One of my biggest dreams is to build a company that creates opportunities for women who started later than expected.
Internships and graduate trainee programs for women in their late 20s and 30s. Remote jobs for women in their 40s and 50s.
I wanted a thousand things in my life, and most of them i didn't get. and i looked at myself the way this post is asking me to, and thought i wasn't smart enough. but years passed, and i started seeing what each of those things would have done to me if i had gotten them, and every single one would have destroyed me - some fast and some slow. everything i didn't get turned out to be the smartest thing that happened to me, but it was not my smartness. it was something else deciding on my behalf, because i was not smart enough to decide for myself. sometimes not getting what you want is the only proof that something out there loves you more than you were ever capable of loving yourself
i know that we are tired of the word 'decenter' but please allow just one more. i think that one of the most important things to decenter especially as nigerians is money. now wait, i am not saying don't make money; it is needed to survive esp in this capitalist hell we live in with no safety nets.
however, do not make it the anchor of your life and all your interactions. some of you tolerate terrible friendships because of proximity to money. many stay in toxic relationships because of money, entertain the attention of bottom barrel men also because of money.
if you don't decenter money, every interaction will be transactional to you. you size people up and use money as a metric to decide if you'll be friends with them.
you cannot take a stand on anything, if that stand will affect your pocket, heck you cannot even disagree with rich people on social media, so you remain in their good books.
try decentering money and see how much better your life will be.
Most intelligent men eventually realise that they do not actually want a woman who is universally agreeable. They want a woman with discernment, standards, intensity, and the capacity to resist the world. Highly disagreeable women are often extraordinarily loyal because they do not distribute their softness, care, and agreeability indiscriminately to everyone around them. They choose a man carefully, and once they genuinely respect and love him, that tenderness becomes deeply concentrated toward him alone.
A selectively agreeable woman possesses something far rarer: discernment, conviction, and loyalty rooted in conscious choice rather than social compliance.
This is one of the most naive misconceptions many young men have. They think they want a woman who never challenges anything or possesses edges of her own. But most emotionally and intellectually developed men eventually understand that there is something profoundly attractive about a woman who is difficult for the world yet deeply soft with the man she truly loves and respects.
@FaotuHappy I don't think this really matters, provided the person is consistent in the usage and communication is effective. It can only become a problem when you're mixing up spellings from both variants in one writing.
The mistake Oga Taiwo makes is saying the poor will pay less tax is funny.
If you over tax the rich, they just transfer the burden to the poor. If you over tax Dangote, he will just transfer it to the poor.
The wealthy have projected their targeted profit for the year, and they will break barriers to meet it. The poor is always at the receiving end.
I’m sorry about your discomfort. Waist pain on a bad bus is real.
But blaming fat people is misdiagnosing the problem — and misdirecting your anger.
The issue isn’t that some bodies are larger. The issue is that we’ve built a transport system that assumes a single, narrow version of the human body and then packs everyone into it because there is no alternative.
In societies with functional rail systems, wider seats, standing space, predictable schedules, and multiple carriages, people of different sizes coexist without this kind of daily humiliation and resentment. You’re not squeezed because someone is fat; you’re squeezed because the system is broken.
Unless the proposed solution is to remove fat people from public life, line them up and shoot into their fat bellies, (or force them to walk everywhere) I don’t see what targeting them achieves. That fat person beside you is also uncomfortable. Many of our parents and grandparents are fat. Many people gain weight with age, pregnancy, illness, or medication. Are they to be banned from public transport?
Also, let’s be honest: Nigerians are not built the same way. On average, Nigerians are bigger than many Europeans. Even within Nigeria, southern Nigerians tend to be heavier than Hausa or Fulani populations. Are we going to start designing public life around one body type and treating the rest as a nuisance?
What’s troubling is how quickly discomfort turns into cruelty. When we suffer, instead of asking why those in power have failed to provide humane public transport, we turn on the person closest to us, someone with no power to fix the situation.
The humane question isn’t “what do we do about fat people?”
It’s “why do we keep accepting systems that strip everyone of dignity and then encourage us to fight each other over scraps of space?”
If we care about fairness, the target should be poor infrastructure, bad planning, and lack of investment, not other human beings just trying to get to work like you are.
We can demand better transport without dehumanising people who are already sharing the same discomfort. And especially if you really are a lawyer, this is something you should think more deeply about.
