Desmond, Author at Zikoko!

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Before we get into this review you need to understand one thing about me – I live for bad movies and shows. I exclusively watch the CW, and the moment I see a tweet about a show being bad I immediately add it to my ‘to-watch’ list. Emmy or Oscar worthy shows or movies that have all the critics raving about how it mirrors society and provides room for us to process our collective trauma? Meh. Binge-worthy trash shows or movies that are painfully exaggerated and obviously rooted in a fantasy that is very out of this world? My jam! Knowing this, you can understand why the moment I heard we would be having a Bollywood-Nollywood love drama I was excited. Two movie industries that were built on exaggerated storylines giving us their love child? Namaste Wahala just has my name all over it.

Naturally, I don’t watch movies like this expecting jaw-dropping writing or acting but Namaste Wahala definitely pushed the envelope. The acting in this movie, especially in the scene where RMD (an actor I love not just because he is my sugar daddy of choice but also because he has consistently proven to have the acting chops you would expect of a veteran) meets his daughter’s beau for the first time and isn’t okay with him being Indian is so unbelievably wooden I believe I can stake a vampire with it. Frodd, of Big Brother Naija fame, had maybe three lines and somehow gave one of the worst performances I have ever seen in my life. And this is coming from someone who has spent considerable time watching the youths in church act out dramas during youth week. The line delivery for almost the entirety of the movie is my current source of joy but only because of how awful it is. The actress that plays Meera, the mother of Raj, our male protagonist, delivers every line like she is amused by herself. She reminds me of those friends who start laughing at their funny story before even getting to the punch line. Her scene with her taxi driver at the airport is so bad I watched it three times. The attempt to put so many Nigerian (and Indian) mannerisms and references into one scene is hilariously awful and unrealistic. That said, she is easily one of the best characters in the movie. And the scene where she called out RMD for not being too smart gave me endorphins.

Namaste Wahala isn’t a bad watch, especially for people who watch and love Bollywood or Nollywood movies. I enjoyed the cultural fusion and the cinematography is top tier. The actors and actresses are really beautiful – I have plans to have babies for almost everyone in the cast. That said, the writing stressed me. In one of the early scenes, Didi, our female protagonist who is played by Ini Dima-Okojie, sits down for breakfast with her family – I love extravagant breakfast spreads in movies – and says ‘‘this looks so yummy’’ and picks up a piece of fried yam. Here’s the thing, fried yam doesn’t look yummy. Fried yam exists, for better or worse. No one has ever looked at a piece of fried yam and thought ‘‘this looks yummy.’’ A similar thing also happens in another of the later scenes when Meera, Raj’s mother, takes a bite of the indomie Didi made for Raj to get an idea for the food Didi has been making for her son. She bites into it and then goes ‘wow’. First of all, calm down. It is indomie, cold indomie at that. Let’s not oversell it. Speaking of overselling it, the product placement in this movie was so violent. By the time I was done, I felt like I owed the brands and products they were pushing money for some reason. It was a lot. Don’t worry, I’ll go to the restaurants this week.

I could go on and on about Namaste Wahala. Premo who is played by Osas Ighodaro had no reason to be so annoying because Didi not working in the company was good for her and would have allowed Premo advance in her career. There’s also the fact that the movie just sang away three months of Didi and Raj’s relationship and let’s not forget that Angie told Raj that Didi was ‘very, very single’ and if any of my friends ever did that I would ask them to explain what that means because my not having a serious relationship for half a decade is not enough reason for me to be pimped out, please. I am not going to touch the scenes where they were supposed to be serious lawyers because if I do that, I am afraid of what I’ll say.

So final word? Eh. I enjoyed watching it and I think hopefully, this means we’ll be having more movies like this – cheesy and fun – but with better writing and not so wooden acting. Perhaps even some Christmas-themed movies. Hell, give us a New Yam festival themed-movie just for the culture.
Horrible exes are the great common denominator. Most of us have them – people that we, at some point, thought or hoped would be the one but by the end of the relationship, we were like WTAF. As today is the day after Valentine’s Day, we got four Nigerian men to tell us about their absolute worst ex.

Emmanuel, Straight, 27.

In my third year at university, I was dating this babe that was in her second year and I was spending all the money I didn’t have on her. My parents paid for my rent and gave me a ten thousand Naira allowance every week and sometimes, my mum would send something in between. I also had a small gig doing graphics. So I was balling on campus back then or would have if I did not decide to die on this woman’s matter. A few months into the relationship, I realized that all she did was come to my house to eat my food and watch TV. She had a habit of missing classes too. All she did when she wasn’t eating my hard-earned food was ask for money. Man, I was stressed. Anyways, I discovered she was sleeping with a guy in her year that lived in my compound. Sometimes, I would return to my compound and see her seated at the guy’s pavement waiting for me. I thought it was just because she knew him as they were in the same year. One day, I came back and saw her coming out trying to set her wig straight and the guy was wearing loose boxers and I just clocked it. I cried like a child they stole his sweet that day but we move.

Ayomide, Gay, 23.

I dated this guy back in 2018. He seemed cool. It was fun, he was charming, sex was great, my feelings for him were growing strong. Basically, all of those things that happen in relationships. And then I fell sick. I was admitted to the hospital. I informed this guy via text because I couldn’t talk. I didn’t get a reply. I eventually mustered up the strength to call him several times. He didn’t pick. Eventually, texts stopped going, calls stopped going. I had been blocked and ghosted. Anyways, it hit me like a Big Mac truck and I was sad as hell. I also cried a lot. I could barely eat because of one stupid man. Eventually, I got over him. And then after a few months, I saw this guy at a place I went to get food with a work colleague. I avoided him but this man came over to say ‘hi’ pretending nothing happened. He even offered to buy me food. I would have lost it and broken something on his head if I wasn’t over him already.

Seun, Straight, 32.

In 2017, I dated this babe who came from a very affluent family. Her family, however, did not like me. The babe also had some issues – she told me she had had bad relationship experiences in the past and I eventually clocked that all of that had left her very insecure and needy. Man, she was beautiful but the stress? Jesus. Anyways, her uncle helped me get a job because of her. I didn’t know it but she had figured out my phone’s password and read texts between someone else and I and saw that I was being flirty. She got so enraged and was talking about how she should have figured out I was like the rest of her exes. She left the house that night. She blocked my number. Two days later, I got a sack letter and they said it was ‘due to performance’. I just took it and left.

Meshach, Straight, 27.

My ex-girlfriend used to get really angry. It didn’t happen often but when she got angry, it would be very bad and violent. The problem is that on other days, she’s pretty good. Smart, funny and nice. But when she is angry, she is something else. One day, we had one of those ‘we are both irritated’ types of quarrels. She attempted to pour the soup she was making on me. That was when it started to click in me that this isn’t working. I left the day she broke this floor-length mirror I had in my room when we argued about her mum. She broke the mirror and shards touched me and she didn’t even flinch. I just stepped outside and after a while, I asked her to leave and that was it. God forbid.
- Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
‘‘I want to focus on music right now,’’ Ayra tells me over Zoom. ‘‘I wish I could just make music for like a month or two weeks. That’s how excited I am by the reception my EP got.’’ When I meet Ayra Starr, she has a big smile on her face, a smile that remains for the entirety of the conversation. She is wearing a black sweatshirt, a gold chain and her hair is tied up in a ponytail. She looks exactly how you would imagine a 19-year-old would on a Friday. She’s, however, busier than your average 19-year-old. She’s currently at the Mavin Studio — she tells me, and I can see the unmistakable Mavin logo behind her — and her publicist calls out, lightheartedly, that she still has multiple calls scheduled for that day, as well as a studio session for much later. Life is fairly busy when you are Nigeria’s newest teen star.

Ayra Starr’s eponymously titled debut EP came out two weeks before our Zoom conversation. Ayra Starr, the EP, is a collection of soft afrobeat-influenced RnB records with honest lyrics.

‘‘Intense,’’ Ayra says, when I ask her what word she would use to describe her sound. ‘‘Intense because when you hear the music, you’ll get to a part where you just feel it . Even when I listen to it myself, it’s euphoric. I’m not trying to gas myself up, but it is.’’ Ayra does deserve to gas herself up. Within days, “Away”, the EP opener and lead single, was a mega-hit. When Ayra and I talk, her Spotify monthly listeners are at over 30,000 and, for context, she had 0 listeners when she released her EP barely two weeks before. Today, her Spotify monthly listeners are almost 50,000. The singer doesn’t quite feel famous yet. ‘‘I’m still processing it,’’ she says laughing. ‘‘Nothing has changed yet, I’m just excited and want to keep making music.’’

Ayra was born Oyinkansola Sarah Aderibigbe in the Benin Republic and spent her childhood moving between Cotonou and Lagos. ‘‘My mum loves music,’’ Ayra tells me. ‘‘Growing up, my mum would be listening to Tope Alabi, and my aunties would be listening to Tuface or Wande Coal. It was just a very musical home. I listened to a lot of music growing up, so that influenced me. I joined the choir when I was like eight or nine, so from there, I started doing music.’’ Ayra eventually gained admission to Houdegbe University in the Benin Republic to study International Relations and Politics when she was fourteen.

