Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the wordpress-seo domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/bcm/src/dev/www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121 compatriots | Zikoko!
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new instalment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, a young woman shares with us, her history of abuse in the hands of a maid brought in to care for her home. This experience marred her childhood and perhaps life for good.
When I was three going on four, I was the size of a kitten somehow cursed with the curiosity of 9 cats. What I lacked in centimetres, I made up for in the sheer volume of questions I produced: what was holding the sky up? Did she swallow her baby? How come you get to tell me what to do? I had an excess of inquiries and a minimum of tact. Proportions which served me right until it came time to question why the maid, under whose care I was carefully placed, was just as carefully inserting appendages slick with Vaseline, into parts of me I was warned were not for outside viewing.
I never once queried her directive that no one be told of our ‘games’. And while 3, going on 4-year old me knew it was weird, it never crossed my lips to question why she only seemed to play these ‘games’ when no one else was around.
Illustration by Celia Jacobs.
It’s funny how guarded parents are when it comes to interactions between their children and known family and acquaintances. Show me a Nigerian child who wasn’t warned via eye movements alone to avoid an Uncle’s gifts or that aunt’s embrace and I’ll show you a miracle. Yet somehow, when it comes to near-strangers, these same guard rails are shifted to the side, to make for easier access to unsuspecting children — picking them from school, making their meals, sharing their rooms.
From what I recall, *Gladis was a Benenoise national given to torrents of rapid French when her limited English couldn’t pass a message across. She was to look after my two older siblings and I (all yet to reach adolescence), and keep our house in order, to ease the load off our civil-servant parents. A perfect stranger, I imagine her presence in our home was made possible through the greasing of some palms and the wringing of others — family and friends sad to see her go.
Perhaps as punishment for separation from her family, Gladys thought to ruin mine, starting with the smallest member she could literally get her hands on – me. And while time and the sheer will to forget have taken the worst of my memories of abuse from me, some experiences linger – being made to sit astride her while she appeared to playfully bounce me — movements which was anything but innocent. Inappropriate touching while she undressed me fresh from primary school, sometimes making me play the games on her instead.
Illustration by Celia Jacobs.
But perhaps her most wicked act was stealing the innocence of my childhood. At 3, I was Incapable of computing hundreds tens and units, but already I was fluent in the well language of excuses and silence that are usual markers of abuse victims. I’m not too sure how long I was a mark for her, a year, perhaps more. But it has been decades and decades since I’ve had the torment of seeing her face and yet, I still hold on to that silence.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new instalment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, we have a natural born salesman narrate the thrills of working in sales in Nigeria and his journey to becoming a professional.
Think about the most potent high you’ve ever felt: the numbing goodness of an intense orgasm; the clouding weight of great marijuana; the rapturous feeling of cocaine — if you’re into any of these, multiply that feeling by three, add one-half for good measure and maybe, just maybe you’ll get a fifth of the thrill that comes with working in sales in Nigeria.
The thing is, we all work in sales. You’re selling the threat of a lost trade when you convince that butcher to sell you meat at a 35% markdown. You’re selling the promise of a changed heart when you persuade your ex to return after cheating. And you’re currently doing a wonderful job, selling yourself dreams if you choose to remain in a country that won’t love you as well as Canada can. But while sales to you might spell intermittent domestic triumphs, to me, it’s a daily professional target — convincing individuals and companies into taking bargains, purchasing products and buying up ad spaces they don’t really need, and yet somehow making it out to be that I’m a hero doing them a favour by taking their money.
My career in sales began like most careers in sales do – as a means to an end. I was fresh out of university with a B.Sc in cell biology. I was in need of a job that wouldn’t peer closely at my lack of experience. An internship role at an e-commerce firm surfaced; I was to handle product placements on their website, which is shorthand for saying: I had to make sure products were arranged in a way that encouraged impulse buying and made purchasing sense.
When I first took the job, I wasn’t entirely sure what product placement entailed. What I originally thought was to be the alphabetical arrangement of merchandise on the site, soon turned out to be hours spent poring over inventory, trying to determine what items would make the sense adjacent to a pink waist trainer and a gym water bottle shaped like a dumbbell.
At the time, I didn’t consider my role to be in sales. Sales was the man in the bus convincing you to buy his all-curing, all-enhancing powder. It was the broadcast on the radio shouting at you to secure land; that TV advert nudging you to purchase butter. Who knew sales and advertising weren’t one and the same thing? And a few product re-arrangements at the backend of a company website could produce a 25% bump in earnings for the month?
By my third month handling product placements and bringing the same positive results, I was promoted (still as an intern), to the floor of the company’s retail store, with the directive that I produce the same results. Without the safety of a computer screen, I did what any salesman worth his salt would do: I winged it. I sang for customers, I tried clothes on for them, I gave heaps and heaps of undeserving compliments. If they wanted my blood, I probably would have injected and drained it on the spot! I did achieve the bottom-line goal to the applause of my supervisors.
While I wasn’t in any way adequately compensated for my efforts, what I lacked in a healthy account balance, I gained in a sense of pride that my work was being recognised. I really was good at this sales thing!
But by my fifth month, that pride had taken quite the fall. Despite putting in the work and hours of full-time staff, my employers kept me on an intern’s salary, which may have been payment in exposure for all it was worth. I had to accept the game really was the game when, rather than offer me the staff role I was so obviously qualified for, my employers put on their shiniest sales hats, and tried to get me to buy the idea of an additional three-month internship ‘trial period’ before awarding me a full-time position. I took my experience, walked out of their doors and never looked back.
It didn’t take a month to find a job. This time, it was as one of the recruits to the sales team in one of Nigeria’s newest e-commerce giants. While some merit played a role in finding a job easily, the reality is — sales in Nigeria is such a never-ending cycle of vacancies and resignations, it would have been difficult to not find employment within that time.
