Over the course of my career, I’ve been privileged to work mostly in remote roles (one being hybrid, but essentially remote since I didn’t go into the office). While some teams struggled with work culture and coordination, others had clearly hacked their workflow and made remote work feel seamless.
Life is a collection of moments, some as steady as a Lagos morning and others as unpredictable as the harmattan season. It’s a mix of the hustle we put in every day and the small joys we find in between like a good meal, a laugh with friends, or finally beating the traffic.
Without my accountability partner, I would have failed my first role as a Product Manager.
Understanding yourself isn’t just about knowing your favorite food or what music you like; it’s about peeling back the layers of your "social onion" to see what actually makes you tick. In a world that’s constantly trying to tell you who to be, knowing your true personality is like having a compass in the middle of a storm, it keeps you headed in the right direction even when everything around you is chaotic.
I remember some years back in Nigeria, it was completely normal not to have a borehole at home. Most families bought water from vendors who pushed carts through the streets, or from neighbors who sold water by the bucket. It was part of daily life. You woke up early, fetched water, stored it, and managed it carefully. Having a borehole in your own compound was rare and often seen as something expensive.
Imagine you’re sitting at a restaurant with your friends. The sun is hitting the table at a specific angle, the smell of jollof rice is thick in the air, and someone just dropped a joke.
Imagine being married to a smooth-talking, high-flying lawyer for years, only for him to waltz back from a "business trip" with a brand new wife. Then, when you ask for basic maintenance money for your three kids, he tries to "delete" you from his life using a legal loophole.
Most apps don't launch on pristine infrastructure. If you're like me, you've probably shipped code to a setup that's one power outage or bad config away from chaos. I remember my first real deployment in Lagos back in 2018. We were building a payment gateway for small businesses, bootstrapped with a team of three. Our infra? A single DigitalOcean droplet costing $20 a month, shared with our staging environment. No Kubernetes, no auto-scaling groups - just SSH, rsync, and a prayer that NEPA wouldn't cut the lights mid-deploy. That app processed millions in transactions before we ever touched AWS properly. The point is, imperfect infra is the norm, especially when you're starting out or running lean. Perfect setups are for companies with deep pockets, not the scrappy teams driving Nigeria's tech scene.
There is a terrorism problem in Nigeria, period. And it doesn’t discriminate.
Starting a business sounds glamorous - the independence, the potential for big wins, the chance to build something from nothing. But when I launched my first venture in Lagos five years ago, a small online store selling affordable gadgets imported from China, reality hit hard. I had saved up some money from my banking job, quit to go full-time, and dreamed of scaling to multiple outlets across Nigeria. Within six months, I was scrambling to pay suppliers while dodging calls from angry customers. Looking back, here are the harsh truths I wish someone had hammered into me before I jumped in.
Before & after laundry transformation. Wrinkled clothes restored to fresh, crisp, clean perfection.
Before diving in, a quick disclaimer : my basic needs are met, and on a good day, having a job makes finding the next one easier. The market is unstable, and I am fully aware of that.
A few years back, I was that guy in Lagos who dreamed big about self-improvement but always fell short. Picture this: I'd wake up at 5 a.m., full of fire to devour books on coding or business strategy, only to crash after 20 minutes because my mind wandered to the day's hustle - dodging okadas on Third Mainland Bridge or prepping for another client meeting. Long study marathons sounded noble, but they never stuck. Then I stumbled on a simple shift: breaking learning into 30-minute blocks. It wasn't some flashy app or guru's course. It was just me, a timer, and a no-excuses promise to show up daily. Two years in, I've gone from zero coding knowledge to building small apps that earn side cash, all while juggling a full-time job and family.
I remember the day my nephew in Lagos came home buzzing about a WhatsApp forward. 'Uncle, see this! A pastor says if you pray with this oil at midnight, you'll get millions from an overseas account.' He was 12, eyes wide with excitement, already planning to share it with his classmates. In Nigeria, where WhatsApp groups light up with every rumour from 'herbal cures' for everything to election rigging stories, kids are swimming in a sea of unverified info. That moment hit me: we can't just tell them to 'be careful' - we have to teach them to question.
A few years back, I was knee-deep in building an e-commerce app for small businesses in Lagos. The idea was simple: help market traders sell online without the hassle of big platforms taking huge cuts. I spent months obsessing over every line of code. The database schema had to be bulletproof, the API endpoints needed perfect error handling, and the frontend? It was going to be pixel-perfect responsive design across every device imaginable. I rewrote the authentication module three times because I kept finding edge cases. By the time I was 'almost ready,' competitors had launched similar apps and grabbed the market.
Freelancing sounds like the ultimate dream for many Nigerian professionals - work from anywhere, set your own hours, and earn dollars while sipping garri in your Lagos apartment. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker back in 2019. Fresh out of a soul-crushing 9-5 in banking, I quit to become a full-time graphic designer on Upwork. Six months in, I was celebrating my first $1,000 payout. Two years later, I'm still freelancing, but the shine has worn off, revealing a grind that's equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. Here's the unfiltered truth about making it work as a Nigerian.
I've lost count of the times I've seen talented professionals in Nigeria stall their careers because they couldn't quickly access the right information. Picture this: you're a software developer in Lagos eyeing a remote gig with a US firm. You need to brush up on React hooks, understand salary benchmarks for Nigerians abroad, and scout visa options - all before tomorrow's interview. Without a system, you're drowning in tabs, forgotten bookmarks, and half-remembered Google searches. With one? You're prepared, confident, and one step ahead.