‘‘My uni was like secondary school,’’ Ayra tells Zikoko. “I was super young, but I looked older. When I was fourteen, I looked like I was seventeen or eighteen. Going to uni at that age was exactly how you would imagine it. No campus life. I would take a bike to school and back to the house. Uni was just like secondary school, I even had to wear a uniform.’’

Around this time, Ayra began to grow as an artist. She was no longer just a choir girl, she began to experiment and attempt to do more with her voice and sound. She began merging her musical influences and the various sounds she grew up with, as well as adding something that was entirely her into the mix.

‘‘I would use Youtube to learn how to do runs, how to take breaks, how to hit notes,’’ Ayra shares, her excitement almost palpable. However, despite the improvements to her vocal ability and consistent compliments she got from friends, Ayra wasn’t initially very keen on posting videos of herself singing on social media. She needed more than a little push to do so.

‘‘I have friends that would just force me to do videos and post,’’ she says. ‘‘I wasn’t sure of my vocals at the time, and I was scared of people laughing at me. So, I would give my friends to help me and post. I would make the video and be like, post it for me. I would refuse to check it after they post it. Sometimes, I would come back in the evening to check how it’s doing. The first time I did a cover, people just went mad. I didn’t expect it. People would just DM me and be like, ‘Are you looking for a manager?’ People liked the music and so I kept making more covers.’’ Eventually, Ayra tried her hand at making an original song, working with her younger brother. She posted the song on social media on the 19th of December 2019. A few days later, she got the DM that would change her career.

‘‘Don Jazzy saw it and messaged me.’’ She tells me. ‘‘He was like he has been watching it for like two hours and had to message me. It was inspiring. Three days later, and, I was in the studio with him. It was my first time in a studio. That was January 2020. That’s how it started.’’

Ayra began working on the EP that would become Ayra Starr soon after. She writes most of her songs with her brother, Dami who writes under the moniker Milar, and while the world shut down in 2020, due to an unprecedented pandemic, Ayra spent it listening and re-listening to the songs she had recorded over the course of two months, deciding which needed more work, which made the cut and which didn’t. The result is the five-track EP that skyrocketed her to fame. Think of the EP as a fifteen-minute long Gen Z guide to life and love. The open-ended lyrics let listeners interpret it how they want. On “Away”, this is particularly obvious. On the track, Ayra muses about taking back power after a breakup, but she shares that fans have been giving it their own interpretations with their videos on Instagram and Tiktok.

‘‘I love how people have been interpreting ‘Away’. People are making videos and challenges, and some of it is not even about the stuff I envisioned when making the song. ‘Away’ is about taking your power back, and I’m glad people are listening to it not just for the vibes or melody but for the lyrics and messages. I’ve seen videos of people using it to raise awareness for domestic violence and that’s just cool.’’

Despite what can only be described as an explosive debut, Ayra already has even bigger plans. She wants to make music with k-pop sensation, Blackpink, and she wants to work with Beyonce. And in the middle of all this, Ayra still makes it clear she is going to live her best life as a young person. When I ask her to take a Zikoko quiz, she’s excited as she scrolls through her options before picking a quiz that promises to tell her how much of a troublemaker she is — it says she often is.
Bullying is one of those things that seem to define the secondary school experience in Nigeria. If you went to a Nigerian secondary school, chances are high you’ve been bullied, bullied someone or witnessed someone being bullied.

We spoke to seven Nigerians about their experiences being bullied in secondary school.

Charles.

When I was younger, I was fat. Like not just chubby, I was fat in the sense that if I step into a room all my classmates or church friends or even adults would stare. I don’t think I went a day without being reminded I was fat. It was awful. Adults oh, children oh. Same thing. But the worst was in school. I would be on my own and people would push me to the ground and they’ll laugh. I would be like what did I ever do to you? And the worst part was that even the teachers seemed to all just dislike me so I found it hard to ever report to them. I think the worst was this thing that happened in JS3. I went to the toilet. My school had a row of toilets that was kind of disconnected but still close to the block of classrooms so sometimes you could smell if someone was using it. I went to use it. I had barely entered when a group descended on me. They said I was the reason the toilets were smelling. More people joined the group and they were laughing at me. I peed on myself. This was around 1 pm and my school closed by 3:15 pm. I had to wear those shorts till school closed. That thing did something to my mind. I don’t think I can ever truly get over it.

Nini.

I was bullied the first day I gained admission to secondary school. I was excited to gain admission at a young age. My mom packed me a big lunch box, my uniform was like a maternity gown and I was wearing this heavy ‘koko’ shoe. When I got to school, the assembly was in session so I just walked in and sat down. All of a sudden, a couple of seniors beside me started laughing and pointing. One of them said, “see this ugly girl, what is she wearing?” It got to the point that everyone caught on and all the seniors started laughing at me. It was horrible because it continued for days. I stopped taking food to school after the first week.

There are countless experiences like this too. I was called all sorts of names for no reason and it was horrible. One day, I went to school with a hoodie and the cap was on, to cover my bad haircut. In the middle of a joint class, someone yanked the hoodie off. Everyone started laughing and they hit my head. I was in tears but no one cared. Even the teacher burst into laughter. My head was red from the hitting and I felt so awful.

Eddie.

I was in a boarding school in Calabar. I had the senior students and my peers refer to me as a “faggot”. They said I walked and talked like a girl and some senior boys said they would soon “beat it out of me”. I used to be asked to walk from one end of the hostel to the other while they watched and if I didn’t “walk like a man”, I would get a hard slap on each side of my face. I got slapped several times every afternoon. Sometimes so bad that I would cry bitterly afterwards. I started hiding out in the classroom buildings after school hours, afraid to go to the hostels for afternoon siesta because I knew one of them would come and find me for their “exercise”. When siesta would be over and everyone came back out for afternoon prep, I would sneak back into the hostel and change my clothes and then head back out. This was a regular occurrence for months. I finally got beat up badly one day by a senior student that one side of my butt swelled up like a pumpkin. A teacher saw it and reported the case. After that, my parents moved me to a different boarding school.

Arxn.

I always wanted to go to the boarding house because it meant being away from my parents. My first week in secondary school, the bullying started, not from seniors but my mates. They would keep me out of “secret meetings” because I had a “big mouth”. I had never really hung out with girls before so this was a glaring experience, trying to see what I did wrong etc. Then the worst thing happened, two of the popular babes in my set asked me to escort them to class on a Saturday. I obliged because I thought I was making progress. We got there and met two popular boys who were also in our set and who they were crushing on. These girls set me up to be raped and assaulted. They pushed me into the classroom with the boys, who got a hold of me and started fondling me, everywhere. I almost ran mad, I was screaming for them to help me but they ignored me and started walking back to the hostel. The boys stopped because they didn’t understand what was happening. The girls told them that I wanted it.

Dee.

I changed schools in SS1 so I had to make new friends all over again. There was this girl, Kamila, that didn’t like me and went as far as telling me I should know my place and not step on her toes. She would see me passing and whisper something to her group of friends and they would immediately burst out laughing and pointing at me. That hurt.

One of the few friends I made was Amina, one day she lost the CDs that she borrowed from me and I got mad and stopped talking to her because she didn’t even bother to apologize. Next thing she did was tell everyone in our class that I was a prostitute and that I had AIDS. This girl went round all the classes (science, arts and commercial) to write on the boards that I was a prostitute lol. I would pass and someone would not so quietly say “ashawo” and everyone would start giggling. Or I would be talking to someone and Amina would come with “eww stop talking to her, she has AIDS” or “don’t touch her if you don’t want to catch AIDS.” That went on for over a year. Amina joined forces with Kamila to make my life miserable.

Ego.

I went to a Christian boarding school. I grew up super pampered, even more than my siblings so adjusting was hard for me and I think it made people hate me. I got bullied for everything. At a point, I was getting punished every Friday for fun. Seniors hated me so much, they got my mates to bully me too. They’d go as far as telling their guy friends to not associate with me. I was a super outcast with like only five friends in the whole school.

One time, a senior lined the popular girls from my hostel up and they all took turns insulting me unprovoked. I had an older sister and I was always afraid to tell her things because I was constantly getting threatened with beatings.

Nobody ever talks about what bullying does to you. I went from quiet and peaceful to angry and extremely violent. I didn’t know how to handle confrontation or anything I didn’t like without violence.

Florence.