Here’s free advice, if you want to be successful in sales in Nigeria, forget what they say about 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Sales will break that equation and introduce three new variables: looking and talking a big game, while of course, being able to back it up
In my first month of employment, I was with a team of fresh recruits that had bachelors and masters degrees in sales. These guys rode in cars I had bookmarked for my five-year goals and spoke in accented sentences punctuated with enough “wanna” and “gonnas” to get the typical Nigerian employer all hot and bothered. If they walked into meetings with their Macbooks, accents and car keys, soliciting 7-figure deals, they’d probably have left with 8. I was left wondering if I could make the cut, I felt like a minor character playing in their show. Appearance really was everything, or so I thought …
By the end of that first month, more than half of the sales team had resigned. Here’s why:
When you’re just one of Nigeria’s leading e-commerce sites, setting its sights on the number one spot, there are a number of things you will subject your sales team to:
Individual weekly targets and mid-week progress meetings, so a slacking member of the sales team can explain to the Managing Director and supervisors present, why only ₦ 50,000 had been made by Wednesday when the week’s target was ₦ 1 million.
A reward system so only high-performing members of the team ride to meetings in company cars. The rest can sort their way out on a miserly ₦ 4000 weekly transport allowance.
Promise a 20% commission for employees able to meet their monthly targets, but right before they achieve it, switch the game on them and double the goal.
In my first month, say the monthly target was ₦ 4 million in sales, by the third week, it doubled to ₦ 8 million. You cannot imagine the flurry of resignation letters.
In that month, I saw grown men have panic attacks at the thought of going into weekly meetings and explaining why their numbers were running short. People so jittery with fear they couldn’t even muster the strength to go into client meetings for fear of continued failures. Every week brought a new set of resignations. It felt like playing musical chairs with opponents who, rather than wait for the music to stop, thought it best to run, kicking and screaming away from the prize.
And yet somehow, in spite of all the chaos around me, I was thriving! I made my first million from a client I somehow convinced her to advertise her products on every single platform we owned – newsletter, website, banners and ad spaces. From there, I was on a roll. You cannot imagine the thrill of closing in two ₦250,000 deals the day of your mid-week progress report, or the high of entering into a client meeting, coming out with more than you bargained for. Even though I was probably just a cog in the capitalism wheel, I luxuriated in those highs, looking forward to my next fix — the next scheme, the next deal.
After the purge of the first month, my views changed from being small fry in a pool full of sharks to being an equal amongst thieves. Thieves because there is absolutely no honour in a gathering of salesmen.
For the rest of my time in this company, it was routine to steal clients from co-workers. Your colleague was taking too long to land a client? Undercut him by reaching out to the same client, and offering a discount of whatever rates are in negotiation. Think your associate is on the brink of reeling in a high-income organisation? Sabotage his ass by reaching out to someone higher than his contact in said organisation, and promising a sweeter deal. There is nothing a salesman wouldn’t do to land a deal. I’ve made promises I had no guarantees of keeping and taken the time to plan meticulous ‘chance encounters’ with clients in restaurants, church and even a child’s birthday ceremony.
Even with 6 years in the game, these are some schemes I still find myself pulling.
These days however, I’ve moved on from that e-commerce giant, on to the sales department of an architecture firm before my current employ as the sales lead in an entertainment firm. But even after all this time, there’s nothing quite like that first thrill of a potential client in sight, the rush of reeling them in and that eternal high of landing them.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new instalment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, we’re telling the story of a young lady whose inability to get the answers to her burning questions about God, led to her shunning his existence entirely.
I’ll start the same way I used to start my days: with a word of prayer.
Thank you for seeking out knowledge, for learning the real rights and wrongs, for vesting accountability in no one but yourself and for actively seeking out the grace, to simply be.
In the past, my prayers would have been directed to an all-seeing, all-knowing messiah, whose existence both terrified and soothed me at my most trying moments. These days I keep things simple, directing all gratitude, supplications, and admonishments to a 5’5, chipped-tooth, second-hand clothes-wearing, indecision riddled human being — myself.
I grew up in one of Nigeria’s more conservative churches: popular for sermons which never deviate from salvation and godly living, its fame is eclipsed only by a set of rules, which even by Nigerian wholesome standards, call for some uncomfortable shifting in pews.
No television, no earrings, absolutely no unnatural extensions of any kind. ‘Sisters’ were encouraged to keep their hair covered in readiness for prayer, while women that chose to show off shapely calves in jeans were only highlighting body parts already simmering in the lake of fire. Attending church here was ostracising, judgment igniting and sometimes even laughter-inducing. But it was home and I loved it there.
Or at least I did until I turned 7. Which was right around the time I started losing teeth, a milestone that only left me determined to square up with a creator who reckoned my smile needed a big gap in the middle.
“Who is this God?”
“Where did He come from?”
“What is the source of His power?”
These were some of the questions I burdened my Sunday school teachers with at the time. I remember being disappointed with generic responses like “He is the Alpha and Omega” and “we don’t question where He came from.” This explained nothing. What if we were rooting for the wrong guy? An assertion that didn’t seem too far fetched, especially after the Holy Spirit entered my Shit List for ‘revealing’ to a Sunday School teacher — in full view of everyone — that I dared to wear braids to the House of the Lord. Never mind that my braids (an allowance of my liberal parents) were peeking out of my scarf, clear as day for man and spirit alike to see.
That is not to say it marked the start of my unbelief; that would come very shortly after. But from my tweens, right up until the very early stages of adolescence, I was a model, middling child of God. While I wasn’t crazy about observing weekday hours on weekends just to make it to church before 8 am, I did so with the unquestioning submission of a child still heavily reliant on her parents. I memorised Bible verses (all forgotten now), always completed a daily checklist of trinity prayers: upon waking, before eating and right before bed and I never once took the name of the Lord in vain. But something happened when I made the leap from shimis and a fresh face to training bras and an unbecoming pitch fuzz — I made the realisation that I really, really, didn’t like attending church.
Look, I don’t know what it is about being a teenager that transforms parents from being your cool, employed best friends, to the very last people you’d want to be stuck on earth with, but my parents got this end of the stick, and my heavenly father was no exception.
