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 Adaeze*, a 35-year-old events planner who splits her time between the UK and Nigeria. She grew up with two younger brothers and a girl she considered her sister for almost 20 years. Today, that woman is engaged to her father.

Can you tell me about yourself?

My name is Adaeze. I am 35. I plan events for a living, mostly in the UK, but I also work across Nigeria and West Africa. Port Harcourt is where I am from, but the UK is where I live now and have lived for most of my adult life.

I studied International Business at university. When I graduated, I went straight into my master’s, and after that, I worked in business consulting for a couple of years. Eventually, I realised I was very good at organising people, spaces, and experiences, and that I enjoyed it more than everything else I did, even finance and the payoff. So I transitioned into events. I built my clientele slowly, mostly word of mouth at first, then corporate clients, then weddings, then larger productions. Now I do both. 

I have two younger brothers, twins. I lost my mother when I was 11, and they were 4. In many ways, I became their mother before I was ever an adult.

What was life like after you lost her?

My father was a different man when my mother was alive. He was kinder and more present. After she died, he became someone we had to learn all over again, and what we learned was not easy. He grew hard. He was emotionally unavailable, and it hurt. Sometimes he would get physical when he dealt with us, especially when he was frustrated or angry. He was not a monster, but he was not the same man. Grief does strange things to people, and I was 11 and trying to understand it while also trying to make sure my four-year-old brothers were fed and okay.

We moved a few times after she died. He was restless, like someone who could not outrun what was inside them. Eventually, we settled in one of his apartment blocks. He is in real estate and has other business interests. That is where we stayed, and that is where I met her.

Met who?

Someone I have called my friend for many years. Let鈥檚 call her Erica*. I was turning 13. My father and some family friends had invited the neighbours for my birthday, and she was there.  She was two years younger than me, so she was 11, and she lived with her parents.

From there, things moved the way friendships between children move. We started spending time together outside, visiting each other, and playing. Before long, we were inseparable. We did not go to the same school because her family did not have the same kind of money my father had, but that did not matter to either of us. I had no sister. She had no sister. We became each other’s borrowed one. Eventually, my father started including her whenever he was taking us somewhere. Her mother sometimes began looking after my brothers, too. She became my actual sister. 

How did things progress?

When I was 15, she lost her father. I was there for her through that grief, completely and without question. During that period, I noticed her mother speaking to my father frequently. Long conversations on the phone, long conversations when they saw each other. I thought nothing of it. Her mother was a widow now, and my father had resources and influence. He was helping her navigate things. That made sense to me.

Then, within a few months, my father transferred Erica to my school. I was thrilled. My best friend would now be at the same school as me, even if we were not in the same class. She started staying at ours more and more until eventually she was practically living with us. She would sometimes go home to her mother, but our house was as much hers as it was ours. My father put her on an allowance. He bought her things. He made sure she had what she needed. At the time, I thought it was an act of generosity. I thought it was him doing what good people do for children who need looking after.

What was she like as a person?

Erica was warm when she wanted to be. She could be very funny and very magnetic. But as she got older, she  always gravitated towards men with money, even when those men were clearly dangerous or unkind to her. Yahoo boys, men who already had wives or girlfriends, men who left marks on her in different ways. It never ended well. I was always there when it ended. She had three abortions during the years of our friendship, and I was present for every single one. It happened during her late teens and our early to mid twenties. I did not judge her, I was just there because that is what sisters do.

My father continued to support her financially well into adulthood. Beyond the allowance from when we were teenagers, he bought her a car and put it in her name. She wanted for nothing from him, and yet she was always chasing more from places that hurt her. I used to worry about her constantly. Especially the first time I had to leave Nigeria for university in the UK.

When did you leave Nigeria?

At 18, after I got my admission. I went, I called home regularly, I FaceTimed my brothers, my father, and her. My father continued taking care of me financially throughout university. In my third year, he came to the UK on holiday with all of them, including Erica and her mother. He paid for everything. Flights, accommodation, activities. They were family, so at this point, it was lowkey expected.

We stayed close through all of it. Her messy relationships, my university stress, her eventually getting into a private university in Nigeria, me finishing my degree and going straight into my master’s. Years passed. By 26, I was done with all of it. I was established, employed, and building. Then I went back to Nigeria for my NYSC.

You came back for NYSC?

My father asked me to. He wanted me to do my service year in Nigeria, and honestly, a part of me wanted to come back anyway. So I did.

And that was the first time I noticed something had shifted with Erica. She was cold towards me, like she had never been before. Also sharp and guarded. It was like I had done something, and she was still deciding whether to forgive me and had not told me what it was.

Looking back now, I can see exactly what it was. But at 26, coming home after years away, I just saw my best friend acting strangely, and I did not know why.

What was she doing exactly?

Small things that accumulated. She would borrow my car and return it with an empty tank, never refilling it. It sounds minor, but the casualness of it and how frequent it was bothered me. She would tell my father things out of context, things I had shared with her in confidence, and he would bring them up in ways that put me on the defensive with him. There was one evening when I invited her to dinner with a group of her friends and co-workers, mostly men, clearly wealthy, and she spent the whole night performing for the table to get attention and in a way that made me look small. From cutting remarks to laughter at my expense. It was nothing you could easily confront, but all of it was deliberate. I was humiliated and sad because I could see who she was becoming with these people, and it worried me.

I pulled her aside afterwards and told her what I observed. She cried. She said she had missed me so deeply while I was away, and when I came back, she felt a distance between us she did not know how to close, and it surfaced as ugliness. She was jealous, she said. Insecure about where she stood in my life now that I had built a whole world that did not include her. She said it would never happen again.

I believed her. She was my sister. You believe your sister.

Did things improve?

On the surface, but I started noticing other things.  My father was different when she was around. His laughter came more easily. His eyes were brighter. He was physically warmer with her in small ways, a hand on her shoulder, leaning in when she spoke, giving her his full attention in a way he did not give to much else. I noticed all of it, and I told myself a story about it that made sense to me. She had been in our lives since she was 11. He was fond of her. Of course he was. He had practically helped raise her. That is what I told myself.

After NYSC, I went back to the UK.

The year after, my brothers started university in the UK and came to join me. Everything was moving forward. I met the man I would eventually marry after three years of building something. We all went to Nigeria for the introduction and the traditional wedding. Both families had weeks of celebration, a full and joyful time.

Erica was my maid of honour.

She was present. She performed the duties. She was cordial when she needed to be, but she was distant. I kept noticing. I caught her looking at me throughout that week with this expression I could not read, heavy and complicated, and every time I asked her directly if she was okay, she would say yes, congratulate me, and change the subject.

What She Said: I Gave Up My Engineering Career and Re-Entered Pageantry at 30

What happened at the white wedding?

We flew back to the UK and had the white wedding a few weeks later. She did not smile once. Not when I walked in, not during the vows, not during the reception. She did not clap, did not get up to dance, did not celebrate me. She sat with this expression on her face, as if she were attending to something painful, and at some point she stopped being present altogether. Just slipped away from her duties and left me to manage without her.

If it were not for my brothers, my closest friends, my sister-in-law, and a college friend who had been with me through years in the UK, I would have been completely adrift on my own wedding day. That friend stepped into the maid of honour role without being asked and held everything together. She is one of the most important people in my life to this day.

What I felt watching my sister sit cold and absent at my wedding is not something I have fully found words for. I had done nothing to her. I had given her everything I had. And she could not even pretend to be happy for me for one day.

She never explained and never apologised. She and the people who had travelled with her left a few days later, and that was effectively the end of our direct contact.

How long did the silence last?

Almost two years. I tried for the first several months. From messages to calls, checking in through mutual people. Nothing. Eventually, I stopped reaching. My brothers were furious with her and had been trying to tell me things for years, things they had noticed when I was away at university, behaviours and moments between her and my father that had made them deeply uncomfortable. I had not listened. 

When did you finally understand?

My father came to visit, and he brought her with him. After two years of silence, she appeared at my front door with my father. She was carrying a baby.

I stood in my kitchen watching my father with that child. Watching how he held her, the way he looked at her, the way he spoke to her. And she was watching me watch him. And she smiled.

Everything that I had refused to understand for years arrived all at once. Every warm look and bright eye I had noticed and explained away. Every cold shoulder and heavy stare at my wedding. Every strange shift in behaviour from the moment I came home for NYSC. Everything my brothers had tried to tell me. It all became one clear and terrible picture in the space of a moment.

I didn鈥檛 know when I charged, grabbing her by the neck.

I remember the shouting and people trying to pull me off her, and my own voice somewhere in the noise and everything we had ever been to each other flashing through me. Every birthday, every abortion I had held her through, every secret she had kept of mine, every secret she had kept from me. And she was laughing through all of it. While I was losing my mind, she was just laughing.

I let her go and turned to my father.

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

What did you say to him?

I told him to take her and find a hotel for the rest of their stay. I told him her name was never to be spoken in my home again. I asked him directly and clearly whether he had been doing this while she was a child. While she was living in his house. While she was my underage friend whom he had clothed, schooled and fed. A girl younger than his own eldest child.

He told me my mother would want him to be happy and that it was natural for a man to move on. That a younger wife of childbearing age was not something I should be surprised by.

I reminded him of my mother’s family’s contribution to his business in the early years. The seed money, the existing agreements, the documents with names on them. I reminded him that my brothers exist and that I know how inheritance disputes work, and if he plans to use this woman to disinherit them, he does not know who he is dealing with. I told him that very clearly.

Then I asked him to leave my house.

What happened after that?

He left. We have not spoken directly in three years.

The engagement announcement came through family gossip. Someone mentioned it on a call without realising I did not know. My father is engaged to a woman who was 11 years old when she came to my birthday party. A woman I called my sister for twenty years. A woman whose abortions I sat through and whose heartbreaks I carried and whose silence at my wedding I spent two years trying to understand.

I have said what I needed to say to my father. I have said what I needed to say to myself. I have nothing to say to her.

Has she reached out? 

She has been sending messages to my husband. We don鈥檛 know how she got his number. He shows me everything. I do not know what she is looking for. Acknowledgement, maybe. A reaction. Some sign that she still has access to something that belongs to me. I think she has always defined herself by what other people have and what she can find her way into. I genuinely do not know how to explain a person like that.

What I do know is that I am almost due with my first child. I have waited years for this pregnancy, and it is here, and it is mine, and it is good. I have a husband who shows his love fiercely. I have brothers who have been my backbone and my truth-tellers through all of it. I have a business I built with my own hands that takes me across countries and gives me a life I love.

I am choosing to protect what I am building. And I am choosing to let what needs to fall, fall without my help.

What do you want women reading this to take away?

Boundaries matter. Even with people who feel like they are bone of your bone. Especially with them.

I do not regret the love I gave her. I regret nothing I offered. But I want women to understand that the depth of your love for someone is not a guarantee of who they are or what they are capable of. I thought I knew her better than I had ever known anyone. I was wrong about the most important thing.

Know who has access to your life. Know what you share and with whom. And when people you love show you something that does not sit right, even something small, please do not do what I did and build a story around it that protects them instead of you.

I had to lose a sister, a father and twenty years of a version of my family to learn that lesson. I hope whoever needs it can learn it for less.

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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. 

The subject of today’s #WhatSheSaid is Zima*, a 27-year-old mother of two based in Kaduna, Nigeria. She talks about years of proving herself at a non-profit that advocated for women’s rights, the subtle ways her workplace began to sideline her the moment she got married, and what happened when she got pregnant.

Can you tell me about yourself?

My name is Zima. I’m a 27-year-old mom of two children living in Kaduna, Nigeria. I’m a Northern woman, and I grew up here, so this is mostly the world I’ve known. Growing up, there were a lot of expectations around what a girl should be, especially when it came to marriage and family. But I’m grateful that my parents never made education a battle for me. They valued it, and that gave me the freedom to pursue my own career. 

Before I got pregnant, I was a full-time advocacy officer at a non-profit organisation that worked to advance women’s rights. I had spent years building my career there, proving myself and doing work I genuinely believed in. Then I got pregnant, was sent on maternity leave, and was fired shortly after. 

There has always been a gender bias attached to my work because I’m a woman working in the North. When I’m working late into the night, my male colleagues will always say, ” You should go home. Let this guy take over and finish up the task. Just go home.鈥�

There’s this mindset that we are not equal. You hear words like, as a female, you’re not supposed to get involved. It’s a man who’s supposed to get involved. I’ve heard that several times at work.  When we go for community engagement, only the guys are allowed to greet the village heads. We can’t. Which is ironic considering my line of work.

What was it like navigating that environment every single day?

Exhausting. Because you have to constantly prove that you belong there. You’re doing the same work, sometimes more work, but there’s always this invisible ceiling reminding you that some people in the room don’t fully believe you should be there.

I remember moments where I would complete a task, and the feedback would go to a male colleague. Or I would make a suggestion in a meeting, and it would be ignored, and then a man would say the same thing five minutes later, and everyone would nod. You learn to keep going anyway because you believe in what you’re doing. But it wears on you over time.

Did you ever try leaving?

I did not because I believed in the work. I was academically the most qualified person for that role, and I genuinely cared about the impact we were making on women’s lives. I thought if I kept showing up and performing, the bias would eventually matter less. I was wrong. It got worse when I got married. 

What was the biggest thing that changed the moment you got married?

I never realised that my marital or motherhood status could change my life so dramatically. It started with my colleagues giving me a little more respect than before, which sounds positive, but wasn’t.

It’s just something I noticed over time. No one addressed me by my name anymore. I saw a shift from Zima to Mrs Ahmad, and I wasn’t cool with that, especially since that respect wasn’t given to my other female colleagues who weren’t married.

Then they started making comments like, Zima, you can’t go on this work trip because of your husband. And I have never given them any reason to think I need my husband’s permission to travel.

How did that show up practically in your work?

Sometimes, if I worked hard on a proposal and it was time to present it to partners who had requested it, another person was selected to do it because Zima is married. There was a time I worked hard on a proposal for three weeks. They found a single female colleague to present it, and nobody asked me whether I was comfortable with it.

Then I got pregnant, and somehow, things worsened.

How so?

There was a younger lady who was employed, but I had no idea she had been brought in to replace me. Thankfully, she was honest enough to let me know that was the plan.

At the time, I was working on a grant application for the organisation. A lot of work had gone into it, and the whole time, I had no idea that there were plans to replace me. It was so bad that even after the grant was successfully secured, nobody told me anything. I only discovered it by accident. Eventually, they notified me that they wanted me to hand over all the information about the grant and the project it was supposed to sponsor to the other lady.

All the months of work I put into securing thousands of dollars were dismissed and casually handed off to someone else.

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What did that feel like, watching your work handed over like that?

It broke something in me, honestly. I could sense that they had lost confidence in my ability to lead, which is crazy because I had spent years proving myself. I was still the same person. I was just pregnant.

I loved that job. I loved the impact I was making. When funding started to dry up because of Trump’s restrictions, I even offered to work without pay because I cared that much. They never responded to that offer.

When did things officially unravel?

A few months later, I received an email from HR mandating that I go on maternity leave, and someone else relieved me of my duties. It was unpaid maternity leave because they said the organisation didn’t have money to cover the cost. In their words, they wanted to give me enough time to prepare for delivery. They said they wouldn’t want a staff member who is pregnant to be subjected to stress.

I said, 鈥淥kay, no problem.鈥� Then I received another email from HR telling me I needed to have a one-on-one with her to address my expectations. At the meeting, I was asked to submit my laptop and my ID card. I did, and stopped going to the office.

Nigerian law grants women a minimum of 12 weeks’ maternity leave. During these 12 weeks, the minimum pay they are to is 50% of their salary.

What happened next?

Surprisingly, I received an email from my work email, which was still functional, telling me I needed to work on the final reports for some projects they had given to someone else to take over. My friends asked me not to, but I worked on it anyway because I cared. Because I still felt responsible for what I had built.