People like this reveal something expert marketers understand very well. Most human decisions are not made from logic. They come from emotion, ego, and the need to reclaim control.
When she says “I supported him because someone annoyed me with their bullying,” what she is describing is not political ideology. It is reactance psychology.
Reactance happens when people feel pressured or pushed. The brain interprets that pressure as a threat to freedom, and instead of considering the facts, the person swings to the opposite side just to feel in control again.
It feels like a decision, but it is actually a defence mechanism.
And people who make decisions this way become the easiest group to market to, because:
1. You don’t need to convince them. You only need to trigger them. A slight threat to their autonomy and they run toward the opposite direction with full conviction. Tell them they can't afford it and watch their drain their savings to prove you wrong.
2. They respond more to emotion than information.
Once the feeling is strong enough, the brain stops seeking accuracy. It seeks relief.
3. Identity overrides reality.
The decision becomes a statement of “you can’t tell me what to do”, not “this is the best choice for me.” Marketing loves this group because identity-based decisions stick longer than logical ones.
4. They turn personal irritation into long-term loyalty.
A temporary emotional spike can become a permanent buying pattern. Brands exploit this all the time by creating “villains”. Political marketers use it the most.
5. They reward the person or brand that gives them back a sense of power.
Even if the choice doesn’t serve them. What they seek isn’t the product. It’s validation. And guess what? You'll make a bank off them.
This is why emotional consumers are a goldmine. Once the marketer understands the trigger, persuasion becomes effortless.
But this is also why they are the most vulnerable. Because whoever controls the narrative controls their choices. And all it takes is the right emotional button.
She’s in her 50s, yet she makes decisions like this in serious matters such as an election. Imagine the kind of buying decisions she makes.
She called me and was screaming.
she said "I won!" "There were so many people but I was among the winners!".
It was a proud sister moment for me, I was sooo happy!!
But looking at her right now, it feels like she's leaving me slowly, my girl needs help and I can't do it alone.
One thing I love about getting older is the clarity with which my desires crystallise. I know what I don’t like. I know more and more what I want. What will truly serve my core and my heart.
I know that “imagine if it was your daughter…” is a plea for empathy
but Ochanya didn’t need to be anyone’s daughter or sister to deserve outrage for what was done to her.
She was a person—a child, and that alone should be enough to break anyone’s heart.
#justiceforochanya
Okay since nobody wants to say the truth, allow me. Sometimes “values” are the very things holding you back.
You call it integrity, but if we’re being brutally honest, sometimes it’s fear. Fear of judgment, fear of being seen as a sellout, fear of becoming the kind of person you swore you’d never be.
And yet… here you are, staring at a project that could change your life.
The money is mad. The visibility? Unmatched.
It’s everything you’ve been grinding for, the kind of opportunity people pray for.
But it doesn’t align. It rubs against your beliefs, your principles, your “why.”
So now you’re torn between purpose and progress.
Because the truth is, values sound noble when you’re not hungry or have responsibilities on your shoulders.
They sound poetic when the bills are paid by your mummy or daddy or elder sibling.
But when survival and self-respect go head-to-head that’s when you really meet yourself.
You start to wonder…
What if my morals are just the boundaries of my comfort zone?
What if I’m using “staying true” as an excuse to stay safe?
What if the version of me I dream of, the successful, visible, abundant version, can’t exist without getting his hands a little dirty first?
The world doesn’t always reward the righteous.
It rewards the bold, the ones who play the game, even when the rules are ugly.
And that’s the tension: do you hold your line and risk being forgotten,
or bend a little and risk forgetting who you are?
There’s no easy answer.
Because doing what’s right doesn’t always feel rewarding,
and believe me, chasing what’s rewarding doesn’t always feel right.
Maybe the balance isn’t in picking one side, maybe it’s learning how to walk that fine line without losing your soul, to take the opportunity, but not let it take you.
Because at the end of the day, the wicked truth, it’s not just about money or morality, it’s about being able to look in the mirror and still recognize who’s staring back.
“Wake up to reality, nothing ever goes as planned in this accursed world…”
I know we love to say “Don’t settle you’ll always find better” and I get it really because it encourages growth and self improvement, inspires ambition and courage by fuelling drive, it’s also a way to reject stagnation and self limiting beliefs.
At the same time, you may not.
I have come to realize that regret is a cruel storyteller. It rewrites the past with the wisdom of the present, convincing you that you should have known better when you actually had no way of knowing.