#NairaLife: This 26-Year-Old Once Owed Millions. Now, She’s Building a ₦50m Portfolio

Every week, Naijaonpoint seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.

Around the time I was in primary four, my mother ran a big restaurant in the North, right opposite major banks and close to a government house.

I used to go into the banks to deliver lunchboxes to customers and collect money. I was so tiny that I had to tap the top of the counter so the bankers would know I had arrived. My mum also had a deep freezer. I would take sachets of water, put them in a cooler and sell outside the shop for ₦5 per sachet. The whole bag cost ₦15, so whatever profit I made was mine to keep for snacks.

My dad ran a large building material business. That was where I learned sales. I was always so shocked by his pricing strategy.

My dad could tell a customer that he bought a sheet of zinc for ₦100 and was selling it to them at ₦110. But then, I’d look at his records and see he actually bought that zinc for ₦50.

I asked him about it one time, “Is it that you are lying to these people?”

He responded, “You wouldn’t call it a lie. It’s more like business now. It’s sales.”

He explained that if you tell customers you bought it for ₦50 and want to sell it for ₦100 or ₦150, they won’t buy. But if you tell them you bought it for ₦100 and are selling for ₦150, when they bargain down to ₦120 or ₦130, you’re not at a loss.

So, on my dad’s side, it was more about actually learning how to do business than about touching the money. But on my mum’s side, I saw the money and touched it.

We were an okay family. I’m the last of five children, and my mum made sure I went to a private primary school. In fact, I was the only one of my siblings to attend a private primary school because my mum was so intentional about my education. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and my mum was such a fashionista that if her children came out, you would know they were out. Money wasn’t really a problem for us growing up.

Then, around 2010 or 2011, my dad’s business suffered a major crash. We became a one-income household, with my mum’s restaurant business holding everything together while paying off the outstanding bills of the failed business.

My dad left for the East in 2012, and my mum stayed behind briefly because her business was doing well. By then, she had expanded into commercial catering and consulting for restaurants. Two of my brothers were still in school, so my mum had one of my sisters stay behind with them. 

But my dad kept pushing for the family to join him, so my elder sister and I went to the East that same year. I was 12 years old and supposed to make the transition from JSS3 to SS1.

Jesus Christ. It was a completely new world. 

My dad was crashing with his younger sister, who had a chin-chin production company. They would make us wake up at 5:00 a.m. to start mixing flour by hand. Then we’d start frying over clay ovens, and we wouldn’t eat breakfast until noon. Sometimes, it was the chin-chin we made that we ate.

When it rained, the town was so bad that the water reached our knees; we were literally swimming. My sister got a job that paid her ₦5,000, but her first salary went straight into buying drugs because she got sick. I wasn’t even going to school. My mum usually sent us money, but since my sister and I couldn’t cook for just the two of us because of the other people in the house, we mostly ate street food and snacks, which wasn’t healthy. 

This went on for about six months until my mum eventually sent money for us to rent a one-bedroom flat. She also had to leave her business in the north to come take care of us because my sister and I were dying and looking malnourished.

We lived in a very rural area in the East, where no one was eating at restaurants. She tried making soup for people to buy, tried going into red oil, and tried importing melon, but nothing worked. Still, she used her last card to put me in the best school she could find.

In 2018, when I was 17, I wrote JAMB and scored 290. My mum wanted me to attend a private university or study abroad. She even tried setting up a Coca-Cola wholesale partnership to finance my schooling, but in July 2018, she suddenly passed away.

Her death was a massive shock. 

My siblings were living in different places, trying to survive, and it was just my dad and me left at home. I couldn’t even take my post-UTME because we were burying her, so my JAMB score became useless.

I had to find a job teaching nursery school, earning ₦6,000 a month, so I could buy a JAMB form for 2019. But I would go to school to teach and just start crying. I didn’t even know I was grieving; I just kept going till I couldn’t take it anymore.

I stopped going to work and bed-rotted for about three to four months, and the 2019 JAMB form passed. I didn’t even know that time had passed. I stopped going to church, stopped talking to my dad, and cut myself off from my siblings. My dad kept calling them to come and carry me before I died, but my sister couldn’t because she was in school trying to see herself through.

Almost the whole of 2019. 

In September, my brother came home and suggested I learn digital marketing. So, I went on Facebook and said I was learning digital marketing, even though I didn’t even know what it was. I wrote in a notebook with a blue pen whatever free courses my brother sent me that I understood, and with a red pen whatever I didn’t understand, to research later at cybercafés. 

I also went back to teaching, now making ₦7,500 monthly.

Interesting story.

In January 2020, a lady posted on Facebook asking what people wanted to achieve, and I commented that I wanted to learn digital marketing. A man replied, telling me to add graphic design and that my life would change in five years. He offered to sponsor my learning.

I thought he was a scammer or wanted to use me for rituals, so I kept ignoring him, but he kept reaching out. He eventually connected me with his assistant, a woman, because he felt I’d trust a woman more. This man eventually paid ₦500,000 so I could learn digital marketing and graphic design at an institute for one year. He also sent me monthly stipends for transport. I couldn’t believe it.

By late 2020, I got my first social media management gig. It was free, but she gave me ₦5,000 monthly for data, and my sister sent me an Infinix phone. In January 2021, another influencer hired me for ₦30,000 per month, but she fired me after one month because her sales had decreased. She said my work was just to put picture, copy caption and paste.

I accepted in good faith because I knew I was not yet a good social media manager. So, I used my salary to buy data, paid ₦2,000 for a course, and dedicated three months to learning properly. I also stopped teaching at this time.

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My next client paid me ₦50,000/month to manage her clothing brand on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. This time, I was like, “If I don’t do a good job here, then this social media is not for me.” Thankfully, I did a great job. We constantly sold out the clothes, and her followers grew. 

Around that time, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw a pretty woman selling good Ankara dresses for ₦2,500. Remembering my dad’s business lessons, I told her, “Give me these clothes. I’ll take your pictures and post them for ₦5,000. Any amount I sell is not your business.”

I started posting her pictures, and it was an immediate hit. I also got some Facebook influencers to post the dresses. At some point, I was shipping packages to Lagos, Abuja, Kano, London, and Canada, moving over 300 pieces a month. That’s ₦2,500 in profit across 300 places.

I was such a big girl, until everything crashed within five months.

I got the lady who produced the dresses to sell them to me for between ₦1,500 and ₦2,000, and ran a discount sale where people could buy three dresses for ₦7,500. People went wild, buying multiple pieces to resell. 

I sold over 1,000 pieces in one week, bringing in over ₦2.7 million in revenue. My profit was supposed to be ₦1 million, while the remaining ₦1.7 million was for the production lady, who lived in Bayelsa. I first sent her a ₦750k deposit, plus another ₦250k a few days later. I’ve never seen the lady before, but that’s how we ran the business. 

Once I got orders, I paid her a deposit, and then the balance after she delivered. It had gone smoothly several times up until that point. I even rented a shop for ₦180k and spent another ₦350k setting it up because I imagined I’d need a store to handle all the orders.

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