During the process, I realised that they had more money for those projects than they had initially claimed. According to them, I didn’t need to know about the financial stuff. I had even used my personal funds to execute some parts of those projects. It was during the final closeout meeting with the donors that I realised how much they had hoarded. I tuned in for the phase-out delivery for those projects and went back on leave.

What happened after your maternity leave ended?

On December 31, HR reached out to me informally via WhatsApp, saying she had forgotten to tell me I would no longer be recognised as company staff.

So I went into the new year knowing that I was officially unemployed. They never even informed my colleagues that I had left the company. For months, all of them believed I was still on maternity leave. One of them still reached out recently to ask when I am resuming. According to her, HR has been saying that whenever they have a new project, they will call me back.

A WhatsApp message on December 31st! How did you receive that?

I remember the first time I saw that message, I cried. I didn’t want anyone to know. I walked into the restroom, called my husband, and I just broke down into tears.

It broke me down. Losing your source of income when you’re about to give birth isn’t something you can prepare yourself for. No one checked in. I was treated like I didn’t matter at all.

What has life looked like since then?

It has been an adjustment. You go from having a career you built over years, a title, a salary, a daily sense of purpose, to suddenly being at home with nothing confirmed about your future. And you’re also a new mother, which is its own enormous thing to navigate. The two things together are very heavy.

What made it harder was that I had given so much of myself to that place. Not just professionally but emotionally. I believed in what we were supposed to be doing for women in this country. So the loss wasn’t just financial. It was the loss of something I had genuinely cared about building.

It鈥檚 more painful to know that this was an organisation that advocated for women’s rights.

That is what stings the most. This is an organisation that swears it is fighting for gender equality, yet enforces unpaid leave on a pregnant woman. I was leading campaigns on breastfeeding, yet they had no private area for workers to breastfeed their babies. If you’re expecting women to resume work three months after birth, you are supposed to create an environment where they can easily breastfeed.

They created spaces for prayer inside the office, but a private space for breastfeeding is where they drew the line. During meetings, you’d hear them say things like, 鈥淲e don’t discriminate. In this place, we don’t give any form of tribal or religious sentiments. We are all one鈥�.

But you’re saying those things, and what I’m seeing is not what is happening. This company had only one woman in leadership. We cannot advocate for a better Nigeria while workplace issues like this remain acceptable.

Experts have reforms to Nigeria’s parental laws to guarantee 16 weeks of fully paid maternity leave and at least 14 days of paid paternity leave, reflecting the modern demands of the corporate world.

What do you want women to take away from your story?

I think I accepted a terrible form of discrimination that no woman should ever have to deal with or accept. Pregnancy should not be treated like a character or professional flaw. I left that place feeling so defeated and powerless, but I think there is more that can be done instead of just accepting nonsense.

I hope more women choose to fight for the benefits they deserve.

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

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鈥檚 #WhatSheSaid is Boma Dokubo, a 30-year-old creative strategist, model, founder, and advocate from Bayelsa State. Miss Grand Nigeria 2023 and now representing Oyo State at Miss Universe Nigeria 2026, Boma talks about being drugged by someone she considered a friend, rebuilding her career, starting her own agency, and everything life did to her in the three years between her two crowns.

Tell me about yourself. Where are you from, and where did you grow up?

My full name is Boma Dokubo, and I am 30, which I still can’t believe I’m saying out loud. I’m from Bayelsa State. I was born in Lagos but moved back to Bayelsa when I was about six, so that is really where I grew up. At 12, I moved to Rivers State and spent a few years living with my oldest sister, then moved back to Bayelsa. I went to university in Edo State, and immediately after university, I moved to Lagos. So different parts of Nigeria have shaped very different versions of me.

I was actually quite a popular child, which is funny because I don’t think I admit that to myself enough. I’m the sixth of seven children, but people in church, around our compound and in the community would call my parents Mama Boma and Papa Boma. I wasn’t the loudest child, but I was the child who did everything. I won prizes at birthday parties because I could dance. I was put into the adult choir when I was about 10. I started playing keyboard around that age and picked up guitar a few years later. I was in every church programme, every dance recital, every cultural performance.

Then, around 12, something shifted. I became much more inward. I started experiencing what I now understand was probably my own share of depression and insecurity. I remember being extremely uncomfortable with my body changing. That was also when writing really began for me. I started to journal literally everything I was thinking. At the same time, I had a complete turnaround academically. From around JSS2 until I finished secondary school, I don’t think I ever came second in class.

Faith was also a very big part of my childhood. I grew up in a very conservative church environment. I was the girl in the longest skirt. I didn’t wear trousers, earrings or makeup. Even though I had always been interested in fashion and beauty, I didn’t really get to explore them until university. Music, dance, writing, academics and faith probably defined me most. But there was also this very creative part of me that took much longer to have permission to come out.

With all your intellectual and creative skills, what career did you think you would pursue?

I honestly never had one straightforward answer. At one point, I decided banking was it, then accounting, partly because every time I walked into a bank, everyone looked so smart and successful. But at the same time, more than anything, I was Boma the musician. I was singing, writing, making covers, and starting to see that art could become something more than a hobby. I also somehow stumbled into baking and turned it into a really successful little business that helped me financially through my final year at university.

The engineering I studied was much more my parents’ choice than mine. Their argument made sense: I’m from Bayelsa State; I was good at maths and physics; petroleum engineering was a professional course; and oil and gas were lucrative. And ultimately, they were paying my school fees, so I thought, fair enough, let’s do it. Pageantry was absolutely never part of the plan.

How did pageantry come into your life?

My older sister had done pageantry, Miss Nigeria, but I was quite young and mostly just remembered seeing pictures. I never imagined it for myself. Growing up with four sisters, I genuinely thought I was the least attractive girl in my house. My sisters had what society would probably describe as softer, more feminine features. I had much stronger features and strong cheekbones. Beauty felt like something that belonged to my sisters.

I had already been modelling for a few years before pageantry even came up. I met another model who was also a pageant girl, and she casually suggested I should consider competing. My immediate response was basically, definitely not me.

Then, I had just left my corporate engineering job. I was exhausted and depressed, and trying to figure out what came next. A few days after that conversation, I thought, What exactly do I have to lose? And that was genuinely how pageantry entered my life.

Can you tell us more about your early experience in pageantry?

The first pageant I had originally applied for was Miss Universe Nigeria. But while preparing, I started to realise through conversations with my coach and chaperone that I probably wasn’t financially or emotionally prepared for that competition at the time. Then the opportunity came for me to represent Nigeria at Miss Grand International instead. Which sounds reasonable until you remember that I had never done a pageant before.

I was literally learning how to walk in six-inch pageant heels, how to catwalk, how to move in an evening gown, how to walk in a bikini, and how to present myself as a queen. And then suddenly, I was preparing to fly across the world and compete against more than seventy women. I had barely a month. It was one of the most ridiculous decisions I had ever made, but once I said yes, I knew I was going to give it everything I had.

I finished in the Top 20, won Best National Costume and placed highly in the Grand Voice competition. Those things meant so much to me because they became evidence that I could walk into something completely unfamiliar, feel terribly unprepared and still rise to the occasion.

What was life like behind that first crown that people didn’t get to see?

Behind that first crown, there was a woman trying very hard to prove that her life wasn’t falling apart.

I had just left a job that looked perfect on paper because I was deeply unhappy there. My family didn’t even know at first. I had spent years hearing that I was too emotional, that I took things too deeply, and I had genuinely tried to become less like that. I tried to stay in jobs I wasn’t passionate about. I tried to exist in environments that did not fill my spirit because that seemed like the sensible thing to do.

But I’m an artist. I feel things deeply. I think deeply. And eventually, I had to accept that constantly fighting that part of myself was making me miserable. So when pageantry came, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to succeed at something after making this terrifying decision to leave the life everyone expected me to live. People saw the crown. They saw the looks, the preparation, the international stage, the achievements. But underneath it, there was a woman trying to rebuild her confidence in her own choices.

At the time, I think I was trying to prove a point to the world. The biggest difference now is that I think I’m trying to prove one thing to myself.

Why did you return?

For a while after Miss Grand, I genuinely thought I was done with pageantry. It was incredible, but it was also hard. But over the years, after everything else life brought, loss, grief, drastic career transitions, healing and rebuilding, I started to miss what pageantry represented to me. There is something about pageantry that gives women permission to shine very loudly. You can shine in fashion, in how you speak, in your career, in advocacy, in creativity, in the way you represent where you come from. It creates this very interesting space where womanhood itself is allowed to take up room.

And then, when I actually began seriously considering Miss Universe, that familiar voice came back. Who do you think you are? You’re not prepared enough. Life has happened to you. You’re too broken. You don’t have what you need. Suddenly, I realised that the message I keep trying to put into the world, that you get to decide whether your circumstances have the final word on your life, was a message I needed to live myself again.

So this time I’m proving a different point. Not to the world but to myself. What has happened to me does not get to define me. I can be afraid and still move. I can feel unprepared and still show up. And I am allowed to begin again.

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Very inspirational. It鈥檚 not always easy to come back. Can you walk us through the three years between these two pageants?

I鈥檇 like to start with the traumatic experience that actually happened three years before Miss Grand Nigeria, in August 2020.

I was drugged by someone I considered a friend at the time, someone I had met through the industry. I was drugged without my knowledge or consent, and the effects were extremely severe. I experienced hallucinations, lost consciousness and became very unwell afterwards. For a period of time, I struggled to function normally and had to receive psychiatric care. Recovery took a long time and affected both my mental and physical health. That period after the abuse was when I got some of my project management certifications. It was when I pushed myself into getting a job at a multinational engineering company. I was very quietly rebuilding my life after what had been the most devastating period of it.

It wasn’t until Miss Grand that I was encouraged by my chaperone to speak publicly about the abuse. My family also had concerns about me becoming, for lack of a better expression, the poster girl for abuse. They wanted me to approach the conversation gently, and I understood that. I also didn’t want everything I had rebuilt afterwards to disappear behind this identity of being a victim. So I spoke about it in subtle ways. I spoke about getting from the girl who genuinely did not know if she would make it through another day to becoming this woman who could stand on an international stage representing her country.

And then life did what life does.

The three years after that have been a lot. There has been loss, grief, depression, drastic career transitions, questioning around faith, building my own agency, becoming a creative strategist, returning to writing after not writing for a very long time, building two publications, new relationships and the reevaluation of old ones. I got into long-distance running, which completely changed the way I thought about discipline. And then there was turning 30.

So these three years have held extreme pain, loss, grief and sadness, but they have also held an extraordinary amount of growth, lot of healing, a lot of self-reflection, learning to love myself, learning to appreciate myself and learning to have the courage to build the things that actually matter to me.

What did healing actually look like for you?

Healing has never looked particularly beautiful to me. And I don’t think it has been linear either. There wasn’t a morning when I woke up and thought, okay, I’m healed now. For me, it has looked like telling myself the truth. It has looked like a doctor’s appointment. It looked like rebuilding a career when I didn’t feel particularly confident about anything. It has looked like learning to trust again, forgiving myself and others.

Sometimes healing has been prayer. Sometimes it has been journaling. Sometimes it has been running. Sometimes it has been sleeping. Sometimes it’s been walking away from a relationship. Sometimes it’s admitting that I don’t have the capacity for something.

I think social media sometimes presents healing as becoming this perfectly evolved person who has transcended everything that hurt her. That hasn’t been my experience. My experience has been becoming someone who knows what hurt her and still chooses to participate fully in her own life.

Was there anything you had to unlearn about what it means to be a strong woman?

Absolutely.

I think strength used to mean something very different to me. I’m naturally a hard worker. I’m disciplined. I’m extremely passionate. And for a long time, I thought that was a strength. Just keep going. Endure. Push through it. Overcome it. But the older I get, the more I realise that strength at its core has much more to do with honesty and authenticity. Strength is having a true relationship with yourself. Strength is accepting who you are and where you are. Strength is sometimes rest. Strength is being honest about your capacity.

And I think particularly as women we’re taught an enormous amount about endurance. Endure the relationship. Endure the work. Don’t be emotional. Be the strong woman who can take anything. I don’t believe that anymore. Sometimes strength is standing up for yourself and saying, I will not accept this. Strength is saying, I don’t have the energy for this right now. Strength can be taking a step away from something that doesn’t inspire you, fuel you or feel aligned with who you are.

Once I realised that having an honest relationship with myself became more important than proving to everybody else that I was strong, the very definition of strength changed for me.

You also mentioned your faith. What did your relationship with it look like during your hardest moments?

I started cultivating a personal relationship with God quite young. I was exposed to Christianity early, but I was also naturally inquisitive, so faith became something I wanted to understand personally rather than simply inherit. One of the most profound things I have realised as I’ve gotten older is that my relationship with God and my relationship with myself are far more connected than I used to understand.

Somewhere along my healing journey, I had to confront this question: how could I claim to love God while being cruel to myself? How could I speak about the value God placed on me while constantly speaking to myself as though I had none? That changed what spirituality looked like for me. There were parts of my faith that had become performative. I could pray for hours, but then speak terribly to myself afterwards.

So spirituality started becoming much more practical. Sometimes it looked like journalling. Sometimes it looked like taking myself on a solo date. Writing love letters to myself. Taking a bath because I wanted to care for my body. Resting. Being honest with God instead of trying to sound perfect when I prayed.

Faith taught me to pray, yes, but also to get up and act on the gifts I’d been given. That period of radical self-care and quiet creation was the seed for ALBA Studios: the first time I began to structure my creative identity into something tangible that could belong entirely to me. 

Entering your 30s during all of this, did it change what you wanted or what you were willing to tolerate?

Thirty certainly doesn’t look the way I imagined it would when I was in my early twenties. And I always say something to my friends that even sounds funny to me: I feel younger at 30 than I did at 26.

At 26, there was this pressure I carried about everything I thought I needed to have and be. I assumed that by 30, the pressure would be ten times worse. Somehow, it has been almost the opposite. There are still expectations around what a woman should have achieved by this age. There are still moments when social media gets into your head, and you start wondering whether you should be married, whether you should have children, whether your career should look different. I’m human. Those thoughts still happen but I have become much better at tracing myself back to what actually matters to me. I understand now that my journey is peculiarly mine. There is no such thing as me being a late bloomer because I cannot be late to my own life.

My relationships have changed, too. I used to think having lots of people around me meant I was loved. I understand the importance of boundaries now. I would rather pour from overflow than constantly pour from depletion. Thirty hasn’t made me feel like I’m running out of time. It has made me much more interested in making sure that the time I have actually belongs to me.

So you built ALBA Studios while navigating all of this. What did building something of your own mean to you?

ALBA Studios grew very organically. Long before it had a name, I was already the person friends came to when building something. I would help with naming, positioning, visual direction, and how the whole idea came together. At first, I didn鈥檛 recognise it as a business or even a distinct skill set; it was just something I was doing naturally alongside engineering and pageantry, at one point even turning it into a side hustle.

So I had always done creative strategy. I just never really had the courage to put my own name or vision behind it and say, 鈥淭his is what I do.鈥�

Eventually, I realised there was a clear thread running through all of it. I wasn鈥檛 just helping with aesthetics, I was helping people turn an idea into something coherent and intentional. That became ALBA Studios: a strategy-led brand positioning and identity studio. Today, I work with brands, particularly within African fashion and luxury, to help them clarify who they are, how they should be positioned, and how that translates visually.

Building something of my own came from stripping away so many things: people who didn’t affirm where I was moving, environments that didn’t feel like me, and inherited expectations about what my life was supposed to look like. I genuinely believe your environment can place a ceiling on your capacity, and environment isn’t just where you live. It鈥檚 your people; it鈥檚 the voices surrounding you.

