Love | Faith | Strength | Gratitude
I’m a very private person. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. However, this will be quite a revealing piece, perhaps the most I’ve ever revealed about my personal life at any one time. I will share very personal details about certain aspects of my life: moments of immense pride and satisfaction, moments of deep sadness and tears. Many of these details, I have never shared with anyone: not even my family or close friends.
I write this for 3 reasons:
- In memory of my late Dad, who passed on 8th April, 2018 — exactly one year to the date this piece will be published.
- As a challenge to myself. Most people write their stories after they’ve achieved success — that’s the smart thing to do as their success validates their story. However, it also means the ‘right’ to tell their story only lies in their achievement of that ‘success’. Writing this now, while I am still on the journey and before I have achieved ‘success’ is my way of taking back that ‘right’, that power to tell my story. It is my way of saying, “the journey, my journey, is all that matters and every success I achieve is only a consequence”.
- Finally, I hope that this piece serves as inspiration, motivation or encouragement to someone. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re going through. It doesn’t matter if you succeed or fail at that endeavor. Your journey is all that matters. This brings to mind the words of Viktor E. Frankl, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
This is a story about my life (some parts of it).
“ A good father is a compass to navigate through life. If you have this, don’t take it for granted.” — Chike
Daddy died on 8th April, 2018. He died in my elder brother, Chike’s arms and mine. I will never forget that Sunday, it is forever etched on my memory. It happened very early in the morning, some minutes past 5am. He had been ill for a while but had been getting better in the days immediately preceding that day. When the doctor pronounced him dead, my brother and I refused to believe it. We asked her to excuse us while we just sat there with him, as he lay on the bed, expecting him to call out “Chuka” in his usual deep, drawn out way and ask for some water. Needless to say, that expectation never materialized. That was the first day I remember crying (not counting being flogged as a kid). I really cried: My acceptance of the finality of his death came with a well of tears, more tears came when we had to break the news to Mummy, even more tears came as I was helping the Nurses perform the ‘last office’ on him (they were kind enough to accept my offer to help), and there were smaller trickles of tears at different points in between. I had no idea I had so much tears in me. But more surprising to me was the fact that the tears were less of sadness and more of gratitude at the privilege I had to call this man, Mr. Humphrey Chudi Nnaobi, my Dad.
Growing up, we had no less than 12 “Uncles” and “Aunts” living with us in our 3-bedroom apartment in Badagry. Both Daddy and Mummy were civil servants, yet, they expended their meager salaries on caring for all these people, most of whom I would later find out weren’t even relatives but rather just needed an accommodation and found a willing helper in Daddy. This was my first lesson in Love, a lesson which, despite having undergone some evolution, has remained with me since. Daddy was very soft spoken, hardly got angry and never imposed his opinions on others. Instead, he gave his advice or opinion on an issue and allowed me consider it, alongside whatever other option I may have already had. When I eventually made a decision, he supported me fully. I recall how he told each of us, as we were filling our JAMB and WAEC forms to choose whatever course we felt like so long as we ended up loving it and coming out with a very good result. He taught me to trust myself by trusting me; and everyday, memories of him remind me to trust others as well.
Family prayer times, especially at night, were some of my favorite memories of Daddy. They almost always evolved into a session where he advised and encouraged us using an event from his extremely storied life. I remember one of such events, it was about the last time he saw his father, my grandfather, nna m Nwankwo. At the time, he was already married to Mummy and we had all been given birth to. He told us about how, after visiting the village for a few days, when he was about to leave, nna m Nwankwo called him into his room and told him “imegolum ive niile i gha-emelum n’uwa a” meaning “you’ve done for me all you need to do for me in this life”. Those turned out to be his last words to Daddy. That story has stuck with me for years and I promised myself to do all I can so that Daddy and Mummy, when they’re leaving this world, will say similar last words to me. Daddy’s last words weren’t as profound as I would have liked: his last words were a simple “Ka m zuo ike” meaning “let me rest”. However, only a few days prior, I overheard him on the phone with Mummy, telling her to join him in thanking God for their children — us. I know that Daddy was proud of us, of me, right until his death. That is good enough for me.
“I would never have imagined that I would love them [the ‘Anumanus’: my dogs] this much” — Chinelo
I got Scoff as a 5-week-old Samoyed puppy in January 2016. From the time I got him, he gradually weaved his way into the hearts of everyone around me. My family, friends, even colleagues always asked after him whenever they saw me. About 8 months later, in August, I got Jolene as a 3-month-old to keep him company. Initially, and for quite some time, Mummy and Chinelo complained about my having dogs and pleaded with me to get rid of them but over time, even they grew quite fond of the dogs. I remember the day my little cousin, David was celebrating his birthday and I took Scoff & Jolene to their house. As soon as I entered, virtually all the kids left everything they were doing: food, toys, drinks, even ice cream. They all wanted to hold Scoff & Jolene’s leash, to touch them, and bark at them; but as soon as the dogs barked back in response, they all took off in various directions only to come back moments later and resume the fuss.
