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Gaya

For many <a href="https://aura.ng/life-and-love/5-things-nigerians-have-mistaken-for-love-for-far-too-long">Nigerians</a>, if they were not born into dysfunctional families, they were born to struggling parents. Only a minority had the stable, fairytale upbringing we often imagine. So, we asked some successful Nigerians, who seem like they’ve always had it easy, about their childhoods. Their answers surprised us.

Nnamdi Okafor, CEO of Okafor and Sons Ltd.

Growing up was tough. Of course, as an Igbo boy, hustle is part of the lifestyle. I started my apprenticeship in my uncle’s furniture factory at the tender age of thirteen. But I say it was tough because working under my uncle came with a lot of scorn for my father. To many people, it proved that my nuclear family had failed to build a legacy of its own. And it wasn’t because my father was a lazy Igbo man. Far from it. Rather, it was the painful choice life left him with after my mother died.

My mother died in childbirth the year I turned six. As a result, my father’s furniture business was run aground by all the expenses he incurred during that period. Unfortunately, he never truly bounced back because he had to take on the full-time responsibility of caring for me and my younger sister, which meant he had little or no time left for his business. Every helping hand he brought in only made things worse and accelerated the collapse of the enterprise he had spent years building. Eventually, he settled for menial jobs like gardening and security work because he had little formal education, all so he could see my sister and me through school.

I can’t count how many times he put his dignity on the line for us, including sending me to learn furniture making under his younger brother. This was a decision that only invited more ridicule from so-called family members.

To make matters worse, my mother’s family had long accused him of killing her because they never supported their educated daughter marrying an uneducated Igbo man for love. So, when life became difficult for him, they simply assumed it was his punishment.

Watching my father live such an undignified and unhappy life pushed me to my limits. After I wrote WAEC, I told him I wasn’t going back to school. He did everything he could to convince me otherwise, but when he realised I was adamant and had already mastered the furniture-making craft, all because I wanted to <a href="https://aura.ng/culture/the-responsible-child-curse-when-being-good-costs-you-everything">ease his burden</a> and contribute to my sister’s education, he reluctantly let me have my way.

And the rest, they say, is history. Today, I run a multimillion-naira furniture company in Nigeria, all because my father put his very expensive ego aside to invest in my future. I am grateful that he is still alive to enjoy the fruits of his labour. I was also able to sponsor my sister all the way to law school. She graduates next year!

&nbsp;The littlest way I could show appreciation to my super dad was by naming my company after him and making him a board member. Hence the name: Okafor and Sons Ltd.

Felicity Oloruntoba, City’s Beauty Salon and Spa

I was raised by both my parents in a very toxic home. My mother was the present parent, while my father was absent, abusive, and constantly drunk. So, when I say I was raised by both parents, I mean they both had, for better or worse, a significant impact on my upbringing.

I watched my mother juggle a full-time teaching job at a government secondary school that barely paid enough with poultry farming and hairdressing. And the most heartbreaking part was that she did all of this just to cover for my absentee father.

My siblings and I didn’t even realise our entire livelihood depended solely on our mother until we became teenagers. And she had been gracefully carrying that burden long before then.

Every morning, my mother would wake up, get my three brothers and me ready for school, attend to customers who came to buy eggs, drop us off at school, head to work herself, return home afterwards, and immediately continue with the poultry business. Then, on weekends, when you would expect her to finally get some rest, she’d batch-cook our meals so we wouldn’t have to worry about food during the week. She also braided my hair and took home-service hair appointments from ‘big’ women in our neighbourhood.

What hurts me the most is that she got married at the tender age of eighteen. She literally <a href="https://aura.ng/the-streets/i-chose-my-mental-health-over-my-family-one-nigerian-woman-s-honest-story-of-leaving-home">worked away </a>the best years of her life for an abusive man who would beat her whenever she didn’t have money to give him to drink or whenever he returned home drunk, and there was no meat in his food.

She eventually told us that the reason she never filed for divorce was that she didn’t want it to affect our upbringing. Apparently, she believed that the dysfunction in her own family was what pushed her into marriage so early, and she didn’t want history to repeat itself. That is why she stayed and successfully covered for such a man for so many years.

Today, I earn a living from the very skill I watched my mother practise with teary eyes and an aching back. While I wish she never had to suffer so much in silence, I am grateful that her endless sacrifices were not in vain. Instead, they led me exactly to the right place; where I am today.

I am a Fulani woman born and raised in Katsina State, Nigeria. Actually, in Hausa language, “An haife ni a daji.” That means, “I was born in the bush.”

My mother was a victim of sexual assault by a Fulani herdsman. As a naive twenty-year-old woman, she was lured into the bush and raped in the most humiliating manner. (Later, she discovered it had all been part of a political agenda spearheaded by her father’s opponent because he was an influential politician in Katsina at the time).

Thankfully, she escaped from her assaulter shortly after discovering she was pregnant. But when she returned home, her own family disowned her. Out of sheer desperation, she returned to the Fulani camp, where she remained until she gave birth to me. She eventually escaped again, this time to Kaduna State.

That was where my mother began rebuilding her life. She hustled until she landed her first job as a journalism graduate with Silverbird Broadcasting Network. With the little she earned, she sent me to the best schools she could afford and did everything within her power to ensure I never lacked.

She also tried to make up for the loneliness she knew I would eventually feel because the circumstances surrounding my birth had scarred her too deeply to ever give love or marriage a chance, so she knew I would never have siblings. We had no extended family either. We lived isolated lives, and her parents didn’t even know where she was until I turned five.

Despite everything, my mother never gave me up just to reconcile with her parents, even though that was the condition her father had given her. (He had wanted her to abort me because I was, in his words, a bastard child).

I remain forever grateful that she never stopped choosing me… not before I was <a href="https://aura.ng/the-streets/dear-first-born-nobody-ever-asked-if-you-wanted-this-job">born</a>, and certainly not afterwards.

These are just a few of the remarkable stories we gathered. Stick around for Part Two.

Nigerians share the heartbreaking sacrifices their parents made to give them a better life—from giving up careers and enduring abuse to surviving unimaginable hardships for their children’s future.


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