While my earthly parents were stuck with a teenager prone to mouthing unrepeatable things under her breath, the Lord got one unwilling to visit, even in his own house! I became masterful in avoiding church services, plotting my escape days ahead — blaming everything from phantom period pains to untraceable headaches. It was during these periods that those truly unanswerable questions, once again reared their heads:
“Who is this God?”
“Where did He come from?”
“What is the source of His powers?”
While my family was away, singing hymns and praising at the House of God, I was home alone, spending an unaccountable amount of time staring at a mirror, trying to come to terms with the fact that my reflection was indeed myself, a person fearfully and wonderfully created by a mysterious God.
As I got older, these questions matured as I did. Growing from merely interrogating the origins of my God, to attempting to make sense of His end goal. Where childish exuberance marked my early ploys to avoid church, at 17, they were my crutch to stay sane.
Post-adolescence was riddled with attempts to rationalise a God who would create a world of people, solely to worship Him. Who could orchestrate scenarios where safety was compromised, simply to guarantee your gratitude that He pulled you to protection. How could God create a world filled with multiple religions, each believing their tenets correct, but with such intricate devices of worship, only one could truly be correct? A God that fearfully and wonderfully created certain humans a special way, but opened them to damnation, per His book?
Who punished deviants from His word with an eternity spent consumed by a lake of fire. And rewarded adherents with a whole lifetime spent praising Him? Forever and ever, worshipping? I couldn’t help but conclude that if God were a man, I wouldn’t like Him very much.
By 19, I understood the appeal of religion and a higher power interceding, where humans might have failed. Especially in a country like Nigeria where uncertainty in safety, sustenance, and security are the order of the day. Where the promise of finally being able to find rest, in a levitating mansion in heaven, is almost literally the thought keeping many underprivileged citizens alive. It just didn’t make much sense to me.
At that age, I made a decision that marked the start of the rest of my life — a year without religion. One year where no one but I, took centre stage in my life. Where all the credit and blame for my grades went straight to me, and where only my hard work and intuition guaranteed me multiple streams of income in university. No divine grace or exceptions here.
From that year, I decided to wing this life thing. I’m finally done with asking questions with no definitive answers, I’ll just wait to maybe be proved wrong at the other side.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new installment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, we translated (from Igbo) and helped narrate, the experiences of a Nigerian wrongfully imprisoned in the early months of 2019. His time in prison and his first taste of freedom on making bail.
In early 2019, a few weeks to my 27th birthday, I marked what will always be a milestone in my life. I didn’t buy my first car, that is still many dreams away nor my first home, I still share a flat with my mother. It was none of the above.
Weeks to my 27th birthday, I was taking my first steps of freedom from Ikoyi prisons, after 36 days behind bars.
My offence? Breaking a padlock that belonged to the police.
If you’ve ever met anyone that’s been to prison, especially a Nigerian prison, it’s a given they know the exact amount of time they spent locked up, almost down to the minute. For me, I will never forget the number 36. Not because I spent that time making a tally of days on top of my bunk like in the movies — where would I have found the personal space? No, the number stuck because I had spent every day during my time there trying to understand the hand life dealt me.
I don’t think anyone who knows me would describe me as a negative person. Even after my arrest, and having to share an open, cramped space with 300 other men, I always made sure to start each day thanking God for the gift of life. But when it comes to Nigeria? Nothing can shake my feelings. I accepted that I live in a country whose sole mission is to ‘mean’ its citizens, a long time ago. The level of ‘meaning’ gets higher, the smaller the zeros at the end of your account balance.
It is why people struggling — my people — attend neglected public schools, and ‘graduate’ without being able to read and write properly in English, just like I did. They’ll take jobs straight out of secondary school, not once stopping to consider the luxury of university, again — like I was forced to do: serving as everything from shop assistant, to errand boy at a printing press, before getting a security job at an Ikoyi office complex in 2017.
I was following the poor man’s script, and was fine doing so, never really allowing myself consider the possibilities of a career or ambition, because what really were the opportunities this country could throw my way, without the usual leg-up? Yet somehow, despite this contentment, nothing could stop Nigerian misfortune from setting its sights on me.
As a security guard, I had a daily routine. In the morning, before daylight, I shared a cigarette with some construction workers not too far from my office, before returning to my post to welcome the first arrivers to the office. I usually did this with extra enthusiasm so they’d remember at lunch-time and when it was time to ‘dash’ something at the close of day. Afternoons were spent parking and re-parking cars, while night time — when I resumed my shift, was used to reflect on the day. I share a phone with my mother, so I had only myself for company. I did everything to stay awake because the complex had experienced break-ins in the past; sleep was not an option.
On the morning of my arrest, I started my routine as usual: smoking with the construction workers. What was different this time, however, was returning to the office to find the gates had been chained and padlocked by somebody. And it wasn’t me.
So imagine this, it’s around 6:30 am, and while the offices open at 8 am, some workers from the mainland, fortunate to have beaten the mainland-island traffic would begin arriving around 7:15 am. In the past, the complex had experienced break-ins where offices were vandalised and I was blamed for it. I could not afford a repeat. So I did what I had to. Using a stone, I dismantled the padlock, placing it and the chains in my security post.
This was exactly what I told the policemen when they made their way to the complex 20 minutes later, asking what had happened with the lock. According to them, the office (a private property) was sealed because there was word trespassers were around the area. As soon as I produced the broken lock, the pitch of their already loud voices increased; they were shouting that “I must pay o”, or follow them to their station.
I know it says ₦20,000 stood between me and freedom, but on the day of my arrest, it was a lot less, at ₦2,000, maybe even ₦1,500 if I negotiated properly. But this amount, on my salary of ₦30,000 which I shared between my mother and a cousin, wasn’t something I carried around. At the time, I didn’t appreciate how serious my situation was. Even when we got to the station, I stupidly thought I could still beg my way out of it, or help would somehow come for me. But by 1 pm, when none of these had happened, I was charged with ‘wilful destruction of property’ at Ikoyi Magistrate and remanded in Ikoyi prison. I didn’t stand a chance.