It was terrifying to take that step, but there was also an incredible sense of validation. Beyond making the most money I’ve ever had, I鈥檓 the most fulfilled I鈥檝e ever felt professionally. There are nights I鈥檓 working at 3 a.m., and I suddenly think, Oh my God. I am awake at three in the morning doing work, and I’m not angry. I’m not depressed. Ideas are flowing. To experience that through something you get paid to do is such a blessing.

I named it ALBA because it means dawn or sunrise. For me, it represented a personal line in the sand; a symbolic marker of beginning again with clarity and intention.

When you talk about “beginning again,” does that philosophy extend beyond your studio work into other areas of your life?

Yes, absolutely. That鈥檚 actually where Alba Dawn comes from.

The connection between my agency and my impact work is very personal to me. Through ALBA Studios, my work is about brand identity, clarity, and helping something become what it has the potential to be. Alba Dawn takes that exact same belief beyond companies and applies it directly to people and communities. 

While the studio is my professional practice, Alba Dawn is my social impact initiative. It’s centred on helping people find a pathway back after difficult or disruptive periods in their lives; built around rehabilitation, education, community, and access to opportunity. Because recovery isn’t just emotional; people need practical, tangible support to begin again.

My mother taught me early that if your life isn’t directly impacting someone else, all the success in the world doesn’t mean much. After everything I survived, I became deeply drawn to people whose lives looked like mine had at my lowest point, people society had written off.

That鈥檚 what led me to prison outreach.

I got the opportunity to volunteer with an organisation during a prison visit, and I genuinely think I will talk about that day for the rest of my life. When you hear the word prison, you automatically create an image in your head of the people you expect to meet there. But I walked into that space and saw women and young girls who were educated, articulate, intelligent, and still had this light in their eyes. 

I remember thinking, 鈥楬ow can someone who has been confined within four walls for years be speaking with so much hope about what she is going to do when she leaves?鈥� Because I knew people outside those walls who had already decided their lives were over.

That did something to me.

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What does a crown represent to you now, at 30, having built a full life beyond pageantry?

Pageantry gives you visibility. It puts you in rooms. It gives you access to government, institutions and people you may not ordinarily have had access to. A platform like Miss Universe can genuinely amplify the things you care about. But beyond all of that, there is something deeply personal about this crown for me. Whenever I’m asked, why Miss Universe, why now, my answer is very simple. I am proving a point to myself first. That my circumstances do not determine the direction of my life.

For years, I wanted to return to pageantry, but life kept getting in the way. And this year, I found the courage to say, I’m going to pursue what I want, irrespective of where life has placed me or how old I am. My mother reminds me of that, too. She got her university degree in her late 50s. She sat in classrooms with people younger than some of her own children and said, “You know what, I’m getting this degree.鈥� That inspires me enormously.

So what does the crown mean to me now? It means I refused to decide that I was too old, too late or too far gone to pursue something that still mattered to me.

When the crown comes off, the cameras stop, and nobody needs anything from you. Who is Boma?

Boma is an artist.

At the core of who I am, I think that is probably the simplest answer. I have always felt things very deeply. I love deeply. I hope deeply. I dream deeply. I feel most at home in myself when I am being completely authentic, and sometimes authenticity is unconventional. Sometimes originality is strange. Sometimes it isn’t particularly palatable because it doesn’t look like what people are used to. But that is where I feel most alive.

With my agency, people literally pay me for my eye, my taste, the way I interpret things. Even my pageantry journey is being built from that same place of artistry. So when you remove the crown, the cameras, the work, and everybody else’s expectations, I am still somebody who wants to create. I am still somebody who wants to feel something deeply and turn it into something.

I hope I never lose that.

If you don’t win Miss Universe Nigeria, what do you hope this chapter still gives you?

Can I say this chapter is already giving me so much?

The courage it took for me to buy the form and actually apply already felt like a win. This is the first time I am actively juggling my baby agency with something as demanding as pageantry. So I am learning an enormous amount about time management, responsibility, emotions and stress.

But I think the most striking thing about this season is that pageantry has become such a mirror. A mirror into certain character flaws. A mirror into what I genuinely believe. A mirror into my integrity. A mirror into the relationship I have with myself. It has also put me in rooms and conversations with incredibly inspiring women. I’ve heard women talk about what they’re building, what they believe in, and what they want to change, and I’ve walked away inspired, even though technically we are competing against each other.

So this process has already stretched me enormously. Of course, winning the crown would be incredible. But I don’t need the final night to tell me whether this entire chapter was worthwhile. It already has been.

And if you do win, what do you want to do with that platform?

I genuinely think I would be doing the same thing, just in a different capacity. I want my life and my story to reach people who feel like society has written them off. People who think they have failed. People who think certain decisions they made, or decisions other people made that affected them, have somehow permanently limited what their lives can become. I want them to know that those limitations do not have to stand if they choose to rise again, to begin again.

But beyond words of hope and encouragement, I want to show people a practical pathway. I am extremely passionate about education. My mother always said that people can take almost anything material away from you. You can lose your car, your house, your money. But the knowledge you have gained is something nobody can take away from you.

So I would love to help create access to education and skills for people who need a new beginning, especially people coming out of situations where their lives have been interrupted or completely derailed. Support for people recovering from addiction, survivors of domestic violence, and people trying to rebuild after incarceration. Encouragement is important, but people also need tools. They need education. They need skills. They need meaningful work.

I don’t just want to stand somewhere and tell somebody, you can change your life. I want to be able to say, “You can change your life, and here is something that can actually help you do it.鈥�

The heart hasn’t changed. I just have a clearer idea now of what hope needs to look like when it becomes practical.

What do you hope women reading your story take away from the woman you’ve become?

This is the one message of my life, truly.

Every morning you wake up is another chance to go at life again. To fight for the life that you want. To look your limitations in the face, look your circumstances in the face, and say, “You do not get to tell me when I’m through. I don’t care what was taken away from me. I don’t care where I ended up. I don’t care how far gone the world thinks I am. I can rise again. I can take up space again. I can reinvent myself as many times as I need to. I can change my life as many times as I need to. I can start again and again and again, at 20, at 30, at 40, at 50, at 80. I get to determine when I’m through.“

And I hope every woman who has been faced with whatever challenge life has put in front of her, her background, where she comes from, what she has experienced, the mistakes she has made, the things that have been done to her, remembers that.

As long as you still have breath in your lungs, you can begin again.

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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 Adaeze*, a 48-year-old businesswoman based in Port Harcourt. She married one brother, and decades later, she is still not sure it was the right one. She knows people will judge her for this story. She says go ahead. Nobody was in her shoes.

Can you tell me about yourself?

I am Adaeze. I am 48 years old, and I live in Port Harcourt. I run a small business, a fabric and clothing store that I have had for many years now. I am a widow and a mother of four.

I grew up in a modest home. My parents were not wealthy, but they were decent, and they tried. There were two of us, two daughters, and they made sure we both finished school and university. It was a simple, happy childhood. I did not grow up wanting for love, even if we sometimes wanted for things. I always knew that after school came marriage and family. That was just how I was raised, and I accepted it. I was not lazy, I could sew, I could do hair, I knew how to generate income if I needed to, but I was wife and mother first in my heart. That has always been true.

What was your life like when you started university?

I was 19, and I remember being fresh. It was my first year at uni, and my first time really away from home, finding my feet and my place in society without my family. As I already said, I came from a simple household; my parents were not wealthy people, but they were good people. So I was not spoiled, but they really tried to provide for me. Our fees were paid every year, including hostel accommodation. What they couldn鈥檛 always give us was pocket money, which is why I started making hair in the hostel and sewing so I could feed my sister and myself. Eventually, I made enough to buy a machine. Other than that, I remember being happy, open and ready for a higher education.

That is where everything started, yes. It鈥檚 where I met these two brothers on campus. They came from a big family with 12 children in Port Harcourt. They had not grown up with money, quite the opposite, actually, but their oldest brother, Sotonjo*, the first son in their family, had built something significant in shipping and oil services over the years and had begun pulling his siblings into it. By the time I encountered these two, the family was already in a comfortable financial position. The oldest brother, Sotonjo, was revered in the family. His word was law. He funded them, and they knew it, and they behaved accordingly.

How did you come to know them?

The older of the two, Emeka*, found me first. He was 28, in his final year, and was really only on campus to defend his project before he left. But he was the kind of man who went after what he wanted. He spotted me somewhere near the faculty buildings, introduced himself, and asked for my number. He was confident and direct. He liked that I was Igbo like his mother; he told me that later. He started calling, took me out once or twice. I enjoyed the attention, and I must admit that he was a fine man with Ego.

And the younger brother?

Here is the thing. What Emeka did not know was that his younger brother Chidi*, who was 25 and in his third year, had already been aware of me for months. Since I first arrived on campus. We had seen each other around, had even ended up in a few of the same courses, but Chidi had never approached me. He had always been quieter, more reserved and content to just observe.

So the day Emeka brought me along and introduced me to his brother, imagine how that went. Chidi looked at him and said, “We already know each other.” Even I could hear the defensiveness in his voice and see the anger in his eyes. By then, we had even been put in the same assignment group. Emeka noticed the way Chidi looked at me. He said nothing. He was older, already earning from their brother’s business; he figured he had the better position.

What happened when Emeka left after his project defence?

He moved on to work, and Chidi used every single day he had left on campus. That is what I did not fully understand until later. He was deliberate about it. He was calm, where Emeka was loud, soft-spoken where his brother was forceful. He had gentle eyes and a patience that I had never encountered in a man before. He remembered things I said in passing. He showed up consistently without making noise about it. By his final year, we had started dating properly. It had not been rushed. It had just become obvious.

How did his family receive the news?

Kasala. There is no other word for it.

When Chidi went to his older brother, Sotonjo, to say he wanted to marry me, the house went up in flames. Emeka was furious. He felt I was his, that he had seen me first, that his younger brother had gone behind him. He was breaking things. He said he had been planning to come back for me. But where had he been in all those years since he left campus? Spending his new money on other women and enjoying himself while Chidi was here, present, and building something real with me.

It took their Sotonjo completely putting his foot down. He issued what I can only describe as a decree. And then, because this family does nothing in simple terms, they actually asked me directly which of them I wanted to marry. I was 23. Chidi was 29. I chose my boyfriend. I chose the man I loved.

How did Emeka take that?

He never fully got over it. He married by the end of that same year, brought a woman home and started his own family. But the resentment sat in him. He was not a gentle man at home, not easy with his wife or his children. He had something of the oldest brother’s energy in him, that belief that being the man in the room entitled you to run it however you pleased. He could be harsh. Tyrannical even.

And Sotonjo, what was he like to live around?

He was the kind of man who reminded you constantly, without always saying it directly, that you existed within something he had built. He funded many of his siblings’ children鈥檚 school fees and some of their spouses鈥� businesses, yes. He opened a store for me before things between him and Chidi eventually soured. I ran it, and I was grateful. But his generosity always came with a weight you felt. He spoke to people anyhow. He said whatever he liked and expected everyone to absorb it because he was paying for the ground they stood on. Most of the siblings did absorb it because what choice did they have?

How did Chidi navigate that?

He pulled away slowly. The way he did everything. He had been building his own funds on the side, his own footing, and somewhere around ten or twelve years into our marriage, their oldest brother said something to him that crossed a line. Chidi warned him calmly and clearly never to speak to him like that again. And then he moved us. Got his own house, built completely separately from anything the family had provided. Something shifted after that; even Emeka looked at him differently. 

What was your marriage like during all of this?

It was a good marriage. I want to say that and mean it because it is true. Chidi was kind to me and to our children. We had four boys, the last two of whom were twins. He was not a perfect man, but he was a present one, and he made me feel protected without making me feel small. I was wife and mother first in those years, and I did not resent that. It was what I had always wanted. We had our life, and it was ours.

Then everything changed 5 years ago.

What She Said: My Parents Introduced My Daughter to Me as My Cousin

What happened five years ago?

We were hit by a trailer, my husband, I and the children. The children and I escaped with minor injuries, but Chidi died.

He was the youngest in his family, and everyone was genuinely shaken. He was the calm one, the one people actually liked underneath all the politics of that house. When he died, everything moved very quickly in ways I was not prepared for.

I am so sorry for your loss. What do you mean by things moved quickly?

Sotonjo came up with ideas almost immediately for managing Chidi’s trucks and business interests on my behalf. I understood what that meant. I had watched this family for twenty-five years. I knew exactly how they operated. I got lawyers involved. Sotonjo was not pleased. He made a remark, something to the effect that I would understand the value of family when things got difficult. He eventually let it go, but I knew the temperature had changed between us.

Emeka came with condolences like everyone else. But he stayed longer and called more. He found reasons to be present, to help, to check in. I was grieving and exhausted, managing four children and now, 2 businesses I was struggling to run alone, and Sotonjo was applying pressure about the trucks.聽

I eventually handed the trucks and the business interests back to Sotonjo. It was too much to manage on my own, and I needed peace more than I needed that particular fight. I know people will say I should have held on. They were not in my house at two in the morning.

And Emeka?

He kept showing up. At first, weekly, then he started spacing it out to monthly. Gradually, and then entirely after a year, he became a constant at the house. He found his way back into my life, and I鈥檓 sorry to say I let him. I am not going to lie or try to make what we鈥檝e done more acceptable. He still has his family, his wife and children, and I have my life, but I was so tired, and I could not fight him. The relationship between us now is what it is, alongside everything else.

What does that mean? How do you make sense of it?

I am not sure I do entirely. I ask myself questions I do not always have answers to. I think about the sequence of things. Emeka was the one who came for me first. He was the one who saw me and moved. Sometimes, in quiet moments, I have thought about what my life might have looked like if things had gone differently at the beginning.

Chidi was good to me, and I loved him, and I do not regret our life together. But I would be lying if I said I never wonder.

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Wonder what exactly?

Whether I married the right brother.

I know how that sounds. I know what people will say. But nobody was in my shoes. Nobody knows what it is to be me, to have lived this particular life in this particular way. So I say it anyway. What is there to lose at this point?

At least we have a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs; I can feed my children, and their inheritance from their father will cover all their fees until they are done with school. Additionally, there is a father figure for them.聽

What about Emeka鈥檚 wife? Is she okay with this?

Of course not. It was a big fight, but she鈥檚 a woman as am I, and this is a man鈥檚 world. The family says if he can handle the two of us, who is anyone to stop him? His wife refuses to leave this safety net, and I will remain at least until all my children have finished university.

Everybody is managing everyone.

What do you want women to take from your story?

Nobody truly knows what it is like to be inside another person’s life. Nobody. I stopped explaining myself a long time ago.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, this weekend, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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 Suoyo*, a 55-year-old consultant and entrepreneur. She talks about a childhood that ended without warning, parents who chose silence over justice, a marriage that showed her a different kind of cruelty, and the truth that was living in her parents’ house for years before she understood what she was looking at.

Trigger Warning: This story contains accounts of sexual violence, domestic violence, pregnancy loss and child sexual abuse.

Can you tell me about yourself?

My name is Suoyo*. I am 55 years old. I am a marketing consultant, I run my own business, and I live with my best friend, which sounds like an unusual arrangement for a woman my age, but it is genuinely the most peaceful I have ever been in my life. One more thing, I have a daughter. 

What was your childhood like?

I was an only child, which in a Nigerian family, at least in mine, means you are surrounded by everybody else’s children all the time. Both my parents came from large families, at least four or five siblings each, and there were always cousins, relatives, somebody’s somebody passing through or staying for extended periods. I grew up used to a full house.

My parents were educated people. They valued education above most things, and they made sure I had every advantage they could give me. On the surface, we were a functional, respectable family. That was always the most important thing to them. How 鈥榩eople鈥� saw them. 

What do you mean by that?

Well, when I was 14, I was raped by my uncle, my father’s brother. 

