded me of our history. I told him that was the past and it has no bearing on this conversation. I told him my daughter is a good girl. She has never been with anyone; she is a virgin, she is well-raised and well-mannered. She is exactly the kind of woman a man like him should settle down with. I told him he is not getting younger, and she is the best thing that could happen to him at this stage of his life. A young, beautiful, fresh woman who will give him energy and keep him young.

And he was receptive?

He is thinking about it. Which means yes.

What do you say to people who would hear this and say you are selling your daughter?

Nobody is being sold anywhere. This is me using my connections and experience to secure my daughter’s future. Every mother does this; they just do it quietly or badly. I am doing it well. I know this man. I know what he can offer. My daughter will never have to stress about money a day in her life. She will travel. She will be comfortable. She will be protected. What mother doesn’t want that?

But she doesn’t get a say.

She will get a say. When I present this to her, I will explain it properly. I will show her what this life looks like. My daughter is a smart girl. She will understand.

And if she says no?

She won’t say no once she understands the full picture. I know my daughter.

What if she falls in love with someone her own age?

With what? What will he give her? These boys her age are on Instagram looking fine, and that is all. They have nothing. I did not raise my daughter to suffer with a man who is still trying to figure out his life at 30. I went through my own journey. I made my own choices. I ended up okay, but it wasn’t easy. I don’t want it easy for my daughter. I want to be secure. There is a difference.

But you married well, according to your standards. Isn鈥檛 your daughter taken care of by you and your husband?

Yes, of course she is. But will I care for her for the rest of her life? I will get old. I will die. So will my husband. Yes, she has a trust fund, and she鈥檚 in our will, and she may never want for much, but she still needs her own man to love and care for her. That is the way it is. I turned out okay. She will too. 

Okay. You鈥檙e saying you ended up okay. You married someone else and moved abroad. Why couldn’t your daughter have that same path on her own terms?

I found my husband because I was already exposed, I already knew how to move, and I already understood men. My daughter doesn’t have that yet. She’s too naive. I am giving her a shortcut. I am giving her what took me years to find, in one arrangement. That is not harm. That is love.

Is there anything that would make you reconsider?

No. I have thought about this carefully. I am her mother. Nobody can tell me what is right for my own child. Nobody knows her the way I do. Nobody loves her the way I do. And nobody, I mean nobody, has the right to come and tell me what I should or shouldn’t do for my own daughter.

*Names have been changed.

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. 

Tumilola* (40) is a Lagos-born accounting officer and the firstborn of six. When her father’s alcoholism dismantled everything her childhood was built on, she became the person her family leaned on. She has been that person ever since. This is what she said.

Can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Tumilola, I’m 40. I鈥檓 from Osun state. I’ve been in Lagos since I was born, so Lagos is really all I know. I’m an accounting officer. These days I’m a pretty boring person, it’s just house to work and work to house. I attend church occasionally. That’s it, really.

I’m not passionate about many things anymore, if I’m being honest. Maybe at a point in my life I had interests, but right now I’m just dedicated to my work. I’m not a fun person. Sorry.

What made you decide to tell this story?

Nothing dramatic, honestly. I guess this is just a story I’m comfortable telling right now. It felt like time.

How would you describe the last few years of your life?

Chaotic. Kind of.

Take me back. What was your childhood like?

It was peaceful. I mean, I had a lot of siblings, and I was the first child, so there was the usual chaos that comes with that, but it was amazing all the same. My childhood was marked by playing games with my siblings and friends until I was tired. My dad was successful and very present in our lives. If I asked him for anything, I got it. None of us lacked. I never had to ask twice.

Then something started shifting. There wasn’t exactly one clear moment where everything changed. I just remember that one morning I was at our apartment, the one that accommodated everyone, and then the next morning we were at my grandfather’s house with our entire household. The house we usually only went to during holidays. It took me a while to understand what had happened. My mum was doing her best to shield us from the details, but eventually, in a one-bedroom space, nothing stays hidden for long.

What did you start to notice?

Alcohol bottles around the house. His words slurring. He barely made sense when he spoke. I didn’t really know what alcohol smelled like then, but I knew his breath always smelled horrible, and I didn’t like being close to him anymore. The father who used to spend evenings joking around with us was just gone, even when he was physically there. Somehow, all the money he seemed to have disappeared as well. 

Did the money go before you understood what was actually happening?

Yes, the money I noticed first. Whenever we asked my mum for anything, she would shout at us, which was so unusual. Then my siblings and I started sharing a school allowance for the first time. This had never happened before. Then I started putting everything together: the bottles, the breath,  how he was barely present, the way he used to be. I had memories of spending evenings joking around with my dad, and then suddenly none of that. He was just gone, even when he was physically there.

And my mum changed too. She went from being this sweet, easygoing woman to someone who snapped at everything. As children, we didn’t understand why. We just knew she wasn’t who she used to be.