Even though I was in prison for a month and some days, the time I spent there broke me. It’s difficult to narrate and even harder to forgive.
On my first day in prison, there’s no other way to put it, I was rushed by the older inmates. While getting kicked and punched, I struggled to explain that I was new, and begged them to release me. I believed they had me confused for someone else. When this only made them hit harder, I kept quiet, praying for a quick end to the attack. Eventually, I was told it was the prison idea of a welcome party. The guards and wardens knew when this happened, yet nobody stopped it.
If there’s one thing I learned in Nigerian prison, it’s that Nigeria is a reflection of its prison system. It is filled with people who want to escape. The prison is run by people unconcerned with those placed under their care, just like the country it operates in. It is also run down and powered by bribes like I came to find out.
There is no part of prison life that doesn’t feel like it is made specifically to break you. Even eating was difficult. We were served twice every day: morning and night. Breakfast was always small portions of watery beans and garri, while dinner was eba with pepper and water — their idea of stew. My body didn’t adjust to the meals quickly, and my stomach was always upset early on, which was even worse for me because the prison space is set up in such a way that, you’re expected to eat where you shit.
The only way I can describe the way we slept is to liken it to chickens in a coop. We slept on the bare, overcrowded floor, dreading every breath exhaled from the next person, each one of us praying they were just a size smaller, so our limbs wouldn’t have to touch on hot nights.
The hopelessness I experienced in prison was so present and so real, you could have stretched and touched it.
While I was trying to make sense of my situation, my employers and mother — who eventually came to know what happened to me — were doing their best to get me out. From their daily visits, I learned that there was no real case against me, that the police and some members of the judiciary were only trying to get some money, a game they usually played on easy targets. It was from these visits I learned at least three bribes had to be paid by visitors.
Before my time in prison, I had no reason to consider the problems the judiciary; I had problems of my own. But by the end of my second week in prison, those problems became mine when, at my second appearance at the Ikoyi Magistrate, I was informed that the charge against me, was no longer just the willful destruction of property, but had increased to include cultism.
According to the lawyer hired by my employers, this was an effort by the police and members of the judiciary to make sure a bribe for my bail — ₦100,000 was paid.
In the remaining weeks, while my stomach adjusted to the meals and I learned to carry out commands to clear waste from the older inmates quickly, to avoid another ‘rushing’ — my lawyer did a lot of running around, trying to get the bail money reduced and sureties to stand in for me.
During that time, to cheer my mother, whose visits always started and ended in tears, I would tell her the progress my lawyer had made with reducing my bail, both of us choosing to ignore the fact that my freedom was being priced like choice meat in the market.
Eventually, ₦20,000 was agreed on, which thanks to my mother, her church group and my employers was paid at the end of my fourth week behind bars. I was only allowed to leave five days after the money was paid, because one of the people responsible for keeping me locked up, refused to share it equally with the rest of his group.
It’s been some months since I was released, but it is still hard to describe the feeling of taking the first steps outside of prison at almost midnight, not quite a free man, but thankfully no-longer an imprisoned one.
(The narrator has since had the charges against him dismissed, but chose not to relay the details)
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new installment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, we got in touch with a woman who has struggled with mental health almost all of her life. She narrates her ordeal with anxiety and the steps she’s taking to overcome her illness.
I have this fun memory. It’s from 2013, when I was in my second year in university.
It was past 1 am. I had just ended a call and was standing directly outside my hostel – a 4 man room aberration, which instead housed an additional 12 limbs. I was on perhaps my second plot at making a return to my room.
At my first go, knowing most of my roommates were awake, I practised engaging the nicest in conversation as soon as I made my re-entry. Perhaps I would inquire as to why she remained awake and what time her first class of the day was to hold as I made my way to my bed.
On the second try, I toyed with the idea of a stoic re-entry — making a solemn climb to my top-bunk, leaving them to wonder what manner of news I had just received.
At the third iteration, I would simply walk back in, say a jolly goodnight and make my way to bed.
Rehearsing the third plot a second time for good measure, I turned the door handle and made my way into a room filled with girls, almost immorally huddled together. They were too lost in conversation to notice the fidgety roommate who threw a practiced “goodnight” their way, before sauntering off to bed.
You see in 2013, my anxiety had gotten so complex, I couldn’t for the life of me, pick a telephone call or make a casual re-entry into a room without first, second and third guessing myself.
And this was only my reaction to telephone calls.
When I was younger. I was a professional worrywart. I had an inexhaustible list of fears: masquerades, dogs without leashes, naked flames and all costumed cast members of “Tales by Moonlight” to name a few. As I got older these fears went from strictly concrete worries to increasingly versatile sources of consternation.
By secondary school, I had become one of those children whose descriptors usually circled around ‘strange’. I had bad luck making friends and routinely broke out in a sweat when asked questions in class. One time, I infamously froze when directed to address an assembly of my peers, and while this may sound dramatic, I’m sure I saw the face of death at the turn of every examination.
At the time, beyond a popular hymn, I had no notion of the concept of anxiety. I would never have thought to class my bewilderment in the face of public addresses or the daily foreboding I experienced making the drive up to the school gates, as anything other than a typical teenage aversion to education. Had my school counselling unit served as anything but a glorified sorting hat, it’s still highly unlikely I would have ventured in to seek guidance for what was so clearly, the beginning stages of anxiety.
When I made the leap to university, my anxiety had grown, seemingly overnight from an almost understanding juvenile nuisance, to an ugly, three-headed and gnarled thing lurking in the shadows, waiting on any moment, opportune or otherwise to make an appearance.
To have a sense of my situation, imagine having to question just about every social interaction you possibly engage in: getting into a bus convinced the passengers hate you, having to rehearse a speech before making purchases at the market, dissolving into steam at the thought of giving a presentation, etc., then you might have a faint idea of how my time in university went and how the world currently plays out for me.