I will not go into the details of what happened. I think the trauma I endured and the years I鈥檝e carried it are enough for one lifetime. What I will say is that the person who did it was someone who was supposed to protect me. Someone who was in my parents’ house, in my life, as a trusted figure. And when my parents found out, they did not go to the police. They did not confront him in any meaningful way. What they did was manage it. They sent me away quietly, far enough that nobody in our community would notice, and I had the baby there. A beautiful girl.

It was one of the most difficult periods of my life. I was living with very distant family that I didn鈥檛 know and though they did not treat me badly, they were not always kind or understanding. I was a young girl whose world had been ripped out from under her. I was pregnant and barely allowed to leave the house. I was very depressed and almost never laughed. I hated the child I was carrying but I also weirdly started to care for her at some point. All they saw was an irrespossinble teenager who was paying for the decisions she made. My parents never told them the truth.

And after all that, they took the baby from me and told me she had been given up for adoption. I was 15. I did not know how to fight that. I did not know I was allowed to. It was just the next step in my life that my parents had decided for me. 

After about a year, they put me back in school. It was a boarding school, about 2 – 3 hours from where they lived. Life was supposed to continue.

How do you continue after something like that?

You just do, because the alternative is not continuing, and at 16, I did not have the freedom to fall apart. I finished secondary school. I got into university. I made a friend there who became the most important person in my life, a woman who has been in my corner in ways I cannot fully articulate. She paid for things when I had nothing, she showed up, and she was simply always there. I graduated, did my NYSC, and got a job. Eventually, I started my Master’s. I was a functioning adult in society. Whether I was happy is a different question.

I carried what happened at 15 in complete silence for years. I had no romantic relationship that lasted because I never fully trusted any man. Something in me was always slightly removed, always watching, always waiting for the version of the person they were hiding. I did not know at the time that I was doing it. I just knew that nothing ever quite stuck.

Did things ever change?

Yes but not in my favour at first. 

It was about three years after I graduated, two years after NYSC. I went home to visit my parents, and there was a young girl there I did not recognise. This was not unusual. There were always people passing through, cousins, relatives, someone’s child being looked after for a while. She was eventually introduced to me as my cousin, Bellema* and I accepted that without a second thought.

But something about her pulled at me. I found her a little annoying but also charming. By the time I left after that week, I was fond of her.

What happened to her after that?

A few months later, my parents told me she would be living with them permanently. Again, I did not find this strange. They had taken in other children before, helped raise cousins, that kind of thing was normal in our family. Over the next two years, I thought of her often. Whenever I visited, I brought her something. Eventually, I got her a phone. I watched her grow, and I felt something for her that I could not name. I just thought I was attached to her because she was a sweet child. Around this time, my parents introduced me to someone.

Who?

I was 31 now. They made it fairly clear that marriage was the expectation. I was not opposed to meeting him, and in the year or so that we courted, I genuinely liked what I saw. He was kind, patient, and tolerant. He did not try to make me smaller. He never said anything that suggested he thought a woman should stop working or shrink herself after marriage. He was the opposite of everything I had been bracing for. I thought I had been given something good.

We got married. Some months later, he began to show me who he actually was.

What did that look like?

It started with what he called standards. What a married woman should wear. How long she should be out of the house, even for work. The food, which had to be freshly cooked by my hands every single day, whether or not I had had a fourteen-hour day, whether or not we could afford to pay someone else to help, which we could. It was about control. It was always about control.

And then about a year into the marriage, he started hitting me.

What did you do?

I told my parents. My mother told me to endure as a woman. My father said nothing. I stopped telling my parents after that.

My best friend from university was the only person I spoke to honestly. She had been telling me to leave for a long time, and I could not, because of my parents, because of what leaving would have meant in terms of their approval and their disappointment and all the things I was still, at 32, 33, 34, trying not to lose. She came to the house more than once to shout at him and take me away for a few days. She was the one who took me to the hospital.

What She Said: I Married a Man I Met Online. A Month Later, I Didn鈥檛 Recognise Him

Why did she need to take you to the hospital, and how many times did that happen?

Three times. I got pregnant three times during that marriage. I lost all three pregnancies because of what he did to me. Three times, my best friend sat with me in a hospital while I lost a child that I had wanted, because of a man I was trying to stay married to, to please people who had already failed me once.

I stayed with him for five years.

What ended it?

Though the marriage was turbulent, there were rare good days, and I would often have Bellema stay over for months at a time. One night, I came home and found him forcing himself on the young girl. She was about 21 by then, and I was 37. The girl my parents had told me was my cousin. The girl I had been buying gifts for, getting phones for, and watching grow up.

I picked up one of the decorative pieces in the house, and I broke it on his head. Then I took her, and I left. I took her straight to my best friend’s place. Her father was a lawyer. We got him arrested that same night.

What was going on in your head during those hours?

It took me back. That is the only way I can explain it. It took me back to being 15 years old and having something taken from me by someone who was supposed to protect me, and then having my parents decide that the most important thing was not me but the story they would tell everyone else. History was repeating itself in the most grotesque way possible, and I had been living inside it without knowing.

After some weeks, I started the atrociously long divorce process. And then I went to see my parents.

Tell me about that conversation.

It was the first time in my life that I told them how I actually felt. All of it. What they had done when I was 15, what their silence had cost me, what enduring and managing and keeping up appearances had actually looked like from inside my body for all those years. My mother cried. My father looked ashamed and could not meet my eyes, but he still said he had done the best he could for me at the time. I have never in my life wanted to hit anyone harder than I wanted to hit him in that moment.

And then I asked them what they had done with my child. I screamed it when they would not answer. They told me they had kept her close. That eventually, I could not stay away. It took me a moment to understand what they were saying. And when I did, I did not stop sobbing for a very long time.

What did you understand?

The so-called cousin I had helped with was my daughter, the child I had at 15. The product of a rape by my father’s brother. She had been living in my parents’ house, she was introduced to me as a cousin, and I had spent years loving her without knowing who she was, while my parents knew exactly what they were doing and said nothing.

She had now survived her own sexual violence at the hands of the man my parents had approved of and encouraged me to marry.

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

Wow. I cannot imagine what you went through. How did you and your daughter navigate what came next?

It took time. There were years when I did not speak to my parents at all, close to a decade. I took my daughter and left the city. My best friend and I got an apartment together, got a job and eventually, I started consulting remotely, then tackled building my own business. I focused on rebuilding, on creating something stable for the two of us, on learning how to be in a relationship with a person I had loved without knowing I was her mother.

She’s now an international lawyer, though she often says that’s not a thing but it’s an easier way to describe what she does. She has 2 businesses: one here, and the other in one of the countries she’s licensed to practice law in. She often volunteers and donates to important causes. She really is the most remarkable person. What she has survived, what she has built herself into despite all of it, I cannot take credit for that. She did that. I just tried to make sure that from the moment I knew, she had everything I could give her.

Where are things now?

My daughter and I have a relationship. It took time, honesty, and a lot of difficult conversations to get here, but we have it. I run my business. I live with my best friend, who has been the most consistent presence in my life for over thirty years now. I have made my peace with my parents to the extent that I am able to. My father died a few years ago. My mother and I speak.

I am 55. I am not who I was at 15, or 25, or 37. I am someone who survived things that should have broken her completely, and I am still here, and I am still building. That is more than enough.

What do you want women who are reading this to take away?

That silence is never neutral. Every time someone chooses silence to protect a reputation, a family name, a marriage, a narrative, there is a person on the other side of that silence paying the price. I paid for decades. My daughter paid it too.

If you are in something that is hurting you, please tell someone. Not someone who will ask you to endure. Someone who will actually show up. I was lucky enough to have that person. Not everyone is. But please look for her, because she exists.

And if you are a parent, your child’s safety is not something you ever hesitate to secure. It is the only thing that matters. Whatever you think you are protecting by staying quiet, I promise you it is not worth what you are asking them to carry.

If you are going through something similar, whether sexual violence, an abusive relationship, or simply carrying something too heavy alone, help is available. You do not have to carry it alone.

1. Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative: Call or WhatsApp text 08091116264 or 08111680686 to receive immediate mental health crisis intervention and counseling from the active volunteers at the .

2. Lagos State DSVA Helpline: Call 08000-333-333 (toll-free) or dial the quick shortcode *6820# on your mobile phone to safely report domestic violence, rape, or child abuse and get immediate medical or legal response from the .

3.聽The Mirabel Centre Support:聽Call or text聽+2348155770000聽to receive 24/7, completely free medical care, forensic evidence collection, and professional psychosocial counselling after experiencing sexual assault from the聽Mirabel Centre.

4. WARIF Toll-Free Crisis Line: Call 080092100009 for 24-hour completely confidential emergency aid, legal advocacy, and rapid response to rape and gender-based violence from the .

5. Project Alert Crisis Line: Call 08180091072 to receive professional counseling, shelter support, and legal advocacy for female survivors of domestic and sexual abuse from .

6. National Emergency Line: Dial 112 from any mobile network in Nigeria to reach nationwide emergency services if you are in immediate physical danger.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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 Stella*, a 37-year-old woman from Rivers State. She talks about a childhood that taught her to survive before she even knew she needed to, a whirlwind online courtship that led to a wedding within six months, and the slow, devastating unravelling of a man she thought she knew.

Tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like?

I’m Stella, I’m 37, I’m from Rivers State, and I have always lived in Port Harcourt. School took me away for a while, but I always came back.

My childhood was good until my parents separated when I was 15, and then life became something else entirely. Before that, though, we were comfortable. My dad is not a rich man, but he made sure I never lacked. He would buy me something every day after work, no matter how small, just something to show he was thinking of me. Our house was always full of people because there was always food. People were always coming to eat. That was my childhood before everything changed.

What happened when your parents separated?

Here is the thing: when they separated, I was actually happy at first. I always knew my mum never loved my dad. She married him so her siblings could have something to eat, and she passed a lot of that anger onto us. So when she finally left, part of me felt relief.

But that relief did not last long. My lastborn sibling was only six months old when she walked out. She did not come back for us. She just started travelling to other states, living her life, and she has never cared since. The only time she shows up is when there is something to get from me.

Then, about a year after she left, my dad remarried. His new wife wasted no time. She made him take me out of the house and sent me to live with his brother. That was when real suffering started. My uncle and his wife took me on as their house help. The maltreatment became too much, so at 17, I ran away from that house and moved in with my maternal grandmother.

At 19, I started selling okrika clothes, which people now call thrift. By 22, I had saved enough to get my own single-room apartment, where I shared a toilet and bathroom with other tenants. I lived on my own from 22 until I got married.

What kind of person did all of that make you?

I have always been a happy girl, somehow. I love to play, I love to laugh, I love being around happy people. I know that sounds strange given everything I have been through, but it is the truth. Life has been a great teacher, and even though I have been hurt by people I trusted, I never gave up. God has been faithful, even when things were hard.

I have always been the romantic type. I love love. And if you know what I have been through, you know what that means. I had four partners before my husband. My first relationship lasted eight years and seven months, and that man made me feel less of myself every single day. By the time I met my husband, I was completely done with long courtships that led nowhere. I said to myself, forget it. Let me try something different.

What did your life look like just before you met him?

I was 36, living in PH, working. Not yet where I wanted to be, but moving. I work in the children’s department at my church, and I have always loved children. I celebrate my birthdays with them. My friends and family all know it. The whole essence of getting married for me was always to have a family, to have children of my own, to see my own offspring. That was always the dream.

How did you meet your husband?

He messaged me on TikTok, and that is where we shared contacts. The very first message he ever sent me, he called me his wife. Just like that.

What was that early period like?

It was beautiful, honestly. He told me he loves the things of God, and I do too, so that mattered deeply to me. We prayed together every morning and every night, even while he was still away at work, and he was the one who initiated it. He sent me messages without fail every single morning and night. I asked him once how long he planned to keep doing that, and he said forever. He still does it today. He has never missed a single day.

He told me he does not drink alcohol because of a health condition. He made me believe that whenever there was conflict, he preferred to talk things through and never go to bed without resolving it. That made me feel safe. That made me think, this is a man I can trust.

Walk me through what happened after his first text and how it led to a wedding.

We were talking online for three months while he was still away at work. Before he came back, I told him I thought we needed to slow down. I said I wanted us to spend maybe a month or two in the same space first, going on actual dates, properly getting to know each other. He got angry. He asked me if he had ever been bad to me, and I said no. He said he loved me, he knew what he wanted, and I should trust him. He said he believed we could make it work.

Considering his age, he is 42, and the fact that I was also ready to settle down, I accepted. I believed we could make it work.

We met in person for the very first time the day he got off work. The next day, we went on a date, and that was when he proposed. He said, “Please be my wife; it would make me the happiest and luckiest man.” At first, I was scared, and I told him that. He promised to make me the happiest woman.

I said I know marriage is a good thing and I am happy, but a part of me is scared because I know how emotional I am. My fears were greater than my joy in that moment. But I said to myself, I have heard stories of people who meet online, fall in love, get married, and it works. Mine would not be any different, especially because of the God factor. So I believed.

. I met his family a week after the engagement. When he introduced me to them, everyone loved me. His friends, too. Nobody said anything discouraging. He kept saying, 鈥淲hy can’t you see that this is meant to be?鈥� About a month after the engagement, we got married.

Tell me about the wedding. How did that day feel?

It felt special. I was happy seeing people come out to celebrate with us.

But my mother made me sad. She acted like a complete stranger. I had given her money to buy clothes since she rejected the outfit I had already bought for her. She did not buy anything. She showed up in a wrapper she had bought in 2000, when she was still married to my dad. I ended up giving the outfit I had bought for her to my dad’s younger sister, one of the people who actually took care of me when I was little.

My dad and my elder siblings, though, were the happiest. That made me so happy and teary. That part I will always hold.

When did you first sense something was wrong?

The morning after our wedding. I was on the same bed with my husband, practically naked, and he was masturbating while watching pornography. I was right there. He preferred to do that rather than be with me.

I felt disgusted. Would you be happy seeing your partner do that when you are right there?

What She Said: The Day My Husband Asked for a Divorce Was the Best Day of My Marriage

Did you say something to him about it?

I did. But things just kept unravelling after that.

He drinks heavily, and whenever he drinks, he says whatever he wants without caring how it affects me or our marriage. He makes me feel like he’s disgusted by me. We always quarrel when he is drunk. This is the same man who told me before we married that he does not drink at all.

And there was something else happening underneath all of it. My husband barely even kisses me. When we first met, he told me he loves all of that, the romance, the kissing, all of it. But this is the first relationship I have ever been in where the man does not kiss me or want romance at all. He just wants to go straight to the point. I have never gotten an erection from him just from being close to him, even when we cuddle. My exes were never like that with me.

I spoke to him about it a few times, and he kept telling me I love sex too much. That is not true. I actually have a very low libido. In my previous relationships, my exes constantly complained about it. But with my husband, something shifted in me. I had never gotten wet during sex before, but with him, I would get wet just from cuddling. So I knew it was not about me.

And yet he was the same person who, when he was drunk one night, told me he did not find me attractive and that he regrets marrying me and wants his bride price back. Rather than getting mad, I almost found peace. Because he had finally said out loud what I had been sensing all along. It also explained why he was seeing other women..

What do you mean?

I hacked into his phone. The reason I did it is that from very early on, he was always on his phone. The moment he woke up, he went straight to his phone. When I asked him to come and pray with me, he told me to pray and leave him alone. This was the same man who used to initiate our prayers when he was still away at work.

I found messages with numerous women, along with pictures. Even in the days leading up to our wedding, he had been sleeping with different women. While I was the one begging him for intimacy.

I was filled with so much anger and disgust. Especially when I saw the pictures of the women. It made me sick. Dey no even fine reach me. All I could think of was evil.

What did you do with that?

I told my family and his as well. I told him to leave the house, which he did. I sent his clothes home to his family and told them to instruct him not to come back, because at that point, I could not trust what I was capable of feeling.

