Hey Sisturrr 👋
It's February already, and I'm so excited!
January was indeed a rollercoaster for me and I saw all shapes and sizes of shege 😪
You know I've always been genuinely honest with y'all about what I've been up to!
So, let's dive in!
I decided to take my faith more seriously
On the 31st of December, 2023, I decided to spend my cross-over night by tuning into the Living Faith Church Ota service.
I joined the service at 10 p.m., and despite how exhausted I was, I stayed in the service till past 4 a.m.
The prophetic theme of the year for Living Faith Church members worldwide was Fortune 2024.
According to Bishop David Oyedepo, Fortune means fearful favour, and one way we can activate Fortune 2024 is by living our lives according to God's precepts.
Over the last few years (since 2021), my faith in God has been compromised.
I don't read the Bible or pray as I should. I'm also not committed to church activities.
I decided to make a change in 2024.
I started reading my Bible and doing my devotion every morning.
I also decided to cut off friends, people, and things that made me sin against God.
I decided to join the Living Faith Church worldwide for the 21-day fasting that started on the 8th of January, and I did.
It was not easy at all to fast with an ulcer, but I managed to fast for a little over a week.
As of writing this, I seem to have “fallen out of faith” again 😞
I can't seem to reconcile some parts of the Bible I read that promote violence against women with my strong belief in feminism.
This is a big struggle!
Emmanuella Umeh sent me money
I sent last month’s newsletter on the 1st of January.
After reading, Emmanuella reached out and sent me some money 😪
I was so grateful to be very honest 😊
It was the very first money I received this year, and the very fact that it came from someone within my Hey Sisturrr community simply means the world to me!
Aside from sending me money, she called me for more than 30 minutes to wish me a happy new year.
I went job hunting on the streets of Lagos
Anyone who ever told you being an entrepreneur is easy is lying to you.
I decided to take my entrepreneurial journey more seriously in July 2023.
Since November 2023 (when I moved into my new apartment), I haven't made any money.
I have a lot of debt to clear, as I received loans from my parents and some of my friends while moving into my new apartment.
It's been tough!
Thanks to much help from my new boyfriend (Jide), some of my very close friends, and even my mom, who has been supportive from time to time.
And because I hadn't made any money for two months, I was no longer comfortable.
My bills were piling up, and they weren't going to pay themselves.
I needed to find a solution.
So, on the 3rd of January, I decided to go out and find a physical job I could do in January, and then maybe come back to my online job full-time.
Since I don't have a degree, the only jobs I can do are jobs in the offline world that don't require educational qualifications.
I can do menial jobs like salesgirl, cleaning, messenger, or any other thing like that!
I was looking for supermarkets or fast food restaurants where I could trade my time for money at the end of the month.
Somehow, I managed to send an application to two companies: a fast food (Raheti Foods) and a supermarket (Grocery Bazaar).
I got invited to an interview at Raheti Foods, but I didn't go back again.
The most I was going to get paid at those physical jobs was like 30–40K.
At Raheti Foods, for instance, upon being employed, I was going to be at work for one week straight, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
This was honestly not the kind of job I wanted to do.
Another option was teaching in private schools around my home, but that was bound to drain the life out of me.
I want to be an entrepreneur! Not just any type of entrepreneur, but a digital entrepreneur! I want to build successful online businesses!
I don't work best by trading time for money; my brain is my most treasured asset and what I love to trade in exchange for money.
The main bone of connection wasn't even the fact that I hated a physical job; the question I didn't have answers to was…
How would I be eating till month end when I receive my first pay?
How was I going to transport myself to work every day till month end?
The cost of transportation every day was going to be N400 going and N400 coming back.
So, every day, I needed at least N800 for transport to work. Where was that going to come?
And for someone who didn't have money for food, trekking to work every day wasn't even going to be funny.
I was so confused about what to do, and somehow, my momma turned up for me 😪
She got me a soft loan of 50K to buy food and data for the month, to raise money for myself and to pay back the loan by month's end.
I was so grateful!
From the 50K, I bought a data subscription of 20K from Airtel (about 80GB) and bought foodstuffs/personal hygiene products with the remaining 30K.
The way at which things are high ehn… 30K was barely even enough to get all the foodstuff I wanted to buy.
No light, no water, no network - I almost lost my mind
After receiving the soft loan on January 4th, my only goal was to make sure I worked hard and made loads of money.
That didn't go quite as well.
So many things suddenly started to go wrong:
We didn't have electricity anymore (for almost a week)
Without electricity, there was no way water could be pumped for general use
The only alternative for the water situation was a well with yellowish, muddy water
I couldn't imagine taking my bathe with that kind of water, so, I'd stay almost 2 days without bathing
When the Nepa will manage to bring light, it won't last long
I didn't have money to buy a storage container so, I was always out of water again once the light went off
I didn't have money to buy petrol for my landlord’s generator to pump water
Even if I did, I didn't have a storage container to put the water in when it was pumped
So, I had to remain day after day without water and no solution
This was really how the second week of January was wasted!