Following my hostel re-entry incident, I began to wonder if there wasn’t more to my years of incessant worry. When I came across Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) — a result produced from an internet search of my symptoms — I approached the diagnosis with the trepidation of a cold-sufferer, Google-diagnosed with cancer. Could I really have a mental health issue?
“Social anxiety disorder or social anxiety is an excessive emotional discomfort, fear, or worry about social situations.” It went on to list its symptoms, from which I had my pick.
Yes, I had an excessive fear of embarrassment. Therein lay the real reason I woke at 4 am to clean up in the hostel bathroom, and not the supposed state of cleanliness of the bathroom as I liked to claim.
And correct, I avoided situations where I could be the centre of attention, if my illogical avoidance of the Engineering faculty walkway was anything to go by. But it seemed all too generic, indicative of mere timidity and not what could potentially be a mental health condition.
It just seemed ironic that this disorder could easily be conflated with a heightened sense of importance. After all, it angles on an individual believing themselves the center of attention, a position I would have given away tax free.
But even my doubt couldn’t explain away my sweaty palms when carrying out trivial things like ordering food at a crowded restaurant, or my most extreme reaction till date — a one-week anxiety fueled bender, where I lost almost 2 kg in weight, complete with panic attacks and spontaneous tears, brought on by the fear of failing a final year exam for which I was prepared.
Or somehow never being able to hold on to relationships and maintaining solitary, indoor weekends, public holidays and sick days with the fervency of the devout.
It’s been years since I accepted my SAD diagnosis, triple confirmed through a series of tests and a consultation. While self-help in the form of assertiveness, breathing exercises and step-by-step planning have been my key tools in managing the disorder; a little divine help has come in from time to time, to manage its management in the giant of Africa, Nigeria.
Here, I’ve had to forego sick days on account of anxiety attacks for fear of being labelled the office-crazy, a tag I’ve tried my hardest to avoid in a still mentally closeted country. Or having to every couple of months, remind your family that you cannot — no matter what apostle says — pray away the disorder.
I wish I could say my anxiety was in the past, that I’m now cured and do not consider retreating to a hermit life every fortnight, but I’m learning that it’s okay sometimes to admit that there’s something wrong or to reach out and ask for help. It’s a step-by-step process and I’m okay with that.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian living, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a weekly column, a new installment will drop every Tuesday, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
This week, a Nigerian woman narrates her experience as a victim of sexual abuse in her early days of university, and why it took her so long to accept she was, in fact, a rape victim.
I am currently in my 20s — a decade that has been remarkable for my first minor car accident, first shared living space and the regrettable slowing of my metabolism.
It is also the decade that I finally accepted, without caveat, that I am a part of the Nigerian sexual violence statistic. A victim of sexual assault, a rape survivor.
It has taken me six years to get here. In which time I believed the scaffolding to support classifying my experience as rape, a little too weak to hold any water. After all, I willingly journeyed to a man’s home past the hour of 11 pm. I willingly allowed conversation levitate from sofa to bedroom. I even participated in willing sex, after the fact.
Forget crossing the rubicon, I made a beeline straight towards it. So where could I have come off divesting myself of complicity? Or ignoring the fact that I must have consented to rape, as a certain possessor of Twitter fingers so illogically posited?
Again, 6 years — dismantling, unlearning and piecing together again.
At 19, I was in my second year studying law at the University of Lagos and fresh off the throes of a breakup. 19 was also the year when I, like most people, fell prey to the Snapchat ghoul’s appeal. Chronicling my every waking moment and comatose hang-out, as the must-see events of the next twenty-four hours.
Unfortunately, I had an ex-boyfriend who didn’t subscribe to this credo. His silence on social media often relegated me to minutes spent staring at my phone, comically conjuring up scenarios he was reveling in, sans me. Which was why I was determined to have enough televised fun for two people. I made a show of attending everything from church service to dinner with friends to an envelope opening. In my opinion, I was winning the ‘Post-Breakup Fun Olympics.’ It was on one of such occasions that I met him.
I don’t know if I speak for many women or only slightly impressionable University students, when I say older (unmarried) men hold a largely unwarranted appeal. Almost as though this almighty formula — greying hair + wonky hairline + weathered face — somehow coaxes us into believing they are free of the fuckboyery that plagues their younger counterparts. Their attention, mathematically converted into something worthy of allure.
It is why on the night that I met him, I was more than a little charmed. He had surreptitiously cleared the bill for my table of rowdy, Snapchatting girls at Double 4, using that as a precursor to make introductions with me.
This charm was in spite of the fact that he was sporting the most ridiculous afro — a final, laughable attempt to hold on to the vestiges of a hairline determined to revolt. My very first tell that this stranger was edging dangerously close to middle age.
For some reason, I don’t remember the specifics of our first exchange. I vaguely recall his T-shirt being tucked into slightly flared jeans (my second tell!) and maybe a slight stammer I never quite picked again. But I’ll never forget him making the sign of the cross and releasing a faux gasp when I mentioned that I was still in university.
These weren’t in reaction to some tired trope about Unilag girls like I immediately assume. Instead, he was expressing shock that I still possessed a matric number, when he had hung up his convocation gown at least 10 years prior.
There was a 15-year gap between us.
For all the uncertainty and self-doubt that my encounter with this man unleashed in me for years to come, our actual interaction lasted all of two-weeks. In which time, we spent some hours of the day exchanging calls and awkward texts, never being quite able to find a middle-ground for the messaging requirements of an ancient teen and those of a busy car-dealership owner. We fared better at in-person meetings, two of which were held in restaurants, the last and final of which took place in his home.
It’s important to note that, save the last meet up, all our exchanges were devoid of any sexual undertones. Openly admitting to being uncomfortable with our age difference, he deftly avoided the topic, choosing instead to play the role of harmless friend and confidante.
In hindsight, the events that led up to permanently parting ways with him were so textbook assault, he might as well have written the revised standard of the book.