But I want to be honest about that period, because it was the darkest period of my life. I have two older sisters who were not yet married when I first got married. In my community, people had already been saying things about my family, calling us cursed, using it to humiliate my dad at gatherings. When I started to see that my marriage might be falling apart, the weight of what people would say became unbearable. I almost did not survive that period. I was so afraid of the shame that I nearly cut my wrists with a knife. I thank God for his mercy and grace for still being here.

If you are reading this and you are in that place, please do not do what I almost did. No marriage, no shame, no public opinion is worth your life. Please reach out to someone. In Nigeria, you can call the Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative on 08091126655.

What made you come back from that edge?

God. Just God. And eventually, the anger helped, too, because it was louder than the shame.

When his family saw that I was serious about leaving, and when he saw that I meant every word, he got scared. He kept calling and begging. His family and some elders held a meeting. They called me on WhatsApp, and I spoke for a long time.

Weeks passed, and after much begging from everyone, I told them that the moment this man married me, God made him the head of our home. But since he has refused to act like the man that he is, this marriage will continue on my terms and conditions. If he agrees, fine. If he does not agree, it is way better for me, because this is not how I envisioned my marriage.

The next day, they called back and said he had agreed to do whatever I wanted.

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

What were your terms?

I wrote them down and sent them over. We signed the agreement with a third party, their king, as a witness. Everyone in that room scolded him. Not one person supported what he had done.

I told them clearly: any day he deviates from any of my terms, the marriage is as good as over.

How has he been since?

He stopped drinking. He joined a department in the church. We pray together as a couple again. He has taken the things of God very seriously since then.

When he came back home after we were separated, he had lost so much weight. He looked so pale and sick that it made me cry. I gave us a second chance, knowing that we never actually dated before the marriage. Some of these things were probably always going to surface eventually.

I still have trust issues. He changed the password on his phone after I gave it to him once. I have decided not to let that consume me. I also have my own plans, and those are between God and me.

I know he is probably still cheating, even though I have not caught him again. I know that if I went through his phone, I would find things. But I have decided not to go looking. I told him that he alone will expose himself to me, and that will be the total end.

No one will cut my life short simply because he has refused to keep his penis in his pants. It is very easy for people to say “leave” until it is their turn and they find out they cannot. I know there is no perfect person out there. I pray for my marriage to work out fine.

How do you carry all of this day-to-day?

I channel my energy into building myself. For myself, for my unborn children, for my family. I do not let it consume me anymore.

I come from a polygamous home, and I have hated that reality my whole life. I promised myself and God when I was young that I would have all my children with one man. That has not changed. I want to have my own children. I want to see how beautiful and handsome they will be. I want to see my own offspring grow.

One thing I will never do is cheat. In all my relationships, I have never cheated, not once. I have always believed this: if you are not happy, please leave rather than hurting someone. I believe that even now, even while I am the one still trying to hold things together.

If you could go back to the version of you who said yes to him, what would you tell her?

I would tell her to stand her ground about taking things slow and getting to know each other properly before marriage. Marriage is a long ride.

I would tell her to ask more questions. About him. About his family. Before you sign up for the whole thing.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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 Remi*, a 52-year-old businesswoman based in Lagos. She talks about 25 years of marriage, the emotional and financial abuse she quietly endured, the mother who told her she would be disowned if she left, and why she laughed when her ex-husband finally asked for a divorce.

Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m Remi. I’m 52, and I live in Lagos. I deal in textiles, which is actually something of a family tradition; my mother was in the industry before me. It is the business I have built my independence around, and I am proud of it. Beyond work, I am a mother of three and someone who has learned, later than I would have liked, that choosing yourself is not selfish. It is necessary.

Before you got married, what did you imagine marriage would be like?

I only had my parents’ marriage to use as an example of what a perfect marriage looks like. So I imagined that my husband would be like my father, someone who worships the ground I walk on and loves me wholeheartedly, and that my marriage would be blissful and free of complications. My father genuinely adored my mother. That was all I knew of what a husband was supposed to be, so naturally, that was what I expected for myself.

How did you meet your ex-husband, and what made you think he was the one?

I met him through a friend. Let鈥檚 call her Stella*. At the time, she was dating his friend, and the day they introduced us, I kept staring at him because I had never seen someone as handsome and confident as him. When we started talking, I realised he was someone I could see myself having all my kids with.

What was that early period like before you got married?

It was exciting. He was charming and attentive, the way men are when they are trying to win you over, and I was completely taken. Looking back now, I can see things I missed or chose not to see, but in my time, when you are young and in love, and someone looks at you the way he looked at me then, you are not exactly looking for red flags. You are just happy. I was happy.

How long did you date before he proposed, and how did he ask?

We dated for about two years before he proposed. It was not an elaborate thing; he was not that kind of man, but he was sincere about it, and at the time, sincerity was enough for me. We were at home, just the two of us, and he told me he wanted me to be his wife. I said yes immediately because I genuinely wanted to. I loved him, and I could see my life with him clearly in that moment.

But even as I said yes, there was something sitting at the back of my mind. A few months before he proposed, I had met his eldest brother for the first time at a family gathering. I do not even remember what the occasion was now, but I remember that man’s face when he looked at me. He barely acknowledged me. At some point during that visit, he made a comment, not directly to me but loud enough that I could hear, something about his brother always making decisions without thinking them through. It was not hard to understand what he meant. I was the decision he was referring to. I smiled and said nothing because I did not want to cause problems, but I filed it away. When my husband proposed, I was happy, genuinely happy, but that interaction with his brother was already there, already casting a small shadow over everything.

What was the wedding like?

Quite dreadful, if I am being honest. By the time the wedding came around, I had had enough interactions with the eldest brother to know that the shadow I had felt at the proposal was not going anywhere. He was cold throughout the entire occasion. Not rude in a way that anyone would point to, but the kind of cold that you feel in your body when you are the only one it is directed at. He did not congratulate me. He barely spoke to me. At one point, I caught him watching me from across the room with an expression I can only describe as contempt, and when our eyes met, he simply looked away.

I told my husband how I felt, and he told me I was seeing things, that I was overthinking it, that his brother was just like that. But I knew what I had felt, and I knew what I had seen. I was scared, not in a dramatic way, but in the quiet way you are scared when you can see something difficult ahead of you and nobody around you will acknowledge it is there. I pushed the feeling down and got married anyway, because what else was I going to do? I loved him. I chose to believe it would be fine. It was not always fine.

Did that fear about his family materialise?

Yes. It was not just the eldest brother. Most of my husband’s siblings were awful to me because they felt I was trapping him. He was their only breadwinner at the time, so they resented me for it, as though my marrying him was some kind of scheme. Only the younger ones liked me. The older ones detested my guts. It created a tension in the marriage that never fully went away, because he was always navigating between being a husband and being loyal to siblings who did not particularly care for his wife.

How long were you married?

Twenty-five years.

What She Said: I Sold Everything I Owned For a Visa That Was Rejected Three Times

What were those twenty-five years like? Start from the beginning.

The early years were fifty-fifty. There were good days, genuinely good ones, but there were also moments that made me stop and ask myself if I had made the right decision. He had a way of saying things, cutting things, that would sit with me for days. He would berate me in front of people, family, friends; it did not matter who was watching. He would tell me I could not amount to anything. At the time, I was relying mostly on my parents’ money because I was not in the job market, and for some reason, he would call me useless for that, as though I had lied about who I was before we got married. He knew exactly what my situation was. He still used it against me at every opportunity.

The financial side was its own separate cruelty. There were times he would not give me money for food, but right in front of me, he would give his brother any amount he asked for without blinking. For a couple of years in that marriage, I had to rely on my parents to feed my children and me. He never denied our children their education, I will give him that, but he would constantly expect me to produce money from nowhere to carry the house, while simultaneously making me feel worthless for not having any.

I kept hoping the good days would become the majority, that we would find our rhythm and settle into something more stable. That never really happened. The difficult days were always there, just waiting.

I鈥檓 sorry. How did you eventually find financial independence within the marriage?

I tried a few things before I found my footing. Provisions first, then drinks, then I tried baking for a while. None of it quite clicked the way I needed it to. Eventually, I found my way into the textile industry, which is actually a family thing. My mother was in textiles before me, so in a way I was following a path that had already been laid. Once I found it, things started to shift for me in ways that went beyond just the money.

How did your husband treat you once you became financially independent?

He started seeing me as someone worth respecting. I was no longer someone he could rule over in the same way, and whatever control he had felt over me before started to loosen. There were still moments when he made me feel strange about having my own money because he no longer had the upper hand in the marriage, and that clearly unsettled him. But there was a certain level of respect I started to see that had not been there before. It is telling, really, that the thing that changed how he treated me was not a conversation, a realisation, or any kind of emotional growth on his part. It was money. The moment I had my own, I became worth respecting.

How important was having your own income to your sense of self?

It made me feel really good. I felt confident that I could spoil myself and my children without asking anyone for permission or waiting on anyone’s mood. I could get what I needed without calculating how much money I did not have. I did not have to beg him or my parents for anything, and that freedom changed how I moved through the world entirely. It is a beautiful feeling to know that you are not dependent on someone who does not treat you well for your basic survival.

When did you realise the marriage was something you could no longer live with?

When my daughter started making her displeasure with her father very obvious. She was not subtle about it, the way her brothers were. She genuinely hated him and wanted everyone to know, and watching her made something click for me. I realised that by staying, I had damaged my children in more ways than one. He never let them lack anything materially, that much is true, but he was still emotionally abusive to them. They were watching how he treated me and experiencing his moods and his coldness firsthand. My daughter’s anger was just the loudest version of it. Her brothers had their own version of it, too; they just kept it quieter. Seeing it so plainly on her face made it very hard for me to keep pretending things were fine.

For a long time, you stayed despite everything. What kept you there?

My children, mostly. And the whole “what would people say?” that my mother kept muttering in my ears every time I told her I could not stay in the marriage anymore. There was also the fact that I still loved him, to an extent. That is a complicated thing to explain, loving someone who treats you badly, but it is real, and it is one of the most disorienting feelings there is. You are not stupid for feeling it. You are not weak. It is just that love does not always go away simply because the person has stopped deserving it, and for a long time, that love, mixed with fear of losing my mother’s approval and genuine concern for what this would do to my children, kept me in that house long past the point when I should have left.

What did those conversations with your mother look like?

They usually started with me calling her, exhausted, trying to explain another thing he had done and how overwhelming everything was getting. And they would always, without fail, end with her saying, “he is still the father of your kids.” She has never experienced what it is to have an emotionally abusive husband, so like most women in our society, she trivialised my struggles. A lot. She did not mean harm. I think she genuinely believed she was giving me wisdom, but what she was actually doing was telling me that my pain was not enough of a reason to leave. The concept of my leaving him was so unacceptable to her that she told me she would disown me if I ever did. That threat sat with me for years.

That must have been very painful. What messages had you grown up hearing about divorce?

It was. I grew up learning that divorce is unacceptable and unheard of. That, unless your husband is physically laying his hands on you, there is no valid reason to leave. Just stay with him, even if he spends three hundred and sixty-five days a year making you feel like a failure. Just manage it. Pray about it. Find a way to make him happy. Nobody ever asked whether he was making you happy. That was not part of the conversation.

Why were you worried about what people would say if you left?

I was mostly worried about what my parents would say. My mother had made her position very clear, and my father, though gentler about it, had always taken an “as long as you are happy” stance that I knew would be tested the moment I told him I was choosing divorce. Honestly, I did not really care about other people beyond my immediate family. It was the people closest to me whose reactions I could not stop thinking about.

Do you think you would have left earlier if you had had financial security from the beginning?

Even if I had the money, I would not have left earlier, because my mother would have made good on her threat and disowned me. The financial piece was important, but it was not the only thing holding me. The fear of losing my family’s approval, particularly my mother’s, was its own kind of trap.

How did the conversation about divorce actually happen?

He left the country about three years ago. He said it was to set roots there, but I had a feeling from early on that he just wanted to leave without making it a dramatic event. So when he eventually called and told me he wanted a divorce, I was honestly just blank about it. There was no explosion of feeling, no moment of crisis. I told him to send the necessary papers, and I would sign. That was the whole conversation.

What was going through your mind in that moment?

Honestly? Relief. When I tell you I laughed, I mean I genuinely laughed. It had been such a long time coming that there was nothing left to feel except the strange lightness of it finally being said out loud by him. I did not have to be the one to say it. He said it. And all I had to do was agree.

How did your family react?

When I told my parents that he was the one who had initiated it, they expressed surprise and then more or less called it a day. My dad was calm about the whole thing, and I think it is because he never really liked him like that. He had always taken the gentle path with me, never pushing back strongly, just going with “as long as you are happy,” but over the years, you could sense that his opinion of my husband was not particularly high. My sister asked if it was the right idea because of the children, but our children are grown, all 3 in their 20s and barely interact with their father, so I honestly did not know what point she thought she was making.

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Did you feel judged by your community or extended family?

No one judged me. They all knew what kind of husband he could be. I think that says a lot about how visible his behaviour had been over the years, even to people on the outside.

How did you talk to your children about the divorce?

I told them casually, and they barely blinked. They just said okay. There was no drama, no tears, no long conversation about what it meant. They already knew. They had been living in that house too.

How aware were they of what was happening in the marriage?

Very aware. He was not only unkind to me, but he was also unkind to them. He had his good moments, and I want to be fair about that, but my children mostly remember him for his bad days. They had their own relationship with his moods and his emotional distance, completely separate from whatever was happening between us as husband and wife.

Looking back, do you think staying together would have been better for them?

No. What was the point of having a father in their lives if he only gave them trauma to carry? I think it would have actually been better for them if I had left him much earlier. They would have been more self-actualised. They would have grown up watching their mother choose herself, which is a lesson I gave them far too late.

How has your life changed since the divorce?

It has been wonderful. Honestly, when he left the country, I was already living like a divorced woman in many ways. The weight of wondering whether someone at home was eating, whether his mood that evening was going to determine the atmosphere of the entire house, all of that was already gone. After the papers, I just kept going further in that direction. I started going out more, spending time on myself, pouring into who I am. No husband constantly chipping away at my self-esteem. I am prioritising myself in ways that feel completely natural now, as though I was always supposed to be living like this.

Do you ever regret it?

No.

Have your views on love or marriage changed?

I still think love is beautiful and that people just have to find their right partners. I understand that marriage did me dirty, but it is not everyone it would do dirty. Case in point, my parents. Their marriage is everything I imagined mine would be when I was young. I just did not end up with someone like my father.

Would you get married again?

Absolutely not. I am okay like this. I love being single.

If you could speak to the version of yourself who was scared to leave, what would you tell her?

It is fine to be scared, but she should not be, because it is not even as big a deal as she thinks. She is going to be okay. She is going to be more than okay.

What is one thing society gets completely wrong about divorced women?

That it is shameful. We have always tied a woman’s entire worth to being a wife and a mother, and the moment she exits a marriage, people act as though she has failed at the most important thing she was supposed to do. I think it is silly because more women should be allowed to divorce and still have their communities backing them. Leaving a bad marriage is not a failure. Staying in one for the sake of appearances is not a strength. We have had it backwards for a very long time.

What is one lesson you hope younger women take from your experience?

That it is fine to leave if your husband is not acting like the love of your life should act. You do not need him to be hitting you. You do not need a dramatic, obvious, provable reason. Feeling consistently unseen, disrespected and diminished is reason enough. Your life is too long and too valuable to spend it managing someone else’s ego.

The  is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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 脡n脿re Abang Gideon, a growth strategist and founder in her twenties, originally from Cross River State, Nigeria, now based in Luxembourg. She talks about selling everything she owned to chase a visa-sponsored job in Estonia, surviving three rejections in Egypt with an empty wallet, and how the worst period of her life became the foundation of everything she has built.