What did moving into your grandfather’s place actually feel like?

It was very suffocating. I went from sharing a room with just my two sisters to sharing a living room floor with all my siblings because the only bedroom went to my parents. Six of us in a space that wasn’t even technically ours, it was my grandfather’s living room. I kept telling myself we were just on a long holiday. A year passed, and we were still there, and I had to accept that this was just our life now.

What did accepting it look like?

Gritting my teeth through the most uncomfortable parts of being poor, when we never were. It was a very big adjustment. Years later, after I turned 18, I realised I had to do something about it. My mum had to step up twice over because my dad had stopped being a provider entirely. Any money that came into his hands went to alcohol. He was always at the beer parlour or buying those sachet alcohols. So she was out from morning to night trying to keep us alive, and I was the oldest, so.

What did that look like day to day?

Wake up. Go to whatever work I’d managed to find. Spend the whole day there. Come home. Drop the money into my mum’s hands. Go to sleep. Then do it again.

And while you were doing that, what was happening to your siblings?

Everyone was affected differently by my father鈥檚 alcoholism and my parents’ neglect. My first sister gravitated to any man who promised to provide for her because there was no love or stability at home. Her elder sister, me, was busy helping my mum hold things together; my father couldn’t be relied on, and here was a man saying all the right things. Of course, she followed him even with glaring red flags. She was a mother before she turned 20.

My other sister started moving with friends I didn’t approve of, people who were too close to drugs and alcohol. I couldn’t really say anything. She was finding her own escape.

One of my brothers became close with street boys. Another one tried to hide the fact that he was drinking, but you can’t hide alcohol breath from people who spent their whole childhood smelling the same thing from their father. And the last one became a baby daddy with zero money to his name.

I became an aunt twice before I turned 25.

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I鈥檓 sorry. When you found out about your brother drinking, what did that feel like?

It felt like failure. I knew it wasn’t my job to raise my siblings. I knew that. But I still felt like I had failed.

Was there any pressure on your brothers to help carry any of this, the way there was on you?

None. My immediate younger sibling is a boy, and there was zero pressure on him to help the family or show up in any particular way. He was allowed to be reckless. I was not. I had to help my mum. I resent my parents and that brother a lot for that. A lot.

You were holding everything together, and no one was holding you. Who showed up for you during any of this?

No one, really. No one ever shows up for the firstborn daughter. I didn’t have a support system. That’s just how it was. It shaped me into someone who has a very hard time asking for help. I just don’t know how to do it anymore.

What did all of this cost you personally?

My love life. I’m a lover girl at heart, genuinely. But with the life I was living, I couldn’t afford to actually be with anyone. How do you explain to someone that your entire life revolves around your family because none of them are making enough effort to help themselves? It’s not something most people want to sit with.

Did you ever come close to choosing differently?

My second boyfriend, the last person I was ever with, asked if we could relocate to another state together. I said no. I needed to stay close to my family. He was the last relationship I had.

How do you feel about that now?

I just feel resentment. A lot of it. There were times I thought about killing myself, I can’t lie. It got that heavy sometimes.

What kept you going?

The song that comes to mind right now is, 鈥淚f you ask me, na who I go ask?鈥� I just kept going. I don’t have a straight answer for that.

If you鈥檇 like to be my next subject on #WhatSheSaid,  

What is your relationship with your father like today?

He’s basically useless at this point. The father I knew as a child stopped existing a long time ago. What’s there now is just this person, everyone in the neighbourhood knows as the drunk. Any money that comes to him goes to alcohol. We’ve all had to come to terms with that.

Did you ever feel like you were parenting your parents?

My mum, no. I didn’t feel like I was parenting her. But my dad, yes. Being an alcoholic turned him into a child. Everyone had to clean up his vomit, watch over him, and manage him. So yes. I was parenting my father.

What is your relationship with him like today?

I mean, he’s basically useless at this point. The father I knew as a child stopped existing a long time ago. What’s there now is just this person, everyone in the neighbourhood knows as the alcoholic. We’ve all had to come to terms with that.

Do you think your family ever truly recovered?

No. How do you recover from decades of this? I’m honestly surprised I still talk to my siblings at all. None of us turned out particularly okay. That’s just the truth of it.

What do people misunderstand about children who grow up in homes like yours?

They think we had a choice in who we became. That we could have just decided to be fine. It is not as simple as that. 

How did it shape you?

It made me someone who has a very hard time asking for help. That’s the main thing. I just don’t know how to do it. I’ve been doing everything alone for so long that needing someone feels foreign.

What does healing look like for you right now?

A coworker mentioned that therapy helped him through a dark period, and I started going. I’ve also opened a dating app. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I’m trying. That’s new for me, trying.

If you could sit with the version of yourself in that one-bedroom apartment at your grandfather’s house, what would you say to her?

I’m so sorry. You do not deserve the hand you were dealt. 

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*Names have been changed.