When I was in year 7, I had these group of friends and there was this boy in Year 8 who was very popular and cute and he liked me. I didn’t know that one of the girls in this friend group had a crush on him and was pained that we were ‘together’. They were all Hausa so they would speak their language and I wouldn’t know they were insulting me the whole time I was with them. There was a day when another Hausa friend I had was listeneing in on their conversation and told me that they hand plans to ‘destroy’ me. So what these girls did is that they went to the bathroom which had maybe like 6/7 stalls. These girls wrote all over the stalls and walls of this bathroom that year 7-9s were using. They wrote stuff like ‘Florence* is a bitch’, “Florence* is a slut” and other berating things with a permanent marker. So obviously everybody saw it and they kept talking about it. A teacher saw it too and called me to talk to the headmistress. I told her that I knew who did it. The minute I called the main girl’s name, the woman told me she couldn’t do anything about it. I later found out that her dad was giving the school money for a new multipurpose hall. Anyways the woman made me go to the science lab to get ethanol to clean my own name from the bathroom walls. She said that since I didn’t have proof and it was my name, I’d have to clear it up. Ended up leaving the school after year 9 and they didn’t even bother changing the stall doors. So people who I didn’t even know knew that I was a slut and a bitch.
Being a sugar baby — generally being a sex worker — involves a lot of stress, but for this article, we’re going to focus on one of the highlights of the trade: getting expensive gifts.

We asked six sugar babies what the most expensive gift they’ve ever received from a client is.

Ben, Gay.

So in 2019, I was seeing this man. I met him on Tinder, then I discovered he had a wife and, more importantly, had money. One day, I told him my old laptop packed up, and I was broke. It was a half-lie — I was broke, but my laptop was fine. I just thought, at most, he would give me part of the money to get a laptop. Next time we saw, he gave me a brand new Macbook Air. I screamed.

Anna, Straight.

Okay so it wasn’t one gift, but I was dating this guy when I moved to Abuja. He told me he wanted to come over, but I told him I couldn’t host people because I didn’t have furniture yet. He said that was my business and came over. The next week, oga took me to a furniture showroom and told me to pick what I wanted. That’s how I got a whole furnished apartment.

Irene, Straight.

My best gift was from this guy who was heavily into being dominated. We used to do extreme stuff all day. He’d stand while I was on my laptop and would only move when I told him to. He got me an apartment on the Island — really great and expensive space. But the absolute best gift was the camera and lenses he bought me to kickstart my photography career.

Nneka, Bisexual.

I don’t know if this counts but on my 25th birthday, in November 2019, my sugar daddy spoiled me silly. Plane tickets to Cape Verde, paid for our lodgings and, on the trip, he got me a new iPhone and took me shopping. He’s an oil and gas worker and my birthday collided with his time off. I was extremely lucky. I don’t think I have had that kind of luck since.

Boma, Straight.

I met him on Houseparty funny enough. I had a boyfriend then, but the guy and I started talking and Facetiming regularly during the early months of the pandemic. One day, he said he wanted me to be his, and I jokingly told him that he needed to make it worth my time. He asked if I had CashApp, I told him Nigeria doesn’t have that, so he used WorldRemit and sent $1000. It was almost N500,000. We haven’t met yet but once travel restrictions ease up more, I’ll be meeting him and living my best sugar baby life.

Onyinye, Straight.

Does rent count? My London rent and Lagos rent combined is about N20 million and he pays for it. £2,000 per month for 11 months in London excluding the upkeep he gives me. Then my Lagos rent is N10 milion. But upkeep do usually enter voicemail as I’m in Lagos and he’s not pressing breast anymore.
There are apps for just about everything these days, and for obvious reasons, dating apps are among the most used. So we got four Nigerians to talk to us about their experiences using dating apps.

Modestus, 28, Straight.

The best part about using Tinder was the ease of matching up and getting to talk with people around me with similar interests. The weirdest thing was realising just how many people were open to meeting for random sex.

I mean, it’s fine but people in Lagos are mad. Before you’ll find yourself in a shrine inside a bush. I got tired of saying, “Hey” and getting the reply, “Shey you’re fucking or you’re not fucking?”

Also, I met a white woman in her mid-twenties who wanted me to treat her like a dog and organise a bunch of guys to, and I quote, “breed” her. I confirmed she was legit on WhatsApp, but she pulled back before I could get over the shock. She was very specific about wanting everything to happen in a dirty motel.

Rebecca, 24, Straight.

I’ve actually had a great experience with Tinder. I enjoy meeting new people, so it’s like being in a grocery store — there are so many options. Plus, once the conversation goes left, it’s easy to ghost. I also love that people I am not interested in cannot message me, but I hate that random people in my area can see my profile .

I once took an Uber and the driver kept asking if I was an influencer, which I am not, so I was so confused. At a random time during the ride, he yelled, “Tinder. Na there I see your face”. I wanted to enter the seat. He went on to ask me, “So you don find boyfriend, abi make I message you after?” I hid my profile for a couple weeks after that because omo.

Somi, 19, Pansexual.

The best thing about using dating apps was that it allowed me to express myself more freely than I’ve ever been able to. Online dating sites allow me to connect with people anywhere, and at any time I like. The weirdest thing I discovered on dating sites was that when people find out that I am trans, they struggle or I get outrightly blocked. To them, I am no longer the person they thought I was, to them I’ve deceived and tricked my way into them finding me attractive. If they’d only known, then they’d never have messaged or swiped right so I am to blame?

Itohan, 19, Bisexual.

The best part is getting to meet people. I don’t know how to just meet people, so dating apps helped with that. I especially like that I get to meet people without leaving my house and spending my money. Not until I decide I want to.

The weirdest thing about it is that people are violently anti-sex-worker and it annoys me and my homegirls. The worst part about dating apps is men. They’re so weird. Like, the comments they make or feel comfortable making because they hide behind a screen is just disgusting.
The experiences of queer people any and everywhere are far from monolithic. Oppression takes many forms and, sometimes, the fact that you can or cannot pass as a member of a non-marginalised community is what determines how much or what type of oppression/marginalisation gets thrown your way.

Passing, in the simplest terms, is the ability of a member of a marginalised group to look like they are not from that group. For example, a gay person can be considered to be straight-passing if, based on stereotypes, other people can’t tell they are gay.

We asked four queer people who are visibly queer and are non-passing what it was like job-hunting.

Frank, 27.

I recently made a switch to working for tech startups and the culture is more accepting of my “eccentricities” and queerness, but with traditional companies, job hunting was hell. People would ask questions about my nails, piercings etc. I kept trying to point out that these things weren’t limiting the value I would bring. I would show my certificates and portfolio but nope. I started working for remote companies, especially non-Nigerian ones.

Ugu, 24.

I am a masc-presenting woman, and I think it upsets men. One time, I applied for a job and the person asking the interview questions asked why I was dressed like a tomboy and said they like “their women” looking fine and attractive. I was shocked. I was glad when I didn’t get the job. Another time, during my undergrad days, I went for an internship interview, and I was the only woman employed — there were four other interns. During the interview, they kept making jokes about how the only woman they were employing isn’t really a woman. Job hunting is a minefield. You spend the whole time dealing with subtle and even blatant homophobia, disregard and so much more. Imagine what it is like when people look at you and all they see is your queerness.

Ronke, 29.

I don’t know why I assumed being a creative would make navigating the job market better or easier to navigate the job market when you looked different. However I came to that conclusion, it was quickly disproved. The first job I had was being a social media manager for a store, and when I resumed, they told me not to bring those friends of mine. I was confused by that statement, then someone told me that the owner had gone through my Instagram and saw me “being a lesbian”. The owner remained passive-aggressive towards me till I left.

Another time, I was working in the marketing department of a bank and my superior told me it was important to be sexy as a marketer, so I might want to lose the T-shirt. Luckily I got fired a while after. I say luckily because I joined the place I’m at now right after, and it has been blissful.

Ayo, 21.

Job hunting is the absolute ghetto. I’ve been lucky enough to have only done it twice and only for a few months at a stretch, but it was horrible. I think the worst thing is how employers and people in charge of hiring feel that because you need or want a job, it is okay for them to talk to you anyhow. I am one of those people who you can guess their sexuality by looking at them. I look and sound and walk gay. It is easy to clock me. And that just means it is easy to be homophobic, and Nigerians never let the opportunity to be homophobic pass them by. I was an intern at this place, and I ran a lot of errands. They made comments about the way I walk and how tights my jeans were all the time.

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For most men, dating people who are younger than them age is the only way to go. However, its 2021 and the script is being flipped and more men are willing to explore dating older people. So we asked four men who exclusively date older people about their experiences.

Fidel, Gay.

I was sexually active at a very young age and again I had this fetish for hairy people which turns out to be only on older guys. So eventually that became my thing. The ones I’ve been with, there’s this certainty that comes with dating someone older. They don’t feel the need to be shady because they feel they might have something to lose, and they have financial stability as well.

The worst part of dating older queer men in Nigeria is that their ‘ageism’ jumps out every now and then. The age gap breeds a conflict of ideas, And a lot of times what you have with them isn’t long term because sooner than later they have to start their family as society dictates, and I have no future with a married man.

Tunde, Straight.

I don’t deliberately seek to date older women. It just happens really. We get talking, and boom, we find out about the age difference. I’ve dated a younger lady once. Man, I couldn’t keep up. I had to think for two. I’d advise people to date whoever they love, and find comfort in. Age is secondary. Seek stability, warmth and respect. Amongst other things for sure.

I guess because I’m most times the youngest in a group.
The best part of dating older women is that cues are easily taken, vibrations are higher and the worst part is that it can be too intense sometimes.

Adam, Gay.