Can you tell me about yourself?

My name is 脡n脿re Abang Gideon. I am from Cross River State, Nigeria, and I am currently based in Luxembourg. I am a growth strategist and the founder of InstaGo Travels, a global travel agency providing tailored mobility solutions, and Giena Consulting Group, a business development and marketing firm. I also founded a rapidly growing community for women founders in Luxembourg, dedicated to empowering and connecting ambitious women worldwide.

Can you tell me about the family you grew up in? What kind of child were you?

I grew up in a household where both my parents were educated, yet they placed an immense value on hard work. Some of my earliest memories involve planting cocoa seedlings on my father’s farm, where I was always eager to take on more seeds, not just for the work itself, but because I saw it as a path to earning enough to buy my own treats. That early exposure to industry and the desire to build my own capital shaped me into a curious, driven child, always looking for the next challenge or opportunity to create something of my own.

What did success look like to you growing up? Did you always imagine you would build a life outside Nigeria?

Growing up, success was about independence and the ability to build from the ground up. I did not necessarily have a fixed vision of leaving, but I always possessed an expansive view of what was possible, knowing I wanted to operate on a global stage even if the path was not yet written.

What was your life like before everything changed?

I had just completed my National Service in Abuja and was deeply involved in community services while learning about finance and investment in the stock market. I enrolled in an academy that shaped my mindset on success and the financial markets. I was browsing the internet one day when I received a job opportunity notification in Estonia. I applied, went through three interview rounds, and they gave me the offer. There was, however, one huge problem: I had to apply for the visa from Egypt, as there is no Estonian embassy in Nigeria.

What exactly was the opportunity?

It was a role as a business support associate with a fintech company in Estonia. The interview sessions were held over Zoom, and I got to ask questions and clarify my doubts with all the hiring managers. After the interview rounds, I was offered the position, and I believed it was worth the risk because I saw it as the beginning of a new chapter and the answer to my desire for a life that felt big enough for everything I carried inside me.

So you decided to travel to Egypt for the Visa. What did that decision to go all in actually look like?

I was convinced that I was meant for more than the life I was living. I had received confirmation from people who had already arrived in Estonia that the contracts and paperwork were legitimate, so I decided to move everything at once to avoid making the trip twice and to minimise the financial risk of multiple international journeys. I believed in that opportunity with everything in me because it was the proof I needed that my potential was not limited by my environment.

What did moving everything at once actually mean? What did you have to let go of?

I let go of my apartment and sold all my properties, including downsizing from my two-bedroom apartment in Kubwa to a self-contained apartment a month before my trip. Saying goodbye to my life also meant saying goodbye to my pet. The closest company I had then was my cat, whom I gave away to the Uber driver who took me to the airport. It was very painful, but it had to happen. I was mentally done with my life in Nigeria and was looking forward to a fresh start.

How did your family react when they found out?

My family was excited for me because they have always wanted the best for me. There was some scepticism until they saw proof of others who had successfully received the visa, which is natural, but as I have always been someone who follows a conviction once I am sure of it, they were not surprised at all.

What was life like in Egypt while you waited?

Egypt was intended to be a brief stop, so initially it was fun and less heavy. When you are living in a new country as a tourist with a timeline, things feel different. But it soon became a space of waiting, torture, and eventually, a profound curriculum. My expectations were high, and I spent that period in a state of bracing for the future. My life in Egypt was sustained only by the grace of God. My visa application was rejected 3 times, but people kept showing up for me in ways that defied logic. 

The first wait was short and less painful, and I was less anxious because I was almost 100% certain of approval. But the second and third waits tested me in more ways than I could have imagined. It forced me to stop seeing myself as a victim and start seeing myself as a strategist navigating life. Because that period contained so many lessons I could never fit into a single interview, I am currently writing a book about that journey, with an expected release next year.

Tell me about receiving the first rejection. What did that moment feel like?

That morning, I was excited and just a little anxious. I was looking forward to my next flight out of Egypt, but could not see what lay ahead. Upon arriving at the embassy, I saw many people who had already been rejected, as well as others whose visas had been approved. I was hoping to be among the latter, but I had no idea that I was holding a rejection letter until I opened it. Looking at that paper for the first time was heavy and sobering. It was one of the most confusing and loneliest moments of my life.

What She Said: I Lost My Sight at 11 and Refused to Lose Anything Else

What made you decide to apply again?

After the first rejection, the company itself was confused. They had seen many other candidates receive approvals, so they reached out and strongly encouraged me to apply again. That external validation gave me the glimmer of hope I desperately needed, but ultimately, I kept going because the “why” behind my journey remained true. Even when the evidence was thin, I clung to the belief that it would work out. At the time, I seemed to forget that we make plans and God laughs, and God must have laughed quite hard at my plans, because clearly that specific path was not mine to follow. I simply needed the lessons that period of waiting contained, and I was not finished learning them yet.

By the third rejection, what was going through your mind?

That moment made me question my judgment and my direction. I had to face the difficult truth that my savings were entirely finished, and I had no backup plan before leaving Nigeria, so going back home would mean hitting rock bottom all over again. By the third rejection, I reached a profound self-realisation about life’s survival limit. I knew I had to act immediately, so I began job hunting in Egypt. 

A Good Samaritan I met at an African restaurant eventually referred me to a job as an animator at a resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. Working long, gruelling hours, dealing with frustrated guests while carrying the heavy mental weight of my own failed relocation was intensely humbling. It stripped away every ounce of ego I had left, but it provided the bridge I needed to sustain myself until I could finally return to Nigeria.

When you got back to your hotel room after each rejection, what was actually happening inside you?

When I got back to my hotel room from the embassy, sitting there with an empty wallet and a rejected stamp was the moment I genuinely asked God what he was doing with my life. I cried my eyes out and prayed more times than I can remember, asking for a miracle. Eventually, I learned to treat those doubts as temporary visitors rather than permanent residents.

What did coming home feel like after all of that?

It was a humbling return, but I realised that I was not the same woman who had left. I discovered that even without resources, I was still standing and formidable. It was a hard and heavy experience, and because I could not explain to everyone what had happened, only a few close friends even knew I was back. I refused to let the setback define me, so I applied for an MBA upon my return and secured a visa to study in Paris a few months later. It was not easy, but I am deeply grateful to my family, who never gave up on me.

Financially, emotionally and mentally, what did starting over actually look like?

It looked like extreme discipline and the realisation that I could not do it alone. I had to move past the pride of being the one who figures it out and learn to accept help when it is offered. I was drained and wanted it to end. I spent most of my time at a friend’s place until I was stable enough to stand on my own feet. I learned the necessary survival skills to move forward, and when my flight out of Nigeria finally left, I was determined to make it, and I never looked back.

At what point did you decide that the rejection would not be the end of your story?

The moment I realised that my ability to build and my mental grit were not tied to a visa or a geographical location. I decided that if I could build a business once, I could build it again and again.

How did InstaGo Travels come to life?

InstaGo was born from the intersection of my personal experience navigating complex travel systems and the academic rigour of my MBA programme. During my time in Egypt, the travel agent who planned my trip showed no sympathy, support or transparency, which became incredibly draining. Once I returned to Nigeria, friends and contacts began asking for my support with their own trips. When we were tasked with a mini-project in business school, I chose to develop a concept to solve the very problems I had faced. InstaGo became that project, and I eventually brought it to life outside the classroom because I realised there was a better, more sustainable way to serve travellers. I have trained my team to treat every client’s application as a strategic project because I know they are really buying their future in a new environment, not just a service.

How has the journey with InstaGo been?

It feels surreal, especially when I recall where and how InstaGo started. It was not a smooth path, but I am grateful for the vision. It feels like a blessing to give back in a way that makes people feel seen, heard and supported.

You also founded The Fem Founders. Where did that come from?

I wanted to create the space I needed when I was starting out, to surround myself with women who are building and pushing boundaries. Most of the women in our community are expats and career-driven professionals looking to navigate life or business in a new environment, and my goal is to ensure that no female founder feels she has to face that loneliness alone. The growth has been beyond what I imagined. In just two months, we have welcomed over 200 members from around the world. I believe that when you pool collective intelligence, you reduce the time it takes for every woman in the room to reach her goal.

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Looking back, do you think you would have built the life you have today if that visa had been approved the first time?

No. Never. I believe the rejection timeline was the best professional development I ever had, and I never looked at life the same way again.

What is the biggest lesson rejection has taught you?

Rejection has taught me countless times that a NO from a system is not a NO to your potential. It is simply an invitation to innovate. If you can survive the process of building from nothing, you can lead in any market or environment.

What do people misunderstand about starting over from scratch?

People think you lose your progress, but you do not. You lose your things, but you keep your experience, your network and your capacity to solve problems, which is the only real currency you ever need in life.

If another woman is reading this while navigating a major setback, what would you want her to know?

I want her to know that this, too, shall pass. Giving up should never be an option, and asking for help when you need it is not a sign of weakness. It is actually the first step toward understanding the true power of community. While you are in the thick of it, never give up and do not stop praying, because I truly believe God has a better plan for you than what you can see right now.

What are you most proud of, not because the world celebrates it, but because you know what it cost you?

I am most proud of my mental agility. I honestly did not think I had it in me until life showed me that I did. You never really know how strong you are until the only choice you have left is to survive, and in that space, you realise you are far more capable than you ever imagined.

When people remember your story years from now, what do you hope they remember most?

I stood in the middle of my own fire and built a path out of it despite the challenges life threw at me. I hope my story serves as a reminder to everyone, especially women, that if I could do it, so can they.

罢丑别听聽is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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 Ejiro Sharon Okotie, a 42-year-old Gender, Disability and Social Inclusion expert, trained counsellor, founder of Hope Inspired Foundation for Women and Youth with Disabilities, and author of Beyond the Darkness: A Journey from Loss to Purpose. She talks about going blind due to meningitis at 11 years old, the family that refused to give up on her, and why she is living proof that disability is not a death sentence.

Can you tell me about yourself and the family you grew up in?

My name is Ejiro Sharon Okotie. I’m 42, from Okpara Island in Delta State, and I currently split my time between Lagos and Abuja. I’m a development professional specialising in Gender, Disability and Social Inclusion; a trained counsellor running my own private practice, LRS Therapy Hub; founder and Executive Director of Hope Inspired Foundation for Women and Youth with Disabilities; a published researcher; and now an author. I am also a woman with a disability; I became permanently blind in both eyes at 11. I am a happy soul who loves the soft life, gospel music, laughter, love and humanity.

I am a twin, the second twin they call Kehinde in Yoruba, and I have an older sister. So that鈥檚 three girls from my mother, Elder Caroline Amujiane, who is the most selfless human being I have ever known. Though my mother found herself in a polygamous marriage that eventually ended in divorce, this means I have other half-sisters and brothers I do not really know from my father. My mother had my twin and me as a single parent because she divorced my father before we were born. We grew up with only her our entire lives. 

As a child, I was very reserved, quiet and gentle. My twin was fiercer and more stubborn, and she would fight for me in primary school. The first six years of my twin’s and my life, we stayed with our maternal grandmother in Sapele, Delta State, because my Mum had moved to Kaduna in Northern Nigeria in search of better opportunities with her eldest sister, Mummy Rebecca. Eventually, she brought us back to Kaduna with her, and after about a year, she also brought in our oldest sister, Joy, who had been living with our father. My twin would also fight our older sister and fight my battles, too. I was just noticeably quiet, but over time, with different experiences, I became more outspoken and learned how to fight for myself. Because at some point, my mum’s younger sister took my twin to live with her family in Maiduguri, and she didn’t return until we were 18, like 10 years later.

What are your earliest memories before losing your sight?

Running errands for my mum. She was in the sanitation department at our church, and when she couldn’t get there on time, she would send me to sweep, mop the floor and clean the seats. She also used to send me to the market with a written list and money for food items. As small as I was, I already knew how to price things, collect change, and then I would use whatever was left of my transport fare to buy every sweet thing in that market and trek home with everything balanced on my head.

I was a lively, active child. I had church friends, and we played ten-ten and suwe together. We didn’t have luxury, but I never felt like I lacked anything. Life felt very full.

Can you walk me through how you lost your sight at 11?

It was 1995. My mum had decided to put my older sister and me in boarding school that September. My sister went to Federal Government College, Kuje in Abuja, and I got admission into Christ Ambassador College in Sabo, Kaduna. I stayed only three months, September to December, before I started feeling sick.

Within a few days, it had gotten so bad that I couldn’t walk. I was too weak. They sent for my mum, and she had to carry me because I couldn’t manage on my own. She took me first to my aunt’s family hospital, but the admission fee was two thousand naira, and she didn’t have it. So she took me to another private hospital near where she worked. I was admitted, treated for malaria and typhoid, and kept for five days.

On the fifth day, I woke up to full darkness.

I couldn’t see anything. When I told my mum, she went to get the doctor, and they found a thick, dark, reddish coating over both my eyeballs. They said this was not what they had been treating and immediately referred us to the National Eye Hospital. By the next morning, my joints had started swelling. The eye doctors there told my mum something bigger was happening inside my body and referred us to Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital. That is where they took a sample of my spinal fluid and found the Cerebrospinal Meningitis. But the damage to my eyes had already been done.

I spent six weeks in that hospital. Over 154 injections, including two directly into my eyes. And at the end of it all, the doctor at Guinness Eye Hospital told my mum plainly: “Your daughter will never see again. I advise you to get her into a blind school so she can continue with her life.”

That was how our journey into blindness began.

I immediately decided I wasn’t going to let it break me. Or maybe my infant mind just couldn’t fully grasp what I had lost. Either way, I started pretending it wasn’t affecting me as much as it was, because I could see how the news was destroying my mum.

I remember asking her then, “Mummy, whose report will you believe? I choose to believe the report of the Lord!”

I was forming strong for her. And somehow that helped both of us.

What was the hardest part of adjusting?

Returning to church. My friends were young, and they just didn’t understand what had happened. We would go to our usual playground, and once everyone was done playing, they would forget that I was now blind and run off, leaving me behind. I would just sit there crying, waiting for my mum to start looking for me and send someone to come and get me. The same thing happened at my aunt’s house. My cousins and their friends would run off to play, and nobody thought to take me along. I remember sitting in my aunt’s kitchen on one of those days, feeling terrible about being left behind.

But this didn’t last long. A few months later, we moved from Kaduna back to Sapele in Delta State, and the change of environment made things much easier. These new people only knew this version of me, and they engaged with me as such from the very beginning. Moving to Delta was advantageous because it led me to experience empathy. My grandma’s neighbours showed me kindness; they always wanted to help in any way and at every chance they got. So I really did not feel different.

My grandma also often spoke about my future whenever her friends or others came to greet her, and the topic came up. “So what will happen to her now that she is blind?” My grandma would say, “God that created her will see to it that she becomes something in life. God will not leave her.”

I remember two distinct incidents. The first: a drunkard from the neighbourhood came to my grandma with a proposition. I was sitting in the living room that day. He walked in, greeted my grandma, and began speaking to her in Itsekiri. I understood because I grew up with my grandma. He told her that he had heard she had a blind child and had come to ask if she would be willing to give him as a wife. At least he would feed me and take that burden from her, and I could bear children for him. I remember how furious my grandmother was. She walked him out of the house and asked him never to return, shouting after him, “Did I tell you I cannot feed my granddaughter?” And in that moment, she said, “This my granddaughter, go be a big woman for life.”

