My father's best friend was a man called Uncle Bayo who disappeared from our lives without explanation. I was 12 the last time I saw him. He came to our flat in Gbagada, argued with my father in the bedroom for an hour, and walked out without saying goodbye to me. My father never spoke his name again. Neither did my mother. Uncle Bayo became a silence with a shape.
Twenty-six years passed. I was in Philadelphia for a conference. A networking dinner at a hotel downtown. Across the room, a man about my father's age caught my eye and held it too long. He approached me during dessert and said my surname like it was a question he already knew the answer to.
We sat in the hotel lobby until 2am. He told me the story my father never did. They had started a construction company together in the early 90s. It had failed because of a contract dispute with a senator. The senator had paid only half the money and refused the rest. The debt had crushed them. Uncle Bayo had blamed my father for trusting the senator. My father had blamed Uncle Bayo for not reading the fine print. The friendship had shattered. Two men who had been closer than brothers had become strangers over something neither of them could control.
Uncle Bayo had moved to America after the falling out. He had built a new life, a new business, a small contracting firm in West Philly. He had married a Ghanaian woman and had two daughters. He had never returned to Nigeria. He had never called my father. He had assumed the silence was mutual.
I asked why he approached me now. He said he recognised my face because I looked like my father at 30. He said he had been waiting for decades to see that face again, to explain something that was never about betrayal. He said the argument had been about shame, not money. Both men had felt they failed each other. Neither had known how to say it.
I called my father from the hotel room. It was 3am in Lagos. He answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep and alarm. I told him who I was sitting with. The line went quiet. Then my father did something I had never heard him do. He cried. Not softly. The kind of crying that comes from a place words cannot reach.
Uncle Bayo flew to Lagos 3 months later. They met at the same flat in Gbagada. They sat in the same living room where the argument had happened. They didn't re-litigate the past. They just sat together, two old men with white hair and matching hypertension medication, and let the silence heal.
My father died last year. Uncle Bayo spoke at the funeral. He said the greatest thief in life is not money or failure. It is the belief that there is always more time.
Call them. The debt is not theirs. It is yours.
“Just remove it and enter.”
“Don’t make it a big deal.”
“You’re being extreme.”
The voices got louder, The pressure got heavier, But so did her conviction. Because sometimes, standing firm means standing alone.
“If I had asked Allah to cover their eyes so they wouldn’t see my hijab, would that have solved anything? Nothing was going to change.”
Some situations don’t need escape.They need courage.
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It’s her.
Meet Firdausa Amasa.
Barrister, Researcher, Lecturer, Advocate, and a lot more
Beyond the titles, she is someone who stood firm when it would have been easier to bend.
On this subject matter of whether a particular monthly income is “enough” to cater for a family, the sad truth is that there’s no universal figure. Comfort means different things to different people. What feels like stability to one person might feel like struggle to someone else. That’s why you’ll hear one person say 500k isn’t enough, while another person is genuinely content with 150k.
Family size, lifestyle, responsibilities, personal standards, location, and even unexpected expenses all shape how far money goes. For some, comfort means paying bills and eating well. For others, it includes school fees, savings, healthcare, a car, occasional outings, and plans for the future. So when people argue about what amount is “enough,” they’re really talking from their own reality.
At the end of the day, income is relative. What matters is knowing your priorities, budgeting according to your reality, and working towards the level of comfort that makes you feel secure not what society thinks the benchmark should be.
Lastly In the end, it’s about finding a partner whose financial expectations, money habits and values align with yours.
If he was learned and lettered, people like you would have accused him of intellectually formulating Islam and Qur’an or copying other books.
Being unlettered is a big miracle of his messengership
Arsenal’s Group Stage/League Phase games at the Emirates under Mikel Arteta:
◉ 4-0 vs. PSV
◉ 2-0 vs. Sevilla
◉ 6-0 vs. Lens
◉ 2-0 vs. PSG
◉ 1-0 vs. Shakhtar
◉ 3-0 vs. Monaco
◉ 3-0 vs. Dinamo Zagreb
◉ 2-0 vs. Olympiakos
◉ 4-0 vs. Atletico
◉ 3-1 vs. Bayern
10 games, 10 wins, 30 goals and just one goal conceded. 🤯
I visited four Russian universities and I am highly impressed by their activities and facilities. Solid experience. 🇷🇺
New Day Education || RUDN University
Vincent Kompany: "Every team can lose, that's football. I thought we didn't have a bad start in the first half, but then conceded from a set piece. Nevertheless, we got the momentum back and equalized. At half time, my feeling was that we could win the game if we keep it up. But we didn't find our rhythm in the second half. Arsenal managed to decide the game. They had a very good game management and used the small moments to their favour. I won't look for excuses. We have to say that Arsenal were better. We have to solve things on Saturday. I feel the boys are already hungry for the next game"