I think the best part is that they’ve lived and been around for a while so there’s this mature way of handling things and judging from my partner, they can be understanding. There’s a lot an older man can take or deal with when they’re in love with you because they’re at that age where they know what they want and they tend to listen and try to understand you and even guide you. Whereas someone younger wouldn’t have the patience to deal with it or try to understand cause they deem it as “stress”. The worst part should be them being stuck up in their ways or certain lifestyles and not willing to compromise when you complain because of them? They’re old and have lived so they assume they know better and sometimes they forget they’re with someone younger and just always expect you to be on the same wavelength with them mentally.

Sometimes I miss being with younger people, especially when I think about sex. Sex with my partner is great but I don’t think it can be compared to sleeping with someone younger, young energies are great you know.

Malcolm, Straight.

Older women have less stress. If they want to date you, they’ll tell you. If they don’t, they’ll tell you. No time for uncertainty or all that stuff. I appreciate that. Plus they tend to be making more money and who no like better thing? I realized I preferred older women in my very early twenties. I tried dating people my age or young as per I am a man and stuff. It didn’t work. Older women are my jam. Better in bed, more money etc. Just don’t get them angry, they’ll run you out of town and won’t shake at all.

Chidi, Straight

It might be because I was groomed or it might just be a preference but young women don’t do it for me. I find them too young to have anything more than friendship. I don’t feel any attraction towards them. But older women? Come here mami!
The best part is they are sexually bolder, at least the ones I date. They are in a better place mentally and financially and everything just set. I can’t think of a bad thing. Some feel insecure about not being as young and as pretty as they were but I try to make them see themselves through my eyes.
Last year, Netflix finally and officially came to Nigeria. This means they opened a social media account dedicated to Nigerian content on their streaming service and increased their Nigerian content on the service as well as commissioned more Netflix Originals to be made. However, the sheer number of movies and shows on Netflix are overwhelming leaving many confused on exactly where to start and this is where we come in. We rounded up the five Nigerian movies you need to watch on Netflix right now.

Living In Bondage – Breaking Free

Living In Bondage – Breaking Free, a well-done sequel to the Nollywood late nineties classic Living In Bondage, is arguably one of the best Nollywood movies ever. Featuring a star-studded cast, and an interesting take on the classic poor-but-good and intelligent -boy-is-pressured-to-engage-in-money- rituals and almost palpable chemistry between Ramsey Nouah and then-newcomer Swanky JKA, it doesn’t take much to see why the movie was an instant hit. Currently available to stream on Netflix, we highly recommend you see it if you haven’t.

Iyore

https://youtu.be/_AIlljkR52o

Starring Rita Dominic, Joseph Benjamin and Okawa Shaznay, Iyore has a certain type of elegance that is rare to find. The movie explores reincarnation and love across different lifetimes and in its way, shows how humans repeat mistakes over and over even when given multiple chances. Placing two different lives of the same soul against each other – one in modern times and the other in the ancient Benin empire – the true joy in this movie is finding out what is the same across the different lives and what is different.

Sugar Rush

If you like hearty humorous comedic films then Sugar Rush is likely just the movie for you. Sugar Rush is delightfully chaotic and more than makes up for the occasional continuity and consistency issues with easy laugh scenes. Perfect for a weekend or even a weeknight watch if the goal is lighthearted escapism.

The Figurine

With beautiful cinematography, Kunle Afolayan merges several Nollywood horror tropes in a beautiful and scary tale about two friends who find a statue that bestows seven years of good luck to anyone that finds it before granting them seven years of horrible luck following it. The movie stars two of Nollywood’s best – Ramsey Nouah and Omoni Oboli – playing across each other giving some of their best performances yet.

Phone Swap

Nse Ikpe-Etim has a way of elevating just about everything she stars in to a new level of elegance, a thing that she has had all the way back to staring in the aptly named early 2010s Nollywood movie Blackberry Babes. In Phone Swap, Ikpe-Etim shines through giving the comedy film the boosts it needs to be on this list. The film chronicles the hilarious happenings after a fashion designer and a businessman end up switching phones at an airport. If feel-good unrealistic romantic comedies are your jam, we highly recommend Phone Swap.
As told to Desmond.

A few weeks ago, I put up a link to my Outspoken chatbox when I was looking for men to anonymously interview for this story. A few days later, a woman sent a message via Outspoken telling me that she has a story that she thinks I’ll be interested in. She was right. And the story below is one of the wildest I have ever heard.

In 2017, I decided I was going to be an influencer. I had all the things I thought I needed to get the career started so, of course, I went for it. By 2018, I had more than twenty-five thousand followers on my Instagram alone. The opportunities were coming, but they weren’t as financially lucrative as I expected. They just made me look rich, while I wasn’t in real life. I started looking for ways to make more money and leverage the audience I had. Then my friend gave me the advice that changed my life: get a sugar daddy.

As a hyper-visible woman, thanks to my influencer career, people make passes at me every day on social media. There’s this appeal of someone visible and, in a way, unattainable. My friend advised me to make use of that and pick a sugar daddy. So I started going through my DMs regularly, especially the DM requests, until I found one that caught my eye. He had like four or five photos on his Instagram, and you could tell he didn’t update it that much, but he looked clean as fuck and, more importantly, rich. I had found my sugar daddy.

I replied to his DM and tried keeping it light. Let’s call him Ben. Ben was nice, in his late thirties, a rich guy that came from money and still made his own money on top. He made it clear from the get-go that he had money to spend.. He was uber nice. I did not ask him for money, but he kind of knew what I was there for, and he was sending me money regularly. The lowest he ever sent was N50,000. About a month later, he invited me over to his house. Paid for the flight and sent over tickets. I was ready to eat his money proper.

I was to spend two weeks with Ben. We went out, ate and, of course, had sex. The sex was so much better than I expected. When I say he came through, he did. On the fourth day, he told me his friend had a party and we should go. The party was slightly crowded, but he took me to a small parlour that felt like a VIP section in the house. They were drinking and smoking, and I am not a drinker, but I smoke socially, so that’s what I did. Then they passed something around and he took it. I didn’t clock it because I assumed it was weed, which we were doing at the time. His friends suggested going to a different thing that was happening, so we went to get the cars.

The ‘thing’ was just Ben and a bunch of his friends hanging at a hotel room that belonged to one of them, which was cool. Then they started passing something and I clocked what it was. They were doing cocaine like it was Lucozade Boost. Most of them were injecting it. Then Ben came up to me and asked if I had ever done it before, and I told him no. He told me if I can take weed, I can do this because cocaine is just the elder brother. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life was to believe that lie. He very carefully showed me how to snort a bump off his key and yo, it was something. I felt hot, I felt nauseous but Jesus, the jolt of pure pleasure was amazing. Someone, I’m not sure who, got us a room in the hotel. He might have had a room there already, I don’t know. But we went there and although I have given up cocaine now, cocaine sex is just wow. It was just utterly euphoric.

The bad thing? The comedown from cocaine is just as wow as the high. Very horrible. I didn’t realise it, but this was Ben’s goal. He wanted someone to be having drug sex with and after the first two times, I was hooked. Sex with him was very good normally because he doesn’t hold back, but sex with him when cocaine was involved? Father in heaven. I can not even begin to tell you. I couldn’t have sex with anyone else because no one else had or wanted to do it with cocaine. I came back to Lagos and relatively continued my life but, deep down, I was only really happy when I was doing cocaine. I became hyper dependent. It’s like you’re living a normal life then someone takes you to heaven for an hour and then brings you back to your normal life. Suddenly, that normal life just doesn’t feel enough. Even things you liked before are now dull and tasteless. That’s what it felt like. I went to Abuja at least twice every month for the duration of our relationship, which lasted for six months. There was good sex and money and drugs, I thought I was living the life. My best friend eventually had to tell me to calm down because it felt like Ben and cocaine were the only things that I cared about. I cut off my best friend and blocked her.

I am ashamed to admit it, but do you want to know how I broke it off and started down the road of recovery? I discovered he was partnered off with someone and I was someone he was using to play out his fantasies with, which I would have been okay with if I knew all the details upfront. The girlfriend of a friend of his that I had met maybe once or twice told me to come over for lunch one day, and she casually asked if Ben sees his fiancee often. I was confused then she told me. The shock was frankly the only reason I listened to her talk, to be honest. Me, I didn’t know why I was shocked because na sugar daddy im be, no be boyfriend. In the long run, I did the math and understood what my purpose was in the relationship and it was up to me to decide if I wanted to continue. I did not. I sha did the cocaine small one more time before I left Abuja that time. Once I came back to Lagos, I began looking into how to get over the addiction. I want to say thank God for my best friend because I wouldn’t have been able to get through it. I lapsed and I struggled, but I did it. Last time I had cocaine was in late 2019. I still occasionally smoke but I make sure I cut it out every now and then so I know it doesn’t have any power over me. I’m in a better place, I am genuinely happy and I even got a new job sef. The moral of the story if there is one? If you are going to do something, especially a ‘vice’, make sure it’s for you and it is what you want.
It’s that time of the year where couples are checking their account balances and wondering if they are willing to go broke just to buy a gift and single people are wondering if going to Shiloh is a tad dramatic. Let’s take a look into your future and tell you what you’ll be doing on Valentine’s Day.
When Tobi* lost his job because the firm he worked for, an offshoot of a French company, had left after realising they were losing more money than they were making in Nigeria, he did not quite know he was about to go on a dark road.