The second incident was a young boy from the compound who used to come to our house to play with me. My grandmother’s rule was that I must never enter any neighbour’s house, as there was a possibility they would take advantage and try to rape me since I would not see them close the door, take off their clothes or do something they shouldn’t. So anyone who wanted to play with me had to come to our house, where she could keep her eyes on them. This young boy’s visits had become too frequent for my grandma, and after a while, I noticed he was no longer coming. When I eventually ran into him and asked why, he told me my grandma had told him to get his eyes off me, that she had noticed the way he was looking at me, that I was not his spec, that “it’s an Engineer her granddaughter will marry and not a meat seller like him.” I was shocked and apologised on my grandma’s behalf, saying I didn’t know this had happened. I think people around us just took their cue from my family and treated me accordingly. Everyone was hopeful about what I would become. So though adjusting was difficult, at least I had my family.

How else did your family carry you through all of this?

I always say I am one of the most blessed individuals on the planet when it comes to family. I jokingly tell my cousins that the man who marries me will have a lot of people to pay bride price to because I am a living example of what it means to say it takes a village to raise a child.

Starting with my mother. Her sacrifices for me are immeasurable. When I was at UNIBEN, she would come to school on weekends just to help me dictate my notes so I could braille them, or to help me record textbooks onto tape. She gave everything she had.

My older sister Joy taught me how to carry myself as a woman, even with blindness. Around the time I was 21 or 23, she sat me down and said, “Ejiro, as a woman, you must be known for something. Pick something about yourself and focus on it, your skin, your hair, your dressing, or a combination.” Because of Sister Joy, I take very good care of my appearance.

And my twin sister, Sherida. I call her my Angel because that is the only word that comes close to describing what she means to me. At one point, we were literally living each other’s lives. Her classes were in the mornings and mine in the evenings, and she didn’t want to leave me home alone, so we just went everywhere together. Her classes, my classes, all of it. Until she was travelling to Lagos to help fix my laptop for me, and got into an accident that broke her hand and kept her home for over a month of her final year. That season was one of the hardest of our lives, but it was also when I found my independence. Before that accident, my twin did everything for me.

What was it like going back to school after the doctors confirmed you would never regain your sight?

One of my mum’s greatest worries was education. Our family holds it very dear. The first person she spoke to when she visited a blind school in Kaduna was a blind teacher there, who told her, “Don’t waste time looking for a miracle. Let her continue her life. God can do it while she’s rebuilding her life.”

So my mum found Pacelli School for the Blind in Surulere and registered me in 1997. The principal, Rev. Sister Justina Obiangulu, created a special rehabilitation class just for me so I could learn Braille and typewriting without having to go back to primary school. My teacher was Mr Tunde Mohammed, Uncle Tunde, as I called him. He was also blind, and he was so patient with me. He taught me braille, how to type, how to walk independently, how to find things when they fell to the floor, and the doggedness that life required.

I used to cry constantly because I was desperate to get back to where I had left off, and braille felt like my only way there. Whenever the contractions weren’t coming to me, I would break down, and Uncle Tunde would say, “Ejiro, be patient with yourself; you will get it.” And one day, Sister Justina found me crying in the corridor, held me to herself and said, “Ejiro, always remember that whenever a door closes, God opens a window somewhere.”

Those words carried me for years.

I spent eight months at Pacelli. By July 1998, I had fully learned Braille and typing. By October 1998, I had gained admission into Queen’s College to JSS2, exactly where I had left off. I didn’t repeat a single class.

How did you manage through university without the resources available to you today?

Queen’s College was manageable because the school had always had blind students and had basic provisions in place. Resource teachers, extra time for exams, and brailed scripts. I was also lucky that older blind students passed their Braille notes down to me, so I had two classes’ worth of notes ahead of me at all times.

University was a completely different battle. At UNIBEN, I was the first blind student in my department for the International Studies and Diplomacy diploma. I had to go around and introduce myself to every lecturer at the start of the term. I had no screen reader then, just a braille machine and a manual typewriter. With a typewriter, if you make a mistake, you cannot go back and correct it. I had to memorise each exam question, arrange my full answer in my head, and then begin typing, because once you started, you carried on no matter what.

Despite all that, I completed my two-year diploma with Distinction, then gained direct entry to the 200-level and finished with a Second Class Upper in International Studies and Diplomacy.

By the time I was doing my first master’s at UNILAG, I had learned to use a computer with the JAWS screen reader software and everything transformed. I could scan notes, get soft copies of textbooks, search the internet, type and correct mistakes, and print my exam scripts. What had been grinding and exhausting became something I could actually navigate with confidence.

That was the first of three master’s degrees. Public and International Affairs from UNILAG, Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex on a Chevening Scholarship, where I graduated with a Distinction, and Marriage and Family Therapy from Triune Biblical University in the US, alongside other certifications and short courses.

Even with those provisions in place, were there moments when you felt excluded because of your disability?

Sure, there are several moments when one is excluded, deliberately or unintentionally, due to ignorance. Often, when people see me, because my disability is visible, people are quick to begin putting me in different CANNOT boxes. “Oh, she cannot do X, cannot do Y,” but they never think about what I CAN do. It’s sometimes from ignorance. But I have felt that way at work, at events, and even at church.

Was there ever a time you wanted to give up? What kept you going?

I do not think giving up was ever an option for me. Do I have low moments where I feel overwhelmed? Yes. But giving up, no! I love life too much. My mantra is that there is always a way out. Whenever I have cried, maybe slept a lot, or just engaged in the things I use to cope, I start thinking about the different possible solutions or ways out. I always believe that too many people have invested in my life at different points for me to just give up. Plus, God has surrounded me with great people; I always say I have the gift of people, and I do not take it for granted. During low moments, I always have someone to call, and often I get the right prayer or just the direction to move forward.

My mother is one of my biggest motivations to keep pushing in life. Whenever I think about everything she has done and been through, I always want her to look at me and be glad that her sacrifice was worth it. And it paid off after all! My purpose and all the destinies I now know are tied to mine, which is also what propels me to keep moving. When I think about all the hurdles I have surmounted in life and tell myself, if I lived through that, then I’ll survive this. What does not kill you makes you stronger. The difficulties I have faced at different stages of my life have made me stronger and often served as preparation for the next hurdle. I also thank God for the gift of salvation; I am a believer, and the word of God is where I draw the most strength. There is always the right word tailored for that particular situation, and the Holy Spirit is right there encouraging me, directing me to scriptures, or simply leading me to a story on YouTube or a WhatsApp status that answers the situation. God is my foundation and remains the rock that keeps me standing in any storm or blow that life may deal me.

What She Said: The Clinic Paid More For My Eggs Because I鈥檓 Light-Skinned

Looking back now, what do you wish people had understood about you during those years?

I wish people understood that the loss of a part of a person is not a death sentence. You do not have to write people off because they acquired or were born with an impairment. We are unique, and people live differently. Disability is just one of the diversities of life, and the fact that I am blind doesn’t mean I’m no longer a human being. I have breath in my nostrils, and like everyone else, I have desires; to be somebody in life, to marry, to love and be loved, to have my own children and my home, to have my money, and to have a voice that should be heard in society. I’m just like everyone else, a human being with dreams, hopes, aspirations and everything else that keeps and drives any human being.

I mean, look at me now. I became the founder of Hope Inspired Foundation for Women and Youth with Disabilities, a Lead Counsellor, Gender and Inclusion Specialist, Chevening Scholar, Mandela Washington Fellow and author.

Walk us through your journey to each of these milestones. Which achievement feels the most meaningful to you, and why?

My mum has a common expression: “Life is in phases and men are in sizes.” One phase of my life opened me up to the next, and like an onion, I have just continued to peel back old skin, diving into opportunities by seizing them and sometimes by just showing up, speaking up, or asking a question.

In October 2011, I began my NYSC, and six months in, someone told me about a job opening at the Nigeria Association of the Blind for an HIV project for blind adolescents. In camp, I had joined the UNICEF Peer Educator Trainer programme on preventing HIV/AIDS and Sexual Reproductive Health for adolescents, and I was the only blind person there. As we did the training, I kept thinking to myself: as important as this information is, how come none of these programmes targeted people like me? In addition to my CDS at a secondary school near my house, I started visiting two blind schools: the School for the Blind Vocational Training Centre in Cappa, Oshodi, and the School for the Blind Nigeria Farm Craft Centre at Isere Olofin, Igando.

When I heard about the opening at NAB, where the African Union for the Blind was coming to implement a project, I applied as a fresh corps member. Long story short, I was employed as a Project Coordinator. The project was implemented across three south-western states, Lagos, Ogun and Oyo, and at the end of the first year, it was extended to the remaining three, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti. Over the two years of the project, I trained 50 blind youths as peer educators, and we reached over 4,000 blind adolescents and youths with information and HIV testing across the six states.

But as I moved from state to state, I noticed a troubling trend. The male peer educators were adventurous, outspoken and daring, while the female blind peer educators were often passive, wanting to stay in the background, sometimes too afraid to speak. I remember one lady from Oyo who was so frightened, so I went to her, and she told me her spoken English wasn’t good enough. I encouraged her to speak in Yoruba, noting that there would be people in the room who needed the information in Yoruba and that she was the one who could give it to them. She came forward and delivered beautifully.

This discovery really bothered me. I began asking questions: Why are girls with disabilities so passive? The answer was always the same: low self-esteem. So I decided to do something about it. As UNICEF peer educators, a key part of our curriculum was building life skills, such as self-esteem, assertiveness, confidence-building, negotiation and refusal skills. I started at my alma mater, Queen’s College, got approval from the school authorities, and began coaching the blind students there. After some time, I spoke with my mentor about my vision, and he advised me to build a proper structure to track progress and impact. I got into a conversation with a classmate while doing my master’s at UNILAG. She told me about her lawyer who helped register her organisation. I approached him, and in 2015, I officially registered the Hope Inspired Foundation for Women and Youth (HIFWYD). After eight years, in 2023, we metamorphosed into a full Organisation of Persons with Disabilities, promoting and protecting the rights of women and youth with disabilities through policy advocacy, programme implementation and self-actualisation efforts. Over the last eleven years, we have supported over 22,000 women and youth, building their capacity as self-advocates for rights and inclusion across education, economic empowerment, and leadership.

Establishing HIFWYD has been my most meaningful achievement because it embodies the core of my purpose: to inspire others to succeed. Seeing our beneficiaries speak up for themselves and their rights, pursue their goals and dreams, and aspire to be more is more rewarding than anything else in this world. I remember in the early days of HIFWYD, before we began attracting grants, I would use all the salary I made from my nine-to-five to implement our small projects, the InspireLife project, our annual Girls’ Camp in December, and how rewarding it was to see students in QC stepping into leadership opportunities in school, handling peer pressure efficiently, speaking confidently and boldly for themselves; young women with disabilities becoming more aware of their bodies, their sexuality, their sexual rights, able to make informed choices; women with disabilities now leading policy advocacy for the enactment of disability law in Ebonyi. HIFWYD stands as the bedrock on which everything I have done is built.

That鈥檚 truly amazing. How did the Mandela Washington Fellowship happen?

I first applied in 2014 but was rejected. In my mind, I said, “No be people like me them dey find,” but I was wrong. When it opened again in 2015, my lecturer called me and encouraged me to apply again. This time, I was more intentional. I downloaded the form, but because I didn’t have full faith in what I had, I submitted it at eleven-something pm on the night of the deadline. To my greatest shock, I got an email inviting me to an interview.

At the interview, when they asked why I should be selected, I said, “If you don’t believe in your own dream and cannot invest in it, why should you expect someone else to invest in it? I don’t have many resources, but from what I have, I have started to address the challenges I observed in my peers, one life at a time, slow but surely.” I remember the coordinator, Rodah, as I later found out her name was, repeating those lines back to me, and I knew I had struck a chord. Still, I did not believe I was what they were looking for.

On a certain day in March, my twin Sherida called to say she had received a congratulations email from something called IREX. She said it seemed those people had taken me. I ran to check my email, and there it was. Not only had I been selected for the seven-week Fellowship at Arizona State University, but I had also been accepted for the six-week Professional Development Experience, an internship with a US-based organisation. I was going to be in the US for thirteen weeks.

My cohort included 25 Fellows from 20 Sub-Saharan African countries. We all prepared presentations for the Ignite Talk to be delivered at the Presidential Summit in Washington DC, and the cohort voted for the best one to represent ASU. Everyone voted for mine. Our coordinator, Dana, said my presentation always moved her to tears because of its content and the passion with which I delivered it. That was how I represented Arizona State University in Washington DC. I also shook hands with President Barack Obama at the Presidential Summit. I presented at the Sixth Africa Forum in Uganda, attended a Disability Rights Monitoring training in Pretoria, South Africa, and received a scholarship to a rehabilitation conference in Edinburgh.

In that same period, I won two grants totalling $14,000 for Hope Inspired, which dramatically scaled our work. Over 7,000 applications in Nigeria, only 40 Fellows selected. Across Africa, over 50,000 applications, only 500 Fellows. I was among the 40 from Nigeria and the 500 from Africa. From that point on, I stopped doubting what I can do.

Let鈥檚 get into you becoming a Chevening Scholar.

I applied once and was rejected. Same feeling as before: no be person like me them dey find. But my colleague Michael, who had gotten in on his own application, kept pushing me to try again and offered to help review my essays. I applied a second time, got invited for an interview, and when I arrived, it felt like a walk in the park. That year, I had been so intentional that sourcing and applying for scholarships had practically become my full-time work. I applied for the Australia-Africa Award, Chevening, and the IDS Scholarship, among others, and received two scholarships at once: Chevening and the Australia-Africa Award. I chose Chevening and IDS because at the time, IDS had been ranked first globally in Development Studies for six consecutive years. If someone was paying the bills, why not choose the best?

IDS challenged everything about me. I was intimidated daily, surrounded by brilliant professionals from all over the world. I doubted myself, my knowledge, everything. But I was being stretched. I heard that only one Nigerian had ever graduated from IDS with a Distinction, and I said quietly to myself, if one person made it, I would be the next.

At the end of my programme, I received a Distinction in my dissertation and an overall Distinction. I was one of five Nigerians to graduate with a Distinction from IDS in 2020.

And you also became a counsellor and an author. How did both of those happen?

Both came from the same season of deep intentionality. In 2024, as I planned my 40th birthday, I took March to pray and reflect seriously on what the next decade should look like. Then in May, a cousin called, and we spoke for two hours. At the end of that call, he was lighter and clearer. After I hung up, a thought came to me: why are you not doing this as a profession?

Counselling. It felt surprising and completely obvious at the same time. My older sister had told me when I was thirteen to open a problem clinic. From as far back as I could remember, I had always had the right words for people. The next day, I found a training institute, enrolled, and by December 2025, I had completed a master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and set up LRS Therapy Hub.

The book came from the same season. Having lived with blindness for thirty-one years and gone through a particularly difficult stretch in 2025, something in me said it was time to put it all down. In April 2025, I was featured on the podcast Through It All by Dr Kola Alexandra Olugbodi, and for the first time, I narrated my full story out loud. Something moved inside me. I started writing.

Eight months later, on my birthday, 21 April 2026, Beyond the Darkness: A Journey from Loss to Purpose was in my hands as a hard copy. I launched it with my friends and loved ones on that same day.

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

What is the book about, and what do you want people to take from it?

It is a memoir. My life from age eleven, losing my sight to Cerebrospinal Meningitis, through every phase that followed, the lessons, the storms, the wins. But I didn’t want it to be only about disability. I wanted people to see the endless possibilities the human spirit carries.

What drove me most was wanting to honour my mother. When a disability occurs, everyone focuses on the child’s needs. But the day I lost my sight, my mother also lost something. She lost her hope for my future, asking God what would become of me and whether I would ever live a normal life. She revealed later how she lost parts of herself, her own dreams, her own life, just to be there for me emotionally, spiritually and physically. Those sacrifices go unnoticed. Beyond the Darkness is for her and for every parent, sibling and caregiver who has ever done the same in silence.

The key message is this: we all go through darkness. Mine was the loss of physical sight. Yours may be the loss of a loved one, a job, an addiction, or a dream. But in every darkness there is a hidden light waiting to be found. The darkness is not the end. It is the shadow that leads you to your inner light. Do not wait for the light. Shine, and light will find you.