Exactly two weeks to the day we met (a Friday), we were in the middle of an uncharacteristically long telephone conversation where we admitted to suffering bouts of Friday night FOMO. It was past 10 pm, and my hostel had all but emptied out following a cacophony of heels and excited voices coming down the stairway.
We agreed to forgo a night of dancing and sipping fake Henny in smoke-filled rooms, for some time hanging alone at his home. It was my to be my first time over. Attempting to allay any fears of foul play, he pledged to have a spare bedroom cleaned out for me, even going so far as to suggest booking a room in a hotel fairly adjacent to his home if I felt the need.
There was the reel — a seemingly innocuous night spent with a friend, gorging on bad movies and even worse junk food. The innocence of the night supported by the promise of separate lodgings. But here’s the kicker — in spite of how things turned out that night, I went into his home, completely open to the possibility of the start of a physical relationship. It may sound contrarian to my claims, but at the time, I was roaring to go.
Only he shared the sentiment of our ages being a barrier. My reservation laid in immediately having sex; as I was completely swayed by the idiot notion that having sex early in a relationship, equated to a woman being ‘easy’ or whatever rubbish term we had been sold since the female inception.
So when, shortly after arriving at his home and making a game out of picking a movie to watch, (eventually settling on An Education, ha!) — he leaned in for a kiss, and I gladly, wholeheartedly welcomed it.
When we were done with the niceties and compliments that usually follow a first kiss, and that slow segue that usually marks the beginnings of sex began, I aired my reservations, making it clear that I wasn’t ready to get intimate so early in what I thought could possibly blossom into a relationship.
I could be wrong but, I’d bet anything this wasn’t his first time attempting a thing of this sort.
So easily did he placate my worries and assure me of his patience to wait for however long I needed, that there was no way this skill hadn’t been honed through at least a number of tries. It was why I couldn’t have suspected anything untoward when he suggested we move to his bedroom to get ‘more comfortable’.
A year ago, I would have told the rest of the events that played out in an entirely different way, completely discounting his actions as rape, narrating them instead, as a jolly one-night stand of sorts. An added knot to my achievements as a conservatively wild teen.
I would have explained how, getting into bed with him, things got more physical, with me disrobing entirely at some point. I would have narrated how eventually, he did the same, focusing on the fact that he took great care of his body for a man his age, and not the reality that I was completely unprepared and unaware of when he did so. And in telling the beginning, of when we actually engaged in sex — I would have skipped that part altogether.
But here’s what happened.
It had gotten incredibly heated, and while I originally asked that he take things slower, he assured me that he got off more, giving pleasure as opposed to actual sex, so I allowed things proceed.
What I wasn’t prepared for was sometime during the rush of things, feeling the tip of what was most certainly not a finger at the entrance of my slit. Believing myself still to be in the presence of a trusted friend and potential partner, I laughingly asked if he was attempting to ‘just the tip’ me at his age.
Again, I was unprepared for the millisecond transformation in his eyes from the glassy, almost depraved look of the aroused, to an almost stricken thing, contorted into what I couldn’t believe was near rage.
“Why are you insisting on proving you’re a child?”
“Why are you choosing to make me suffer?”
“Haven’t I done enough?”
He punctuated his last statement with an unexpected thrust inside me, reverting his eyes to that glossed over look that only seconds ago, seemed so far away.
In the moments that followed, he may as well have been ploughing into a freshly deceased corpse for all the response I was giving. My mind was moving at a thousand thoughts per minute. This man, this essential stranger whose sexual history I knew nothing about, had just, without a condom slipped inside me. He could be housing a harem of diseases for all I knew. Somehow focusing all of my worries on my health as opposed to the fact that he had in addition, just completely violated me and my trust in him.
My disgust and embarrassment soon gave way to self-reprimand. You baited this, you dressed for it, your genitals were in his face. What did you expect? At my lowest moment, I resolved simply to go along with things, putting up no struggle the next morning when he initiated sex a second time. I even attempted to make up for my unresponsiveness the night before, somehow finding the space to be worried at the thought that he would tag me as shit in bed.
I actually attempted to impress my rapist. What a concept?
When I left his home later that day, I did so with the equivalent of my allowance in cash for ‘cab fare’ and the directive that I forward my account details so he would pay some more money in. I don’t know if this was out of guilt or a misdirected attempt at providing care. And I’ll never find out, because I blocked and cut off any chances of communicating with him on my solemn ride home. I based my reasons on being uninterested in a relationship, choosing to remain adamant that I was merely foolish and not the reality that I had just been raped.
I can imagine him and the majority of men who have no doubt pulled this maneuver to have sex with a girl, laughing and poking holes at its classification as rape. I’ve seen it on Twitter, where several named rapists pull out ‘receipts’ in the form of texts discussing the intercourse in question, as unimpeachable proof of innocence, making no reference to the allegations laid by the victim that she was essentially worn down, or coerced into having sex.
But make no mistake, that is unequivocally rape.
For years, I asked myself the wrong questions, if really it was a rape, why didn’t you struggle? What stopped you from shouting out and drawing attention to the fact? After all, that measure of resistance would have put him in his place.
But the right question and the only question I should have asked, and one I finally asked this year was: “Why should it have gotten to that stage at all?”
It doesn’t always have to be the gore and struggle, sometimes it is simply continuing after an appeal to stop. Sometimes it is starting at all, after clear requests, please even, that it not begin. I would know.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a bi-weekly column, a new installment will drop every other Tuesday of the month, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
In this article, we had a peephole view into the life of a Nigerian whose primary and secondary schooling experiences were marred by the simple fact that he was from a sphere of life entirely different from that of his peers.
My formative years were spent navigating life in primary and secondary schools, filled with the children of parents whose combined incomes could easily fund the running of a small country.
As the child of parents whose determination to provide the fineries of life was marred only by a glaring financial incapacity to do so, this afforded me a double education of sorts. On one hand, I grasped the rudiments of arithmetic, civics and the like. And on the other — I was made privy to a very, very practical approach on just how class-systems worked.
