What’s your earliest memory of money?
Hustling for ₦3k at 16. I helped nurses carry polio immunisation kits from house to house. I remember being irritated at how the children ran away and cried because of the injections. I thought, “Oga, just stay and collect this thing. You’re wasting my time.”

How long did you do this?
I did it just once. The ₦3k was for three days of work. The crowd I saw on the day I went to get paid was so much that I couldn’t get my money. I had to come back another day.

When I was told I couldn’t get my money that day, I felt especially terrible I didn’t have a dad. I wouldn’t have to hustle for ₦3k like that if my dad was around. I swore that I’d never be poor in life. The experience was that bad.

Where was your dad?
No idea. He just wasn’t around. I started working at 16 because, as the firstborn, I felt like I had to. It was just my mum, my younger sister and me, and at that point, I was old enough to realise how much my mum was doing for us.

My mum is a trader, but she made sure we wore good clothes, never skipped meals, and were never sent out for school fees. She put us through private primary school, but when it was time for secondary school, she sat us down and told us she couldn’t afford a private secondary school.

What was the switch like?
Omo, first it was embarrassing. All my friends from primary school went to private secondary schools.

I won’t lie; going into secondary school, I believed public school students weren’t as intelligent as private school students. It was a stereotype that flew around in my primary school. I soon realised it was a lie. People are smart everywhere. I’m hardworking today because of how hard I had to compete academically in senior secondary school.

Tell me about it
My set was a bit too serious. The principal had to call an assembly to tell us to loosen up and come out to play sometimes because we were reading too much. We represented the school in competitions, some against private schools, and won. I don’t know what motivated the others, but I knew how hard my mum was working to take care of my sister and me, and I just didn’t want to disappoint her.

As serious as I was though, maths was a problem. I got an F when I wrote GCE in SS 2, and a D when I wrote WAEC in SS 3. I couldn’t get into university with those grades, so it was that year I stayed at home and did menial jobs like the immunisation one.

What other jobs did you do?
I worked at a factory that produced hangers for ₦14k a month. I quit after a few months and got another job at a factory that printed past questions. That one paid ₦19k a month, but it was the most hazardous job ever. I inhaled so much smoke because I worked near a generator. There was a time I fell while carrying a load of heavy papers My boss saw me on the ground and said that if I destroyed the papers, the money would be deducted from my salary. My ₦19k salary!

After another few months there, I left and did WAEC and JAMB lessons. I used my money to pay. By 2015, when I was 18, I entered university to study mass communication.

Was that what you wanted?
Yes. I liked listening to the OAPs on Beat FM, so I thought I could do something in entertainment. In fact, because of how much they talked about Twitter, I opened a Twitter account and started being funny and steadily gaining followers in their hundreds and thousands.

Was it your mum who supported you through university?
For about two years. In 2017, I started making my own money.

How did you learn to write?
I wrote essays all the time in secondary school, so writing didn’t feel like a skill I had to learn.

When I started using Fiverr, I had to use a VPN to make it seem like I wasn’t in Nigeria because, for some reason, it was hard for Nigerians to get jobs. Within 24 hours of opening an account, I got an essay-writing job that paid $5.

In less than two months, I made $100 — the threshold for a first withdrawal. It was about ₦50k when I withdrew it. If you see my mum’s joy when I called her to tell her I made that much from writing online. She even called our pastor and told him.

That year, I made about $500.

Was it just through essay writing?
My brother, when poverty holds you, your creativity will come up. I wrote marketing articles, essays, assignments, and even poems for people’s partners. There was also a lady that paid me just to rant to me.

You were also doing therapist work? God when?
But I wasn’t saving sha. I was spending the money anyhow. Even the next year, when I made almost $4k by levelling up, I didn’t save. I sent my mum some money, but I wasted the rest in school.

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