You can get the book here on or Amazon ( or ).

What are the biggest misconceptions people still have about blind women?

The CANNOT box. Before asking a single question, people assume I cannot cook, care for a home, or raise children. Someone I knew from university had secretly been considering marrying me years before I knew anything about it. Years later, he came to visit me in Lagos and sat watching as I made eba from scratch, warmed soup and dished out his food. The next day I came back, peeled a yam, cooked it and fried eggs. After eating, he told me about the secret intentions he had once had and how he had talked himself out of it because he didn’t think he could afford all the help I would need to function as his wife.

I simply said: “Your loss.”

The second misconception is that I should not have preferences or standards, that I should be grateful for any attention and not exercise any judgment about what I want. A man from my church once told me that what I needed was just a husband. When he eventually asked me out, and I said no, he was genuinely shocked. Then came the insults. “Too proud. What do you think you are?”

I have a spec. I am educated, beautiful, bold and a Jesus baby. You think I don’t know I deserve the best, and that I have worked far too hard on myself to settle for someone I don’t want?

The third misconception is that confidence in a blind woman reads as pride. Because many women with disabilities struggle with low self-esteem and stay quiet and in the background, when you show up blind and bold and with a voice, people read it as arrogance. It is not. It is just a woman who knows what she carries.

What do you wish people would stop doing, even with good intentions?

Moving my things without telling me. When friends visit and rearrange my space in the name of helping, they complicate my life. I already have a full mental map of where everything is. When you move something, and you’re no longer around, I spend time searching for it, which leaves me frustrated and sometimes unable to function. If you must move something, tell me the new location.

The other thing is speaking to my assistant instead of speaking to me directly. When people meet me with someone helping me, they will ask my assistant what my name is, what I would like, and how I should be guided. Speak to me. I am right there. I have a voice and all the information about myself.

If you meet a person with a disability and you’re unsure what to do, there are only two questions you need to ask: “How would you like me to help you?” and “What do you need?” Ask those, and you will always have a great start.

What would you say to parents who have just found out their child has a disability?

First, I want them to process what has happened, not only to the child but to themselves and to the family. Because it is not only the child who has lost something. Then I want them to know there is hope. The journey may be tough, but with the right support and information, you can begin to take action early, and that matters enormously.

Give your child independence. From early on, begin teaching them to do things for themselves, with you guiding them along the way. Over-protecting them and doing everything for them is a disservice to their long-term life. Set structures in place for them to thrive, and then let them learn, make mistakes and grow.

And do not lose yourself in the process. Process your own emotions. Build with your child, but do not leave yourself behind. You deserve to live, too.

If you could speak to the 11-year-old girl who had just woken up in the dark, what would you say to her?

I would tell her everything is possible. Dreams come true; you just have to keep holding on to them and keep moving through every difficulty.

I would tell her the storms will come, but those storms will make her stronger, and in her growth, her wings carry opportunities for others to fly. Under her shade, others will find comfort from the scorching sun of life.

I would tell her that life is beautiful and worth living. So live your best.

And I would tell her this: you may have lost your physical sight, but the sight within is stronger than any external light outside. Do not wait for light. Shine, and light will find you.

罢丑别听聽is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders and join 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. 

Today’s #WhatSheSaid is a little different. We spoke to two women who donated eggs at the same private clinic in Lagos. Yasmine* (27) is mixed race and light-skinned, and Kemi* (30) is fully Nigerian. Though it was the same procedure and the same hospital, they had two completely different experiences in pay, care, pain, and in what the clinic decided each of their bodies deserved to feel.

Can you tell me about your life before the egg donation? 

Yasmine: This was around 2023. I was about 24-years-old, living with my best friend somewhere past Sangotedo in Lagos. We could barely afford it, but we were making do. I had a job in Lekki that paid me 50k and expected me to come in every day, so it was very temporary. My parents did not care. They felt like, okay, you’ve finished university, time to stand on your own. For context, I did not come from a poor family. We have always been comfortable, so this felt unfair to me, and I was resentful. I know some people will call me ungrateful. It is what it is. Anyways, this meant more often than not, I didn’t have much. Of course, I had a few other friends who pulled me into modelling gigs here and there, but those were not sustainable and modelling never really interested me. 

My roommate had a job that didn’t pay much, but it was enough to keep us afloat, and she also had people she was seeing who helped fund our lifestyle and survival. I was dating someone too, who helped out often. I was taking courses, trying to find better jobs, just trying to figure myself out while surviving in an economy that was not making it easy.

Kemi: Mine happened in 2021, I believe? Or early 2022. I had just lost my job, and your girl was really going through it. I had been there nearly four years; I was due for a promotion. But my superior was making advances, and I couldn’t keep putting myself in a compromising position. I knew if I said anything, nobody would believe me, so I left. My family comes from very little, and I was the one sending money home. My mother was sick at the time, and I needed to keep those transfers going, and I couldn’t anymore. Still, I couldn鈥檛 stay at the job. It had gotten to a point where I could genuinely see him raping me. 

So, I needed a significant amount of money quickly, and egg donation felt like the most viable option. I spoke to people from my university and people I trusted from my former office who had been through it. I asked a lot of questions before I went anywhere.

Had you thought about egg donation before? What were your feelings going in?

Yasmine: I had strong feelings that were mostly less than positive ones. I’ve always been the type to say that if I got accidentally pregnant, I could never abort. I judge absolutely nobody who does. Genuinely, if you cannot keep it, please do what you have to do and don’t let anyone make you feel a type of way. But for me, it always felt like I couldn’t, and egg donation felt similar. I used to think it was like giving a part of yourself away. It was like giving a child away almost. I know it’s not the same thing, but that’s how it sat with me.

I think part of it comes from the fact that my parents were absent in a lot of ways when I was growing up. So I take the found family I have very seriously: my siblings, my close friends, the people who really show up. The idea of giving something away that could become a life just felt heavy. That’s where I was.

Kemi: I have never had any strong thoughts or opinions about it. I have always known that in this life you must hustle to survive, and I have never judged another woman鈥檚 hustle. I needed the money. That was the main thing. The fact that I was helping a couple have a baby was a good thought alongside it, but the financial need was the driver. I had done my research, I had asked around, I went in with my eyes open.

How did you find the clinic and what was that first conversation like?

Yasmine: My best friend and housemate was already in conversation with them. They had reached out to her, and she was going to speak to the doctor about donating. She asked me to come for moral support; I was just there for her, that was the plan. But when we arrived, they were so warm, so open, so patient. Any question you had, they answered fully; nothing was rushed. And somewhere in that conversation, they started talking to me too, encouraging me to consider it. They said just come for a scan first, just see. So we both had a transvaginal ultrasound right there, and everything checked out. By the end of that visit, I was in.

Kemi: Through a friend. She told me the clinic was offering more than others I had heard about. Most places were paying less, and these ones were offering one hundred and seventy thousand naira. I was going to be able to send seventy thousand home and keep the rest. That felt like a lifeline. She also mentioned that she had gone through the process and it wasn鈥檛 bad. That they were better than other hospitals she had tried. The conversation with the doctors was straightforward. I asked what I needed to ask, they told me the full process, and I said yes. 

Yasmine, what happened to feeling like it was giving a part of yourself away? 

I had that thought mostly during my teenage years and very early twenties. At this time, I had been through enough that I was a bit, should I say, swayable? And I was with my friend, with whom I had done everything. My friend who has always been there for me. I felt comfortable. They told me I would be helping a couple who had been trying really, really hard to have kids and that the 鈥榚ggs are there, I am not using them anyway鈥�. I thought really hard, and what mostly sold it was clinging to what I know was the manipulative point that I would be helping a couple out; I was on the precipice of deciding to be child-free and the money. I really needed the money.聽

Kemi, did you have second thoughts at any point? No worries about where your eggs would end up?

Genuinely, no. I really didn鈥檛 care. That wasn鈥檛 my thought process at all. I was thinking about the money at the end and the pain I was enduring for it. I was thinking, 鈥淚t鈥檒l all be worth it in the end鈥�. You will not understand. I have seen suffering in this life. This was nothing. 

What She Said: The Clinic Paid More For My Eggs Because I鈥檓 Light-Skinned

When they told you what you’d be paid, what was your reaction?

Yasmine: They said full Nigerians get paid 170,000 naira. While mixed-race and white donors get four hundred and fifty thousand. Some people have negotiated more. When I asked why, they said, ” You know, mixed-race and white eggs are rare here. If you go there, black eggs will be more expensive.

I hate discrimination of any and every kind. I see the privilege that comes with looking the way I look in Nigeria, and it is something I am very conscious of. So this disgusted me. It irritated me to my bones. But I also had nothing. No money, no job. And they were offering me almost three times what they were offering fully Nigerian women for the same procedure on the same body. So as much as it annoyed me, I took what was being offered. I needed it.

Kemi: They told me one hundred and seventy thousand, and I said okay. They were offering more than most other places I had heard about, so it felt like the right choice. I didn’t ask many questions about the number. I just needed it to work.

Walk me through the process. 

Yasmine: So, after the transvaginal ultrasound confirmed everything was fine with my follicles, they explained what the next two weeks would look like. The stimulation phase is basically you injecting yourself daily with hormones that tell your ovaries to produce more eggs than they naturally would in a cycle. Normally, your body matures one egg per month. The injections push your ovaries to mature multiple eggs at once, which is what makes retrieval possible and also why you feel so rough by the end of it.

They gave us a Gonal-F pen each; it looks exactly like an EpiPen. You click a tiny disposable needle tip onto the end, dial the dose, inject it into the fatty part of your belly, and remove and throw the tip away afterwards. That’s it. They also gave us a tracker sheet to log each injection so we wouldn’t lose count or miss a day. We only needed to come back to the clinic after five to seven days for monitoring appointments, transvaginal ultrasounds to check how the follicles were developing, and to adjust the dosage if needed. They covered transportation to and from those visits.

For most of the two weeks, I barely felt the injections. The needle is genuinely tiny. I remember the first time, being absolutely terrified, looking at it from every angle, and then putting it in and thinking, oh. That was nothing. I was alternating sides of my belly each day, so it never got too sore in one spot. I had maybe two or three clinic visits during the entire stimulation phase. It was very manageable for most of it.

Then, about thirty-six hours before retrieval, they give you what they call a trigger shot, an hCG injection that tells your body the eggs are ready and triggers the final maturation. That’s when the real discomfort kicks in because your ovaries are now full and heavy with multiple mature follicles. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting for retrieval day.

Kemi: Mine was nothing like that. I had to go into the clinic every single day for the full two weeks, and getting there wasn’t cheap. I was calculating transport costs against what I had saved and what I could still afford to lose before the payment came through. It was tight, but I made it work because I had no choice.

The injections were done by the nurses, not by me at home. It was regular needles, the kind they use to draw blood or give you a drip. Definitely much bigger than what Yasmine is describing. They were painful, not unbearable, but consistently uncomfortable, and that felt unnecessary, but it’s needles, so of course. And the nurses were efficient, fast and got it done. But the coldness is what I remember most. Nobody was outwardly rude, but I could feel it: that energy of I don’t particularly want you here; let me just get through this. It was like I was a task to be completed rather than a person to be treated. You could feel it in the room among the other women, too. We were all just moving through the same thing together, quietly, with the same indifference pointed at all of us. Nobody checked in, nobody asked how you were doing beyond the clinical minimum. You came, you got your injection, you left.

What happened physically as the retrieval day got closer?

Yasmine: The last three or four days were rough. My belly was already sore from the repeated injections, and the bloating or what felt like it, was 10 times worse. It wasn’t normal bloating; it was like my stomach was on fire from the inside and heavy. I could barely walk properly. Any bump in the car, any sudden movement, was agony. I couldn’t bend. I felt constantly like I wanted to vomit. I called the doctor, and she answered, talked me through it, reassured me it was normal and that it would be over soon. That helped.

Kemi: I had all the same symptoms, but I didn鈥檛 call anyone. I just handled it and went about looking for money still. I did call my friend because this was the first time I had gone through this. I needed to be sure the pain was normal. It was deeply uncomfortable. By retrieval day, you are already at your worst. Your body is in so much pain, you’re bloated in a way that makes every movement difficult, and you can barely think straight. You just want it to be over.

Tell me about the retrieval itself.

Yasmine: I lay almost upside down, my knees bent and ankles strapped down to the bed, uncomfortably wide open, and they asked the standard questions: do you drink, do you smoke, do you do hard drugs, and while they were talking, they injected the cannula they had put in earlier with, I guess, anaesthesia because I was just gone. I don’t remember anything from the procedure itself. There鈥檚 some foggy memory of feeling like something was being pulled out of me, but it鈥檚 barely there.聽

I woke up to discomfort and real pain. It was difficult to walk; there was a deep, sharp pain in my belly. My friend was there, and she helped me get ready to leave. They had given me painkillers while I was still under, so I woke up to the tail end of that wearing off. But the procedure itself, I mostly felt nothing. I was completely under.

Kemi: Before they even started, the nurse tried to put the cannula in my hand, and she missed. Over and over again. Kept stabbing the same hand, trying to find the vein. I was already in so much discomfort, and now this. By the time she got it in, I was exhausted before the procedure had even begun.

Then I was supposed to be sedated, but I am guessing they didn鈥檛 use as much as they should have, or I just needed more because I was lying there and I was aware. I could talk, and I could feel everything that was happening to me, but I couldn鈥檛 move, or I was too sluggish to move.聽

I saw the big needle before it went in. I felt it go in. I felt them working, pulling the entire thing. Even when they were cleaning me beforehand, it was so rough, like sandpaper. But the worst was the needle and the extraction, over and over, each time they went back in for another egg. It was so painful. I kept saying so. I kept telling them it was hurting, that I could feel it, that they needed to stop.

They didn’t stop until they were done.

What were they saying back to you while you were telling them to stop?

Yasmine: I was unconscious. I didn’t know anything was wrong until much later.

Kemi: Nothing. They just kept going.

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

When did it become clear that your experiences had been different?

Yasmine: When you reached out, and we started talking. From the pricing, I already knew something wasn’t right. There was also something else: they mentioned that if you refer a surrogate to the clinic, you get two thousand dollars. That was already strange to me. But when you described what happened to Kemi during retrieval, that’s when I understood that we hadn’t just been paid differently. We had been treated differently in the most fundamental way possible. What happened to her during that retrieval should not have happened to anyone.

Kemi: I’m the type of person who talks to people. Even in that recovery room, there was a woman who was alone and clearly uncomfortable, and I just offered to help. We started talking the way you do when you’re both in a situation like that. And I asked her what she was receiving. That was the first time I heard a number that wasn’t my number. She told me, and I just thought, oh. Oh.

I’ve spoken to others since. Fully Nigerian women who went through the same clinic and mixed-race women who did as well. The experience is consistent. The coldness, the daily visits and the retrieval for full Nigerians and mostly warmth, tiny needles and Gonal-F pens they get to take home for days for the mixed-race women. 

What do you want someone reading this to do with it?

Yasmine: I want them to understand that this isn’t abstract. This is a clinic in Lagos making decisions about how much pain a woman’s body deserves to feel based on how she looks. It is happening right now, and the fact that I benefited from it makes me sick.

Kemi: I’m just telling you what’s going down. I thought it was important that someone know. This is what’s happening. Now you know.

Have you considered reporting this to the authorities?

Kemi: What exactly am I reporting? That I consented to a procedure that was performed on me? If it’s the retrieval process, some other mixed-race women have mentioned feeling some of it as well. I think everybody’s body just responds differently to it, and that is probably what they will say. I have no case. Besides, they tell you everything before you start. No one lies or takes your choice away.

Jasmine: No, I haven’t. I also do not think this will be taken seriously. And truthfully, a part of me is scared.

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