‘‘I was sad, very sad obviously. But I thought, las las I would survive and find a new job. I’m smart and my degree is pretty good, so I packed my stuff up and left.’’ he says. Within the next two months, Tobi’s girlfriend broke it off with him as she left the country to further her education — a thing Tobi hadn’t known she was looking into at the time — his mother fell sick, his physical health started deteriorating, his savings were near depletion, rent was nearing renewal and he still hadn’t gotten a job.

‘‘It was simply awful. It was the worst period of my life. I remember how every night I would stay awake thinking about how I could kill myself and end of all this once and for all. Then because I couldn’t sleep, I would wake up late and tired and angry at myself for being so lazy.’’ Tobi’s friends began to grow concerned after he managed to blow them all off and actively avoided them for weeks.

‘‘I knew my friends were worried, but at the time, all I could think about was how sick and tired I was of needing people to take care of me. I thought I was weak and a failure, so I actively refused to let them in, which in hindsight was bad.’’ Tobi eventually took to looking into ways of committing suicide and attempted a drug overdose.

‘‘I know it’s stupid to, but when I remember it, I laugh at how dramatic I must have looked. When I took it, the pain was overwhelming, I was lucky to send a text to a WhatsApp group I was in with my friends. I don’t remember what happened, but my friends said someone showed up about twenty minutes later and took me to the hospital. After I was discharged, I stayed with my friends for a few months. They made me get into therapy and whew, that was helpful. I still didn’t get a new job till like a year after I got fired by the way. But I was mentally healthy till I did, and that’s thanks to my friends.’’

Much like Tobi, Joel*, a writer, points to his breaking point around a time he lost a job.

‘‘I got commissioned for this big story for a publication I loved, then after writing it, it was killed. The editor told me that he no longer thought it was a good fit for the publication so they wouldn’t be publishing it. They offered me a kill fee, but I was too devastated by the fact that this publication thought I wasn’t good enough as a writer. This was worsened by the fact that I had been trying to get commissioned for pieces for months and nothing was coming. I had convinced myself that this story coming out would save my career.’’ Joel barely left home for most of that month as he felt his anxiety about his career reach new levels.

‘‘I was out of work for two months, and if you know what that’s like for a freelance writer, you know how bad that was. I eventually had to accept a small but intense ₦50,000 gig just so I could eat. It’s all in the past, but I think something in me broke then.’’

‘‘My ex was an upcoming singer and me, I was the hopelessly devoted boyfriend who was convinced his job was to stand and support,’’ Seun* says. ‘‘I was the better off partner and had a well-paying job, so I thought supporting my boyfriend was the right way to go. I paid for studio sessions, he lived at mine etc. I was deceiving myself.’’ Seun remembers getting multiple texts from his friends that they had bad news and he should call them when he could.

‘‘We got on a conference call, and apparently, my ex had been sleeping with a mutual friend for a decent amount of time. I couldn’t work that day. When I got home, I locked myself in my bedroom and cried to sleep. My ex, who was staying with me, kept asking what happened. The next day, I asked him if it was true. It was.

I’m ashamed to admit, but I still wanted to make it work. I tried for one full month and my friends were disgusted. I eventually realised I was kidding myself, so I broke it off. That was when I truly broke down. I think I was dispensing on that relationship for my self-worth, so when it ended, what was left was a shadow. For weeks, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t laugh. I don’t think I had ever been that sad before.’’ Seun eventually realised that he couldn’t continue this way so, he asked to take some time off work.

‘‘I took two weeks off work and left the country. It helped me. But I think what helped the most was my friends. They were supportive and kind till I healed.’’
2020 took a lot from us, with new music from some of our favourite artists being one of them. A pandemic and a year-defining protest don’t particularly make for the best environment to release new music, so many artists were forced to push their releases to this year.

The good thing, however, is that this means we will be spoiled this year with back-to-back releases. So, we’ve made a round-up of five talented artists who have announced or alluded to releasing albums in 2021.

Joeboy (Somewhere Between Beauty And Magic, February 4)

Joeboy had a stellar debut EP in Love and Light, which was released in 2019. The five-track EP spawned the megahits “Baby” and “Beginning”, which also properly introduced the afropop star to the world.

With his debut album, which was originally slated for a 2020 release but was delayed due to the pandemic and then the #ENDSARS movement, we can expect Joeboy to solidify his status as a definitive star.

Bella Shmurda (Hypertension, Release Date TBA)

Following the mega-success of Bella Shmurda’s street anthem, “Cash App”, the Lagos State University final year student has made it clear that his debut studio album is coming soon rather than later.

While fans do not have an exact date the album is expected to drop, we do know that the album, Hypertension, will feature the likes of Kida Kudz, Shatta Wale and more.

Teni (TBA)

When it comes to music from Teni, one thing you can be guaranteed is that it is going to bang. The singer was set to release an album last year but due to multiple reasons, she couldn’t.

Although we don’t know much about this album — we don’t know the title or her collaborators — we know that, as she did on her last two EPs, Teni will deliver the bangers.

Rema (TBA)

It is hard to name a newcomer in the Nigerian music industry who has had a more fun-to-watch ascension than Rema. In less than two years, the twenty-year-old has become one of the biggest acts in the country.

Now, after a bunch of solid EPs, the singer has promised fans that his debut album will be dropping sometime this year. It goes without saying that this might be the most anticipated release of the year.

Simi (TBA)

After dominating 2020 with back-to-back releases, including a well-received EP, a killer feature on Ladipoe’s “Know You” and one of her biggest hits to date, “Duduke”, Simi is all set to give us a full-length album in 2021.

Going by her tweets about the album, we can expect that the project is going to be even better than last year’s releases, and we can’t wait to see what she has in store for us.
Thanks to the internet, a host of careers that previously didn’t exist now do. From vlogging to digital influencing, to UX designing, and so much more in between, it seems there is an endless list of professions that didn’t exist when our parents were young that many young people have created for themselves and are flourishing in.

It doesn’t come as a surprise then that many parents either do not understand or care for what their young millennial/Gen Z children do for work especially when those careers are non-traditional. There are also, of course, the parents who understand and even those who don’t but still give their unwavering support. We asked six Nigerian creatives who are working in non-traditional jobs to interview their parents on what they think their kids do for work.

Here’s what Immanuel’s dad has to say about Immanuel’s job as a social media strategist and event planner.

‘‘When you told me you wanted to be a creative I thought of your school fees (laughs) and wished you had made the decision earlier. I probably wouldn’t have allowed you major in creative arts as your only major. We’ve always allowed you to choose your path but we also know how uncertain the world can be. It’s always important to have a tangible degree in an established field – then you can do you extracurriculars. Anything that doesn’t make you money is extracurricular! I think you’ve had some moderate success and are much more certain in what you want to do than you were when you moved back. I would still want you to get a monthly salaried job and do all this media stuff on the weekends. But I will support you as best as I can – within reason.’’

Here’s what Fidel’s dad has to say about Fidel’s job as a product designer.

‘‘You said you are a something designer. All those words, UI oh, Uniport oh. They don’t mean anything to me. But I know you said a designer and when I asked when you started designing clothes you said it’s in computers and phones. So I don’t know. But you work with companies to do stuff and some of the companies aren’t in the country sef. I am happy and proud because you are doing what you like and you are making money. I am happy too that you have moved out.’’

Here’s what Mikey’s mum has to say about Mikey’s job as a photographer.

‘‘I am so happy for Mikey because he went to Law school and finished but has a passion for photography. I can remember days when we went for a summer holiday and my other kids were buying clothes but Mikey said ‘Mum, I just need to buy a camera.’’ And I would ask ‘What do you want a camera for?’ When he finished law school, he was so interested in taking pictures and I have seen his pictures, they are all so good. I remember that I had to buy an Essence magazine when I was in the US when his shoot for them came out and I had to show it to everybody and they were all saying ‘‘He is good!’’. Initially, my husband was like ‘‘Mikey is a lawyer and he needs to go to the court and this and that.’’ but when we saw the pictures he had taken and how far he had gone, we knew we had to support him. When I came back to Nigeria last month, I told him that you can not sit down on your bed and edit. I have to create an office for you. Now I tell him, when it comes to your work don’t joke but still tidy your room.’’

Here’s what Sogie’s dad has to say about Sogie’s job as a photographer.

”There are several roads and paths to a successful life. If you have chosen yours, I am only interested in you giving whatever you have chosen a 101% commitment and continually improving yourself at whatever you have chosen. Since you are enjoying and feel good about what you are doing, as a parent I feel okay.”

Here’s what Steph’s dad has to say about Steph’s job as a writer.

‘‘You are a writer. I’m not sure why you waited till we had to pay Babcock law fees before you found out that you don’t need a degree sha. But you are doing what you like so that is what is important. I like it better now that you are making better money from it too so let’s thank God that it has gone beyond a hobby.’’