I had easily one of the best purely educational experiences money could buy, and I say this not in an overly sentimental ‘I love my school’ kind of way. My primary school, with its adjoining secondary institution, surely cracks any list recognising top academic performers in Lagos State, or maybe even Nigeria (but this might be the sentiment creeping in). Its (needless) nationally exclusionary syllabus boasted a mix of British and American curricula, or something of the sort – which made it a fly trap for the children of CEOs, bank executives, Consul Officers and other officials whose hyphenated positions only served to underscore the importance of their roles.
Equally enamoured by the prospect of a school that promised international learning at your back door, was my mother. Now, by no contortion of reality was she in the same league as CEOs and bank execs. Throughout the duration of my elementary and secondary schooling, she served as a cleaner in an incredibly ornate high-rise apartment complex within the vicinity of my schools. From there, she would make, what I I can only imagine was a constantly harrowing daily trip, past manicured lawns and fortified estate gates, to our sparsely furnished home in one of the lesser known shanties of Lagos State.
Perhaps this spurred the determination that her last child have a fighting chance at a better life. Resolute, she sourced for support for my education in the multi-levelled complex which she cleaned. Finding and spreading sponsors across its many floors like confetti. Thus began my journey as a shanty boy, rubbing shoulders with the spawn of the high and mighty of society.
Having a chance to look back at it, it’s a bit of a marvel how children, yet to fully comprehend the notions of good and evil, or even the three-times table, can so unreservedly grasp the concept of shame without any outside assistance.
I’ve never been able to pinpoint the exact moment I knew for a fact, that there was something that made me distinct from my peers. But it was always the little things that set me off.
It was in the way my mates in primary school appeared pristine to class every morning, not a hair out of place, or a sweat broken, during their commute from air-conditioned home to air-conditioned chauffeur-driven car, straight into the school premises. I, on the other hand, was sure to make an appearance, a little slick with sweat, shirt most likely untucked, with socks just begging to tell the tale of how my 13-minute (unaccompanied) walk to school, made friends of the dirt and sand along the way.
It was noticing, in Year 4, during that great stationery transition — how my Bic pen, with paper rolled into the tube proudly announcing your name, surname and class, differed greatly from that of my peers. Whose fountain, ballpoint and fluffy-headed gel pens added an extra flourish to writing, that the stain-happy Bic pen, just couldn’t.
It was even in the timbre of their voices. These children, who barely scratched the surface of adolescence, had a certainty of self and a rapport with teachers, I can only imagine was lubricated by being surrounded by, and giving direction to, armies of domestic staff. Whereas they had no reservations letting the teacher know where they had trailed off, or asking to have a missed point repeated; I was resolutely mute. Almost looking for permission to exist within the classroom.
It was listening in on conversations that centred round children programmes only available on satellite televisions and feeling like my peers were speaking in another language. One which needed an Ikoyi- club membership and a minimum two-person domestic staff to understand.
But sometimes, it was in the big things.
Like a teacher laughingly requesting that I put my hands down, after instructing that all last-born children in class raise their hands during an exercise. My kind of ‘last born’ wasn’t the sort being referred to.
Or having to feign disinterest for the umpteenth time, in school excursions that might as well have required pounds of flesh in payment.
The very many humiliating instances of being pulled out of class to answer for late fee payments. There was being invited to the homes of my peers for birthday celebrations and feeling like I had taken a left from earth and somehow landed in The Emerald City. Houses with corridors big enough to envelop the entirety of my home, that included dogs held as voluntary inhabitants, and not resilient strays you had to shoo away for picking your home as a marked spot.
It was being relegated to the service quarters in the apartment complex where my mother cleaned, while my peers (who lived in the flats), freely traipsed about the community.
It was always managing to stick out somehow in class photographs, no matter how much I laundered my uniform the day before.
It was a perpetual inability to fit in.
By secondary school, when adolescence multiplied self-awareness and embarrassment to the Nth degree, I had learned to reserve the whole truth when asked about my mother’s profession. Substituting her role as cleaner, for the more non-committal ‘worker’ in the buildings. An act for whose memory still makes me recoil.
Resumption weeks came to be dreaded. When stories of those who travelled abroad and had international hang-outs were freely swapped. Somehow, I knew my tales of transforming Lagos’ beaches into second homes with my friends, wouldn’t quite have made the cut.
My battles with esteem raged on during those years. Mornings, afternoons and evenings were hard. On several occasions, I fantasised about transferring to the public schools my neighbours in our shanty community attended. Where group walks to school wouldn’t be viewed as odd. Where no one would hide a snigger, while pointing out the fact that I had outgrown the uniform I honestly considered a better fit from the only other ill-fitting unit at home. Neither of which could be replaced for obvious financial reasons.
A school where I wouldn’t have to smile through students expressing fake-worry at the additional letters my ‘designer’ footwear sported, when kitting up for recreational activities in school.
But watching me, you would never have guessed.
To the outside observer, I was a spunky teen in class. Quick with retorts to anything that bordered on absolute disrespect to myself or my family’s station in life. Admirable athletic ability and some intelligence, or enough intelligence that it didn’t pose additional ammo for my already blood-thirsty colleagues. When in reality, I was constantly riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and shame.
This is not to say I had nothing but a nightmarish experience in school. For all the bad, it was almost completely countered by the lifelong relationships I forged with classmates who didn’t consider status in life, a caveat for fostering friendships. I’d also be remiss to ignore the great educational impact the school had in my life, while simultaneously exposing me to students whose ways of life, travels and experiences broadened any knowledge I could probably have hoped to gain, relating only with my ilk.
But was I glad to finally see the back of it, to attend a more socially-representative university? You can not imagine the relief.
*Locations and specific experiences have been tweaked to protect the identity of the narrator.
To get a better understanding of Nigerian life, we started a series called ‘Compatriots’, detailing the everyday life of the average Nigerian. As a bi-weekly column, a new installment will drop every other Tuesday of the month, exploring some other aspect of the Nigerian landscape.