There was no light and no water.
By the 3rd week of January, the electricity was restored and the water started running again.
Do you know the problem this time? Bad network!
That 80GB I bought from Airtel won't even let me do anything!
For the whole week! I was so pissed off!
I called Airtel’s customer service, and they claimed to have rectified.
By the 4th week of January, the network became a bit stable but …
We were back to not having light and water.
How exactly am I supposed to work and make money when all of these unforeseen circumstances keep recurring?
I almost lost my mind!
BBC’s Documentary on T.B. Joshua
Something else that made me almost lose my mind in January was the 3-part documentary released by BBC Africa on the late Prophet T.B. Joshua.
I watched parts 1, 2 and 3, and I was both traumatized and shaken at the bottom of my being.
How could one man be so corny, manipulative and powerful?
Because I had had my share of sexual abuse and molestation as a child from people who ought to have protected me, it was so triggering to me.
The worst part was that I started seeing the documentary very late at night (at around 9 pm).
Even after I was done watching around 2 am, I found it very difficult to sleep that night.
I was so traumatized hearing these people share their experiences of their encounter with this man for 10, 12, 15 and almost 20 years.
I couldn't even imagine how traumatized they were themselves.
That morning, the first thing I did upon waking up was go on Twitter and tweet:
The very fact that people were defending T.B. Joshua and saying his former “disciples” were lying against him was something I couldn't understand.
How exactly do you think you knew a man better than the people who lived with him, simply because you visited SCOAN once and watched Emmanuel TV?
How can a genuine man of God be:
Molesting young girls sexually and forcing them to get abortions when they got pregnant
Punishing his “disciples” to the extent of putting grounded pepper into the vagina of his female members
Staging fake miracles and exaggerating people's illnesses
Keeping young people hostage to work for him for years after alienating them from their friends and family with no pay for years
Running a TV station where church members could go as far as opening up their breasts in church and women even gave birth to children right in the Synagogue
It was very, very disturbing!
I didn't hesitate to reply to some of the tweets:
Even before the release of the BBC documentary, I've never really liked T.B. Joshua.
I've always felt there's something off about him.
And I'm glad the world is finally getting to know who he is.
Stories like this always fill me with dread and reiterate how religion is one of the worst things that happened to mankind.
It completely brainwashes you and takes away every sense of logical reasoning you have.
The Mummy Zee’s story
Talk about something else that erodes logical reasoning in Nigeria is the talk of gender equality.
Women are not seen as equals to men. They are seen as lesser.
A woman's entire existence is to be a daughter, a wife and a mother.
A woman isn't expected to have many dreams, and any woman who refuses to follow the status of getting married and having children is tagged Prostitute and Bitter Feminist.
There's an unending war on Nigerian Twitter.
Nigerian men feel the new generation of Millennials and GenZ women are doing too much and don't want to be submissive to their husbands like women from the older generations (Gen X and Baby Boomers).
On a serious note, who raised these Millennials and GenZ women? Gen X and Baby Boomers who hated how their lives turned out.
Because of marriage and childbearing, their wings were clipped! But they taught their daughters to fly!
On Nigerian Twitter, there are two teams - The Patriarchs/Alpha makes and The ‘Bitter’ Feminists.
A Traditional woman (Mummy Zee) replies to a tweet about waking up at 4:50 am to cook for her husband every morning:
Guess what… her tweet went viral!
The Patriarchs/Alpha Males saw it as an opportunity to prove a point to their opponents The Bitter Feminists.
They started donating money for Mummyzee.
It didn't stop in the millions they donated for her, companies started gifting her and her family too.
She even got a job and many more goodies.
The Patriarchs/Alpha Males were super excited! They had humiliated Bitter Feminists 😂
I'm 24.
I identify as a feminist.
I believe in the equality of rights between both genders and even in marriage, I believe that household responsibilities should be shared among both partners.
So many girls my age and even younger are married—a few with children.
But I'm neither ready to be married nor have children in a year or two.
I want to be an entrepreneur! I want to build businesses!
I know the demand that comes with being a wife and a mother is all-encompassing, and as someone not so great with multi-tasking, I've decided to do one at the expense of the other.
Everyone thinks women like me are crazy (including my mum).
“You're going to grow old and be very lonely.”
“When you grow old, you won't have any man who's interested in you. This is the best time to open your eyes and marry.”
Is marriage the cure for poverty? What would I feed my children if I had them broke?
They'll end up like Mummyzee and her husband, both university graduates, but shallow standard of living.
God abeg 🤲
This whole conversation led to me exiting my secondary school Alumni group chat.
Someone was very antagonistic and claimed that talking about Mummyzee and T.B. Joshua's crimes was a waste of my energy.
He said I was only being very delusional as a feminist.
And they all unanimously agreed on the Alumni group that a woman who got pregnant without marriage was a slut and it was her fault.
The man who got her pregnant and took no responsibility for the pregnancy was not to be blamed.