Here’s what Dami’s mum has to say about Dami’s job as a social media strategist.

‘‘You have a job? I thought people pay you for being on the phone every day. I don’t entirely understand what you do, all I know is that you make money from being on your phone and laptop. I was worried that you were doing online fraud when you started talking about making money online then you said it wasn’t online fraud and I haven’t seen police come so I thank God. I am happy because this country makes it hard for young people to find employment so I am glad to see that young people are making their own jobs up and are doing it from their houses.’’
The late 2000s and early 2010s was a great time in Nigerian music history but can you identify these hit songs released in that era from just their lyrics?
Growing up, Max* hated dresses and, for that reason alone, he loathed Sundays when his parents demanded that he and his younger sister wore a dress and a head covering as they went to church.

‘‘I wore a skirt to school from Monday to Friday, but it was the dresses on Sunday that really made me mental. I still don’t entirely know why,’’ Max, a trans man, tells Zikoko. When Max went to university and got his first taste of freedom, he made sure to put all his dresses in a different bag to make sure he never came across them. But he quickly ran into another problem.

‘‘I was in an all-girls hostel, and I quickly realised how out of place I felt,’’ Max says. ‘‘I don’t begrudge the girls. They weren’t mean to me or anything, but you could tell they didn’t quite understand or get me. Every now and then they made it clear that they thought I was weird. Some thought I was a lesbian. One even asked, and I said yes because, back then, I didn’t know what I was.’’ When asked how he came to understand his gender identity, Max’s answer is simple and straightforward: ‘‘YouTube.’’

Watching YouTube videos of trans activists and even trans beauty bloggers, Max came to terms with the idea of being trans and eventually came to understand that what had been tagged as him being ‘A girl who is a tomboy’ is him being a trans man.

‘‘It has been almost three years since I left Uni. I moved to Abuja, and I was lucky enough to get a job as a product designer for a firm in Belgium and the money is good,’’ Max tells Zikoko. ‘‘I have plans to leave this country before the year ends because I deserve to live a good life, where I am visible and validated daily.’’

In 2019, Chuma* changed the pronouns in his Twitter bio to ‘he/him’. He tells me that he has less than two hundred followers and his Twitter is private, but it was a pivotal moment to him in his gender identity journey.

‘‘My mum is a single mother and growing up, she made it clear that she expected me to be perfect. So when I realised I was trans, I wasn’t scared about people and what they’d do. I was scared of and for her. I planned to remain in the closet until I could leave the house. Then one day, when I was in 300L, she came home with a youth pastor, and I realised she was trying to set us up. The guy came home a few times and once when we were alone, he tried forcing himself on me. I was able to push him away. I think he thought I would put up a bit of a fight and then let up. That was when I realised I couldn’t do it anymore. When my mum came back, I brought it up and I think during the argument I realised that if allowed, she’ll never let me live. That day, I changed my pronouns on social media and over the weekend, I moved in with a friend.’’

When asked if he remembers coming into the realisation that he’s trans, Ben* laughs and says he doesn’t and that he always knew even when he didn’t know the right word to use. ‘‘I had this innate awareness and knowledge that I am not a woman. I wasn’t even overly masculine, I hated football etc. But I knew.’’ Ben tells Zikoko. ‘‘My parents disowned me a few years ago. They first thought I was possessed and tried conversion therapy, but once I could, I left. I moved to Lagos and I found relative peace. At least enough peace till I can japa,’’ Ben says. ‘‘But I think the moment it hit me, like really hit me, that I was trans was in 2018. I applied for a job in marketing at a tech-company, it’s supposed to be a remote job that is very ‘KPI based’. They also claimed to be progressive. They needed me to do an interview and I had to present as a woman because of my certificate and the rest. It was awful and it was worsened by the fact that I couldn’t do it convincingly. I didn’t get the job and I know why. Now, I always show up as me, trans man and all.’’
- Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
It is common knowledge — at least common Twitter knowledge — that the skincare routine of most Nigerian men begins and ends with a bar of soap and vaseline.

For many of the men we spoke with, they don’t see why they should care that much about their skin but others are actively taking time out to learn about skincare because they have been bullied by the timeline or just because they want to be a part of the baby boy lifestyle.

Michael, 25

The first time I saw the Nigerian men and Irish Spring banter on the timeline my heart skipped a beat because of a truth that was the extent of my skin and body care routine. Last year, I got a better job with much better pay so I decided that I should reflect how much I earn and one of the things that changed was caring about my skin. I got one of my female friends to help give me one of her skincare plugs and see that shit is expensive even though it’s worth it. My skin had a purging phase after I started – where my skin was shedding and broke out even more than normal – which I think people should talk about more, but after that, I was gleaming. I still use my bar soap sha but now I have a whole ass routine as well.

I budget about N50,000 – N60,000 monthly and I have no regrets because I can see the return on investment.

Brian, 28

I was very insecure about my skin when I was growing up so I got into skincare really early. I tried astringents, Dermatol, everything. Most of them made it worse but I hated having acne with a passion. I think I cracked the code three years ago, I went to a professional dermatologist and within a few months, my acne cleared. It was an absolute game-changer and confidence booster.

I think monthly I spend about N40,000 on products, this is excluding consultation visits and spa trips. My skincare routine now is very simple, cleanser, toner, serum, moisturizer, and sunscreen.

Ade, 23

You know when people say men only use soap and vibes, that’s me. I tried getting skincare once but everything wasso expensive. I’m lucky I have fairly good skin, to be honest, so I just wash my face with soap and rub Nivea and bounce.

My skincare budget a month is about N4,000 or less.

Emenike, 28

I use my girlfriend’s products, can’t even lie. She spends the weekends at mine and most weekdays so she has a lot of her stuff there. I just ask which I’ll use that won’t turn me into a frog because the bathroom looks like an alchemist’s lab because of her products. My skin is naturally good but the extra oomph isn’t bad.

I don’t spend on skincare products, my girl does. But when she is out buying stuff and asks for money, I try to always give her more than she asks for because na me dey enjoy am.
What does it mean to be a man? Surely, it’s not one thing. It’s a series of little moments that add up.

“Man Like” is a weekly Zikoko series documenting these moments to see how it adds up. It’s a series for men by men, talking about men’s issues. We try to understand what it means to “be a man” from the perspective of the subject of the week.

The subject of today’s Man Like is Denola Grey. He’s an actor, a fashionista and an all-round badass. Denola tells us about battling anxiety and how he uses fashion to manage it. He also tells us about struggling to make genuine connections with boys while growing up, and how much his tribe means to him.

What are your day-to-day essentials?

I definitely need to do my skincare routine — both morning and evening — because I feel like if I don’t, my skin will fall apart. I have to meditate at least a couple of times during the day. Brief meditations. You know to kind of keep the anxiety in check because that’s something I battle with. And water, lots of water.

Anxiety? What’s that about?

I didn’t really know what to call it growing up, I always knew it was a thing. Maybe it was the years of bullying or just really not able to connect with people; I always felt an internal panic, especially in social settings.

But it wasn’t always like that. I was about 10 years old when it started, in primary 6. And it kind of stuck with me all till college.

I started talking to some therapists here and there to figure out why I had these intense moments of panic where my mind would be racing at 1000 miles per minute. And eventually, that feeling would go on for a few weeks and lead to can’t get out of bed depression. When I realised it was anxiety, I was better able to manage it before it got out of control. Now I’m happy to say that I have the tools to help me keep it at bay and not let it consume me anymore.

That sounds intense. How have you been able to find your balance especially during this panini we’re in?

We all need extra help. And I’m so thankful that I have such amazing friends that take mental health seriously as well. But the main thing for me was that in 2018, I got some clarity in my personal and spiritual life, which led me to read up more about energies and the mind state and what anxiety means in that space. How something as simple as breathwork and relaxing the body goes a long way in helping you feel grounded and secure because anxiety means you are not in the moment. Your mind is either living in the past through some triggers that remind you of past trauma or in the future based on possibilities that haven’t happened yet. So it’s always a reminder to kind of stay in the present, and I can only do that through breathwork and meditation. And sometimes, a healthy distraction with talking to friends or doing some work, or being aware that the anxiety is there but not grasping onto it, letting it pass like a storm.

Makes sense. So you mentioned being bullied when you were younger, in school? When did that start?

It wasn’t like people were beating me up or anything. It was just name-calling, ostracism and stuff like that. It got worse in boarding school when I was in secondary school because I was in an all-boys dorm. And it was easier for me to connect with the girls and just be friends with them because they were more emotionally intelligent. So I was always kind of ridiculed for, you know, being a “woman-wrapper”. It’s so wild that these people were just like 17 years old.

It went on for a while and I couldn’t take it anymore. And so my parents took me out boarding school, and to a day school and that wasn’t too bad. Again, I couldn’t really connect with a lot of guys in my year. I had some friends along the way, but I wouldn’t say I had any real friends till I was about 17.

Bruh, teenagers are mean. Is it easier to navigate male friendships as an adult?