In this, we checked in with a young Nigerian woman, currently navigating employment in Nigeria’s elderly civil service, and how personal reservations might not be enough to prevent her from slipping into the doldrums, characteristic of government service.
Illustration by Celia Jacobs
Before I started my job as a tier one officer of the federal government, there were three things I never compromised on: punctuality, efficiency and my zeal for self-improvement. These days, 6 months into my employ, you can catch me strolling into the office well past the 8am resumption deadline, freshly bought breakfast in hand; while signing in an arrival time of 7:45am regardless. I’m already counting down till 5 pm.
In the first two months of my employment, breakfast would have been followed with 30 scintillating minutes with the Most High and about 16 of my most zealous colleagues. What better way to begin the work day (one hour post- resumption) than with a well-attended morning fellowship? However, when one or two missed fellowships turned into stony “we missed you todays” and frosty stares from my co-workers, I abandoned communal worship for an early start to the Korean dramas that would keep me company throughout the day.
When you look at the Nigerian Civil Service, a practice like morning devotion or having junior colleagues serve as gofers isn’t exactly untoward, because it is run like one big Nigerian family. Its helm of affairs handled by individuals who vividly remember Nigeria’s struggle for independence, a high premium is placed on the most mundane things, like fawning over the boss upon his arrival (you’ve never seen arthritic joints move so fast!) or using the right title to address co-workers (‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ is encouraged for junior workers relating with seniors). It’s almost hard to tell where the family meeting ends and the civil service begins.
What’s worse, this ‘family’ comes complete with its fair share of lecherous uncles. You know the ones. As the youngest member of my unit, I’ve had a sizeable amount of older (married) male colleagues, linger a little too long with eye contact and hand-holding, while inquiring how I’m settling in. Or giving downright uncomfortable shoulder rubs while asking if I’m faring okay with assigned tasks. The more brusque ones doggedly chase relationship possibilities and my availability to do so and so after office hours. All done with a flippancy so expert, you’d almost believe they were genuinely unaware of how inappropriate their actions ran. Except they do know, they all do.
Perhaps this familial leaning is also to be fingered for the hiring process favoured by the service. What is a qualification? Of what need is an impressive CV? You’d be hard-pressed to find any worker whose employment wasn’t courtesy some long leg or other. Till this day, I have no idea whether a mere application or an examination process is necessary to become employed by the Federal Government. Thanks to the good graces of a “connected” uncle, yours truly — a computer science graduate is somehow making things work as a glorified (and severely overpaid) administrative assistant.
I want to say I feel bad, contributing my quota to feeding Nigeria’s beast of a nepotism problem, but it’s hard to, when everyone from the tissue-supplier to the unit head, came in through a back door — it’s an accepted way of life here.
Perhaps as nature’s karma, I did get a temporary comeuppance. Placed in a department that simply had no vacancy or any real need for an additional worker, I was relegated to the very important role of simply observing the process and assisting the workers from time to time. It wasn’t until a colleague’s opportune maternity leave, three weeks after my employment, that I was given more responsibility to handle.
Now speaking of those three weeks, it was during this period I learnt two very important things in the service. One, they carry out transfers, a lot of them! Mostly arbitrary, but they can be punitive. You could be in Ogun State today and receive a transfer notice to resume work in Cross-River for next week. However, for women with the all-important ‘married’ title preceding their stations, there’s always the opportunity to refuse a transfer. But for men, married or no, likewise single people – no such luck.
The other thing I learnt was, the civil service is very much set in its ways. If you’ve ever visited a busy government office, you’d be hard pressed to miss the staggering amount of paper in use. From file contents, to internal memos and books for signing in customers and workers. It’s ridiculous.
Attempting to put my observation period to good use, I suggested in a carefully worded email to my unit head, simple ways electronic substitutes could save my department bales and bales of paper. This prompted a direction to print out the contents of the email (on more paper!) and an encouragement to keep up the good work. Last I saw of my plans, they had made the move from desk to a forgotten side-table to his left, gathering the very best servings of the day’s dust.
Ditto my attempt to organise the cavernous hell-hole that is my department’s filing room. When attempts to sort the first couple of files labeled ‘A’ in their right compartments were met with frequent disorganisation from my colleagues, I promptly developed a well-marketed allergy issue and my now problematic love-affair with Korean dramas, to fill up my idle hours.
Despite its shortcomings however, a job in the civil service is likely to remain a highly sought after affair. And it isn’t simply because its workers are prone to throwing professionally catered-to office birthday parties every other week (this really happens!). Or the fact that its salary package allows a way of life that gives a semblance of wealth — as my six-figure salary, complete with 13th-14th-month provisions, added bonuses and allowances have proven.
It’s all of that and a little more. Well, a lot more.
Remember I mentioned transfers being given as a punitive measure? This is sometimes meted out to workers who, using their station, fail to be discreet in cutting back- channel deals with customers. Note the keyword ‘discreet.’ It is a well-accepted way of life in government institutions, to cut deals in exchange for some special service rendered to members of the public. It even has its own name, but I’ll keep mum on that, I’ve been told different agencies have their specific terms for it.
These deals, with their propensity to make one’s monthly salary, from a mere week’s back-channeling, now serve as a driving force for aspiring workers and established employees alike. I’ve had NYSC workers ask me in confidence the best departments to work their entry into, simply on the basis of the best deals to get from their employ.
I’d like to say I’ve never participated in the act, but the service somehow makes you complicit in things you’d otherwise have no part of. I have received the occasional ₦5 000 – ₦ 10 000 in an envelope distributed to everyone in my 14-member department, courtesy a mega-deal struck by my department head, more times than I’d like to admit. I have even come to anticipate them.
However, I want to believe I’ll never actively seek these bribes out, there are limits I am not willing to cross. But then again, if you had told me I’d become a tardy, Korean-dramas-during- office-hours watching worker in just the first half of a year in my employ as a government worker, chances are, I’d have laughed in your face.