I was shaken by the depth of Patriarchy and Misogyny the average Nigerian has normalized.
P.S. If you're a Nigerian woman who ever wants to get married or have children to/for a Nigerian man, ALWAYS PUT YOURSELF FIRST!
I finally told my Aunty the truth about Pharmacy School
In 2020, my daddy's step-sister (my Aunt) who lives in The USA paid my school fees, for my books and accommodation.
Since dropping out in August 2021, I have never mentioned it to her.
She calls me on some occasions and asks me how school is, and I just tell her it's fine.
I didn't want to break her heart by telling her all the money she spent on my fees, school books and accommodation was wasted.
She would never understand.
She has never met me in person before.
She doesn't know how driven and motivated I am.
She doesn't know how hard I worked in school for those 2 years.
In 2024, I had gotten tired of lying to her. I called her and told her the whole thing.
She was hurt and devastated, that I had kept this from her for almost 3 years now.
All I could do was tell her I was sorry.
After talking with her that night, I felt so much peace and slept so well that night.
I MCed my first event in Lagos and everyone started calling me GenZ
I met Peter Ebuka Agbo in person for the first time in November 2023.
It was during TIBA Conference 2023 (the same event where I met my boyfriend 😊)
I walked up to him and took a selfie. He was kind and nice.
Before then, I had been following him on WhatsApp and LinkedIn, after joining his Biweekly Business Seminars group.
He told me they were planning to host a physical hangout for members of his community either in December or January.
I told him I was interested.
Then, he added me to the group chat.
I volunteered as one of the event coordinators and also as a co-host.
I hosted the event so well, and everyone fell in love with me 😊
I also made some new friends and business contacts.
The funniest part of everything was that I got a new name - GEN Z.
When I noticed the event was becoming boring, I brought up a very interesting conversation about the ongoing war on Twitter of Older Generations versus Gen Z.
Of course, I supported my generation, and I was nicknamed Gen Z 😁
I had so much fun that day!
I'm so grateful I attended the event!
I'm so grateful I volunteered to co-host!
I look forward to more fun opportunities like this!
I got featured on my first video podcast
In the first week of January 2024, while trying to curate a list of potential speakers at my Biweekly webinars, I met Wilson Obeneme.
We hopped on a call and talked briefly that day, and he informed me he'd love to have me featured on his podcast.
His podcast was titled The GrowthPlug Podcast.
Last Saturday, we jumped on a Zoom call and recorded the podcast.
Once again, I shared my legendary story of how I dropped out of Pharmacy School and the challenges I face in my current career path.
It's funny how a LinkedIn post I made a couple of weeks ago has attracted me to two podcast interviews.
P. S. Unfortunately, Wilson told me yesterday that we might have to redo the podcast interview. I had poor lightning and bad internet on that day 😔
In conclusion…
January 2024 was a very interesting month!
There were so many exciting and not-so-exciting things that happened.
It's already a long letter and there are still so many things I wanted to gist you guys:
I wanted to write about what the last 2 months of dating my boyfriend have been like. The dynamics of our relationship, and how this feels very different from my previous relationship.
I wanted to write about the pressure my mum started mounting on me with regards to “making it” asap, to start supporting my younger siblings.
I wanted to write about the day I was so fed up and this heartfelt piece on Medium.
I wanted to write about a tweet I wrote that went semi-viral with over 25K views.
I wanted to write about how spending a night at my friend's apartment in Lekki taught me about gratitude
I wanted to rant about how gullible Nigerians are and how the hot comparison between Moses Bliss' engagement and Kunle Remi's marriage was so unnecessary.
I wanted to write about how I created a KIND WORDS folder on Google Drive, and how I'll start reading it and I feel down and unmotivated
I wanted to write about the audacity some potential clients have and how they have very miserable budgets for social media management services
I wanted to write about this particular potential client who started calling me Princess and insisted he wanted us to meet physically instead of talking about the business he wanted us to do together
I wanted to talk about the day my boyfriend and I wanted to visit a beach in Badagry and how unsuccessful we were.
I wanted to write about how I failed to achieve all my set goals for the month.
I wanted to write about how I wanted to launch a blog today (1st of February), and how I don't have money to buy a domain name and pay for web hosting.
So many, many interesting things happened in January!
Yes, I was broke and couldn't do most of the things I wanted to do, but …
There's a level of character formation January 2024 gave me!
Come February 2024, I pray for money and big opportunities!
I pray that this becomes my best month so far!
I pray this becomes your best month so far too!
I love you, and I'm rooting for you 🥳
Cheers to a new month 🥂🥂🥂
It's a long read indeed but it is worth the time.
I was so shocked to see that I was mentioned in your newsletter. I'm glad to be of help. I hope to help whenever I can.
One beautiful thing I love about your newsletter is that you say the truth as it is. Everyone thinks that entrepreneurship is easy but no one gets to tell you about the ugly moments.
Happy new month, Delight. This month will be better than January. Say me well to Jide.☺️
Keep pushing sis
You will get there soon