Well yeah, 100%. I found that the key to connecting with people is just authenticity and knowing you aren’t going to be for everyone and everyone isn’t going to be for you. So I stopped thinking ‘‘Oh my God, are they going to like me?’ and instead thought: ‘‘Is there any value in this dynamic?’’

I stopped going after people based on some perceived clout or who I thought they were. Also understanding that some people’s energies are just not conducive for me and my mental health. And being okay with that and not trying to denounce people for not being your cup of tea.

I find it easier to show up as my authentic self. The people who subscribe to that stay and people who don’t can exit stage left. There are no hard feelings. I have more guy friends now, even more guy friends that are more ‘hyper-masculine’ than I would have expected. And I cherish those friendships because those guys have sense.

I can’t even begin to imagine how important your tribe is to you.

Growing up, I had a hard time finding people generally because I couldn’t trust them. I didn’t feel secure in those days. Because I thought that if you let your guard down people will be able to find a way to hurt you emotionally and those emotional scars don’t go away with time. So I didn’t really think I would have so many friends. I have so many fulfilling friendships right now. They’re very important to me in the same way that I’m important to them.

I got that confirmation last year when they banded together to give me the biggest surprise of my life. The best, sweetest short film and a love letter to me. I got to feel really validated in that space and in that love, and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced. Obviously, I didn’t share that on social media because you just have to keep some magic for yourself.

Is there space in your WhatsApp group?

Lol.

Did you ever have a “man now” moment?

I didn’t have one key moment. I’ve had several over the years and instances where I look back on and I applaud myself showing up for myself for being a brave person. I’ve had to redefine what masculinity means to me so many times. I’ve tweeted about it — that tweet made headlines which I didn’t expect. I’ve had to confront people because of how I’ve been treated in my relationships, and, people don’t tell you how difficult it is to stand up to your friends. But I’ve had to do that numerous times and be like, I’m not going to tolerate this, you know, I’m not going to be someone that’s going to cower away from confrontation because I’m a gentle person. I think placing the ideas of masculinity and femininity side by side and seeing how they can both thrive together if left unabashed and unbridled are where I found my joy — somewhere in the middle

You once said something about using your personal style to navigate your anxiety. How did that come about?

For me, something as simple as putting an outfit together gives me an element of control. It gets me out of my head, and I can channel my more expressive creative side. And that has helped me over the years be like, you know what, you can beat me, but you can’t beat my outfit. I know that is something that is mine and is unique to me. I take great pride in that.

It also helps the way people relate to me because they are like this guy has a level of confidence and I can’t talk to him anyhow.

Inside, I still feel the fear and the anxiety. But when they come to me with a bit more respect, I feel less threatened and I’m able to show up calmer and communicate better. Over time that has become my norm. Even if I feel scared on the inside, people see those physical things, and they relate to me accordingly because they feel I have confidence. And people flock to confidence.

Taking notes furiously.

Haha.

What’s a thing people expect you to like because you’re a man but you don’t?

For me actually, it’s the reverse because there are things that I like that people don’t expect me to like because of the low level of masculinity that they perceive for me.

Photo Credit: @theseyekehinde

Like you wouldn’t expect me to enjoy drinking a big bottle of beer but I love it. You look at me and think ‘‘cocktails and canapes’’ but I am a beer and chicken wings all day.

I’m dead. What do you think is the hardest part of being a man in Nigeria?

I think it’s the fact that a lot of men have not been taught to be expressive or to be emotionally intelligent. So you have a lot of emotionally stunted men who are deeply insecure. And when you possess all these qualities that most men don’t possess, it leads to unwarranted attacks and microaggression because you don’t fit the traditional model of being stoic and probably dead inside. So yeah, it’s the lack of emotional intelligence and the expectation to be everything to everyone but nothing to yourself.

Check back every Sunday by 12 pm for new stories in the “Man Like” series. If you’d like to be featured or you know anyone that would be perfect for this, kindly send an email.

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It is an open secret that the music industry especially in Nigeria is a boys club. When you take a look at both the veteran and emerging acts who are making waves within and outside the country, it is overwhelmingly male. To assume it is so because women artists aren’t making good enough music or aren’t good enough themselves is the route many have chosen to go but this isn’t just mentally lazy, it also ignores the blatant sexism that plagues the Nigerian music industry.

Nigeria itself is sexist, with sexism manifesting and holding the country back in many ways. A 2017 Stears Business article found out that the Nigerian female labor market participation ratio is embarrassingly low at 75 women to 100 men. The article also found that if women participated as much as men, the GDP would see a 27% rise. This is just one of the ways sexism robs a country, an industry as well as women.

The sexism in Nigeria, largely powered by lack of education which has made it possible to hold on to regressive traditional values, has also manifested itself in the music industry’s model especially in how it treats the women in the industry. Many of the biggest labels have one woman who is usually dubbed the first lady of said label or some other honorific title. The result is that where they are several men under a label – from half a dozen to a dozen – there would be one or two women. And this often means these women are in a precarious situation where if another woman artist is to join said label, they feel their position as first lady/queen, etc could be threatened. A situation like this makes it hard for these women to support themselves because they have to fight for the one or two positions made available for women in the label.

We spoke to three women who are working in the Nigerian music industry about what the sexism in the industry looks like and how bad it is.

Tami Makinde, Music and Culture Journalist

@tamimak_

The Nigerian music industry is inherently androcentric and it’s always been that way for as long as I’ve been privy to observe the industry. Women barely break any glass ceilings and when they do, there’s only one spot reserved on top for the ‘Queen’ diminishing the value and accomplishment of other women who could equally be on the same playing field. The culture is so toxic and hinders the growth of female artists who will have to work twice as hard to command the same attention as their male counterparts.

I think it’s quite a big problem but there have been moments of hope particularly with the new vanguard of female artists coming up these days. It’s so inspiring to see bedroom pop make a name for itself with artists like Ictooicy and SOLIS, and also seeing women like Tems dominate the charts both in Nigeria and the UK where she’s never even performed. Women are clearly making a name for themselves and bypassing the gatekeepers by connecting directly to their fans and audiences, and they are all the better for it because there’s less clamor for one ‘Queen Bee’. Everyone is winning as it should be.

I think we need a change in the way we engage with female artists and their work. There does not need to be one main female artist to stand comfortably in a sea of male artists, we need ten women in the room if possible and we need to show younger girls that there’s room for everyone to make it – regardless of gender. I also heard that women are discriminated against by record labels because of the funding it takes to create a female artists brand and that is just absolute crap.

Bella Alubo, Singer and Songwriter

@bellaalubo

Sometimes I want to share the view of older successful women and say what holds women back is thinking their gender affects the hustle, but denial doesn’t solve problems. Because even if hard work and talent eventually help us breakthrough. suffering isn’t a virtue. It’ll be nice if we didn’t have to.

All is mind. As long as a complete mental shift hasn’t been achieved, everything that exists within society continues to be affected by how people think. If people look at you and the first thing they see is a skewed definition of what they think a woman is, all interactions are affected. I think this is one of the only industries without strict human resource guidelines and so there aren’t really boundaries. A lot of the things we see like managers falling in love with artists or producers hitting on artists or the power dynamic between successful artists and upcoming ones that create room for taking advantage are all very unethical in normal work situations. How big sexism is in the Nigerian industry mirrors the Nigerian society and the norms hardly even matter enough to be called out except in extreme clear situations like rape and physical abuse but there’s a whole lot of mental Olympics that are really not okay if anyone cared to stop & look.

Ending sexism in the Nigerian music industry is kinda like solving global warming. I guess if we could suddenly convince everyone to have sense and realize all human beings are equal and deserving of respect and equal opportunities? I seriously dislike the “women should support women” doctrine because it’s often meant in a sexist way but most minorities that continue to overcome it have done that by banding together to create forces bigger than their problems from the black movement to the LGBT movement, the underlying thing is strength in unity. I’d like to see women intentionally come for the entire market together.

Waye, Singer and Stylist

@wayeofficial

It’s really a thing of the mind and I don’t understand where the origin is from. Maybe the stereotyped belief that women are weaker.

I am always being told that women are harder to manage or harder to control. Or you have to have known a woman from way back to manage her. Like huh? But I really don’t agree because any human can be easy or hard to work with.

Like I said it’s a thing of the mind. Everyone has to break away from that mindset, that female artists are this and that. And honestly, it starts with the people at the forefront of the music in Nigeria they should really start to treat/see male and female artistes as equals. Because the only thing holding them back from doing that is their mindset. Not resources and not the music, it’s all in their head or everyone’s head. To the extent that the female artist starts to see or believe it. It’s not a hard thing to fix but then again it is.
One of the sadder facts of life is that cheating happens. It, for the most part, can’t be helped. No one knows exactly just how much cheating happens in relationships and studies into cheating and how much they occur have given varying results. An expert quoted in a Refinery29 article suggests cheating occurs in about 20 to 60 percent of romantic relationships while a published study says it happens in 70 percent of all marriages. While it is hard to place an actual number of how much cheating gets done within monogamous romantic relationships, one thing is certain in just about any and every study or statistics there is about cheating: men cheat more. At least that much we know for a fact.

For today’s story, we spoke to four Nigerian men who not only cheated on their partners but were caught and we asked them what happened next.

Peter, Straight, 28

‘‘My ex-girlfriend’s friends never liked me because they said they had heard stories about me and girls. In all honesty, I wasn’t cheating when they were suspecting me of it. So in a way, they might have caused it, you know how the law of attraction works, yeah? Anyway, I had a side chick a year into the relationship. We — side-chick and I — were spotted by one of her friends in a club when we were in Abuja. Before I could say Jack Robinson, my girlfriend was calling me and asking me where I was and who I was with. I tried ‘explaining’ but when I came back to Lagos there was a big fight oh. Eventually, we made up and I promised to never do it again and I thought things were okay. I said I’ll apologize to her friends and stuff. One day, more than a week later, I came back and she had moved out. That wouldn’t have been too bad but she took everything she ever bought for me including the TV, throw pillows, bedsheets, basically the whole kitchen. Everything. When I asked my neighbor’s househelp, she said my ex-girlfriend and her friends packed everything in their cars and just zoomed out. I wanted to cry, I wish she had left without the stuff she bought.’’

Fred, Straight, Age Undisclosed

‘‘When I cheated, I frankly didn’t mean to hurt her. I genuinely hoped that she would never find out. I slept with a babe I met on Tinder and it was really just sex. When I am off the app, I hide my profile and turn it on only when I am on it. I immediately block anyone that might know me and I don’t use my actual face, just a side view. Unfortunately for me, someone I was chatting with knew her but I didn’t know the girl. Then a few days later — mind you the girl had stopped replying to my texts at this point — my girlfriend asked me why I was still on Tinder. I said I wasn’t. She opened her phone and showed me screenshots that had been sent to her. Then as she was swiping, she showed me screenshots she had taken on my phone – meaning somehow this babe discovered what my password was and opened my phone — and sent it to her phone including very obviously sexual conversations. Long story short, we were yelling at each other. She was accusing me of being a cheat and I was talking about privacy. At some point, she took an actual pestle to hit me. We had to settle it with the police, by the next day I went back to my house and that was it. I finally deleted Tinder.’’

Bolu, Gay, 25

‘‘My ex-boyfriend is considerably well-to-do. He has a great career while I am a struggling creative. He was okay taking care of me and the bills and stuff and I basically lived at his. Then I fucked up really badly. I slept with a not-so-close friend of his. To be honest, more than one. I was young and very stupid. When he eventually found out, to be honest, he was more sad than angry. He felt like his insecurities were validated and he kept asking if he was doing something wrong. I won’t lie, I felt like shit. I begged and asked that we move forward and that it won’t happen again. He agreed. But his close friends weren’t having it. They had always felt like I was using him which I wasn’t and that I was with him because I was broke which isn’t true. They started doing this thing where they would come around to my ex-boyfriend’s place where I was and ignore me and I could tell they were talking about me to him in an unflattering way because my ex-boyfriend’s behavior towards me started changing. It took about a month then one day, he came back and said it had to end. After the relationship ended, all his friends unfollowed and blocked me and I am pretty sure they blacklisted me in the industry. Stress lol.’’

Ifeanyi, Straight, 37

‘‘My wife is very suspicious, she suspects everyone. Househelp, her friends, even her relatives. She thinks I am cheating on her with somebody even when I am not. It is a bit draining. And it made it so that when i finally cheated on her, I think she lowkey felt validated. I used to take my son to his school and pick him up and then I started noticing his class teacher. Young and very fine lady. We started talking and eventually exchanged numbers. I’ll dash her some money when I drop off my kid and one day, I asked her to meet me on a Saturday for lunch. We ended up having sex. It went on for a while and it stopped because other teachers noticed and one called my wife, I am still not sure who. My wife went to the owner of the school and told her. I was so mad. My wife found the address of the teacher and went there to threaten her. Then told me she was giving me one week to round up what we had. So I stopped the relationship, eventually, we changed my son’s school and that was it.’’
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In 2018, Tunde* was sent to a state in the Nigerian middle belt for his NYSC, the one-year paramilitary program Nigerian graduates are expected to serve out after finishing university. He quickly realised that one place within the state he could be posted to and make good money during his service year was the State Government’s House.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who came to this conclusion — the line of NYSC corps members who wanted that posting was long and many weren’t afraid to bribe the officers in charge of drafting people in order to guarantee their spot. Tunde, who didn’t have the money to pay his way out, got a rare opportunity when he realised the camp commandant was making passes at him.

‘‘I slept with the camp commandant to influence my posting to the state government house.’’ Tunde, who identifies as a straight man, told Zikoko. ‘‘We had sex once at his quarters and twice in a hotel outside the camp. I felt bad about it because of my religious beliefs, but I wasn’t about to be posted to a local school in one of the unpronounceable LGAs that the NYSC officials kept telling us about, so I took advantage of it.’’

Tunde isn’t alone in this. Being gay for pay isn’t a new concept. It isn’t particularly uncommon for men who identify as straight to perform sexual acts on men in exchange of money. For these straight men, it isn’t an attraction that has them testing the waters, it is money or a need for certain favors.

Sex Life: How I Went From Straight To Bi To Gay

Chris*, who describes himself as a creative and identifies as a straight man, tells Zikoko that he meets a lot of queer people in his line of work, and eventually, his need for money and the access he knew they could provide made him start making passes at queer men.

‘‘I met this rich Lekki man in my line of work – fashion – who was only looking for sex, and we hooked up,’’ Chris tells Zikoko. Although it worked and Chris got the access and boost he wanted, he soon found out that it was hard to maintain, especially as his ‘client’ kept asking for more than he could provide.

‘‘He helped boost my work a bit, but he now wanted more without offering more back in return,so I cut him off.’’

While people like Chris and Tunde are in it for the favors and access, Stephen*, a 26-year-old banker, says he is only in it for the money. Last year, Stephen, who identifies as straight and has a girlfriend, posted a thirst trap where he tied a towel that outlined his dick print. The photo led to a DM from an account that asked him how much it would take to see the dick without the towel. It had cost N50,000 and both the dick pic and money were sent within the hour.

‘‘I was shocked. I didn’t see it coming, and I didn’t know what to do next.’’ Stephen tells Zikoko. ‘‘He was flirting with me and making lewd comments, but he kept asking if I was comfortable. Omo, I wouldn’t be normally, but he wasn’t forcing me and there was money.’’

The next week, they met at a hotel and had sex. Stephen left with N200,000 more in his account.

7 Nigerians Share The Most Ridiculous Things They Believed About Sex

‘‘I thought I would feel dirty or something but it was just the pain that was bothering me. I read and watched videos about anal sex between men and I don’t think I expected the pain to be that bad. I’ve gotten better about it but the whole thing, ironically, made me realise that I really don’t have a gay bone in me. It’s just the money. My girlfriend doesn’t know because how do you tell your babe that you are sleeping with another man because of money? Abeg.’’

Like Stephen, Ade’s* gay for pay experience started as a DM, but unlike Stephen, it started off on Instagram and not Twitter.

‘‘I work as a gym trainer, and I get several passes from men whoassume I’m gay because I work out and have lots of female friends,’’ Ade tells Zikoko. ‘‘Then one day, someone from the gym DMed my personal Instagram and was being flirty. It isn’t strange to do that, by the way, men and women do it so I wasn’t bothered and I didn’t bother. But this person was very serious. They eventually offered me money and I wasn’t going to take it originally because I was scared and obviously I wasn’t gay.’’

It took Ade two weeks, and within that time frame, he told himself that he was doing it for the money. While Ade refuses to disclose the amount he was paid, he tells Zikoko that it was ‘ not worth it’. He also notes that he found it hard to share his experience with anyone else.

‘‘I couldn’t tell my friends because I know they’ll judge me and assume that I have been ‘turned’ gay, which isn’t true. It also caused me some inner turmoil about my sexuality because I knew I was straight but the fact that I was able to go through with it made me worried. I didn’t like that I did it especially because I know I wasn’t forced or pressured, I just did it because of the zeroes.’’
- Names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

Joeboy (Somewhere Between Beauty And Magic, February 4)

Bella Shmurda (Hypertension, Release Date TBA)

Teni (TBA)

Rema (TBA)

Simi (TBA)

Michael, 25

Brian, 28

Ade, 23

Emenike, 28

What are your day-to-day essentials?

Anxiety? What’s that about?

That sounds intense. How have you been able to find your balance especially during this panini we’re in?

Makes sense. So you mentioned being bullied when you were younger, in school? When did that start?

Bruh, teenagers are mean. Is it easier to navigate male friendships as an adult?

I can’t even begin to imagine how important your tribe is to you.

Is there space in your WhatsApp group?

Did you ever have a “man now” moment?

You once said something about using your personal style to navigate your anxiety. How did that come about?

Taking notes furiously.

What’s a thing people expect you to like because you’re a man but you don’t?

I’m dead. What do you think is the hardest part of being a man in Nigeria?