On the 6th of July 2017, Jolene gave birth to 5 beautiful puppies: Bobby, Klaus, Snow, Pearl & Max. Unfortunately, Max, who was the first to leave the pack to his new home — a friend’s, died within a few months of an unidentified illness. About 2 months later, in January 2018, Pearl was next. Then Scoff & Klaus followed 5 and 6 days after Daddy’s death respectively. 2 months later, Ekene called to tell me Bobby didn’t survive his battle with septicemia, despite the best efforts of the doctors in UNN’s veterinary clinic. The same week, I called Jerry to ask how Snow was doing only for him to tell me she had died the previous week from eating a plate of food they didn’t know was poisoned. Suddenly, 7 dogs became 1 as Jolene became the last surviving member of the ‘Anumanus’. I was devastated, but I never let it show. For some time, I seriously considered giving Jolene out but I eventually decided against it because I knew that no one could love her like I did. 7 months later, in January 2019, Jolene died on a Sunday morning while we were in church. Just like that, I had lost the last of my dogs. When I noticed she was dead, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Chinelo because I knew she had grown really fond of Jolene. Mummy came to visit us that day and when she arrived, one of the first things she did was ask after Jolene as she was surprised not to have seen her jumping and wagging her tail in excitement at her arrival. At that point, I had to break the news of her death to them. The mood in the house immediately sunk — mummy wept while Chinelo cried profusely. 3 years and 7 dogs later, all I have to show for it are 2 empty cages, a bunch of leashes, collars, some dog toys and above all, the memories. I’ll always cherish those memories.
“Nobody loves you more than us, your parents, especially your mother; nobody can ever love you more than your mother” — Daddy
Sometime in August 2017, Mummy was diagnosed with an illness that was potentially terminal. About 2 months prior, Chinelo had complained to me that Mummy seemed to have lost weight when she went to visit her. I assured her it was work stress and that since they were about to commence the long vacation, she would regain her normal weight in no time. About a week later, Aunt Eby made the same observation when she visited Mummy. She told my other uncles and aunts who also assumed it must be stress but insisted she go for a comprehensive health check up just to be double sure that all was well. It turned out all wasn’t well after all.
I still remember that day in September when the doctor told Daddy, Uncle Onwe and I about the diagnosis. After listening to the doctor’s diagnosis and his advice on the different treatment options we had, Daddy had responded, “Thank you doctor. We will heed your advice, but first, we have an assignment of higher priority: we have to take this situation to God in prayers. We must tackle it spiritually before we tackle it physically”. I immediately remembered what Daddy often told us during our nightly devotions: “the spiritual controls the physical”.
After completing our spiritual exercise, we started with the medical treatment as advised by the doctor. Rather than respond to treatment, her conditioned worsened. At the time, to ensure close monitoring of the condition, we had weekly appointments with the consulting doctor and 2 other specialists. This lasted for about 8 months during which time we spent almost N500k per month. Fortunately, I had left paid employment earlier in February 2017, therefore I had the flexibility of time to take Mummy around wherever she needed to go. We were on the road a lot: the hospital, the lab, the pharmacy, then to and fro Ijanikin, through that terrible, terrible Lagos — Badagry expressway, every week for 8 months. Despite this, I still had to do my stuff to make ends meet and keep body and soul together. Needless to say, this was a super stressful period that also took a huge toll on my car but I took it all in stride and despite the occasional down moments, I responded mostly with a smile, a grin, a chuckle or even a full blown laughter.
During that period, I spent a lot of time with Mummy — the most time I had spent with her for many years. Since my JSS1, I’d mostly been away from home: in boarding house, then the university, coming back only for the holidays which always seemed to end just as soon as they started. But in this period, I had a lot of time to really bond with mummy: through tears, laughter, low and high moments. After the initial deterioration of her condition, it steadily improved to the point that at the end of the 8 month period, Dr Banjoko, the main specialist in charge of her treatment said hers was the best response he had ever witnessed in all his years of managing that condition and on 9th April 2018, the day after we lost Daddy, he declared her in full remission! She has remained in remission till now.
“Chuka, it’s not that I don’t believe in your dreams; but you need money to fund those dreams and the easiest way to get that money is by getting a job ”— Mummy
Mummy has always been a realist. She is always the voice of reason who reminds us to “always save, no matter how little you have”, “live within your means and don’t spend too much, there is no value in being a big spender”, “remember where you’re coming from: don’t try to emulate others [negatively], you may not be able to get away with what they can get away with”, etc. I, on the other hand, have always been the optimist, the idealist, the dreamer. I’ve always believed things can be better, more can be done, and I’ve never hesitated to put myself out there and attempt to ‘fix’ things.
Immediately after school, during the waiting period before I was to go for my NYSC, I got an internship position with a Fortune 500 company that was regularly ranked as one of the best companies to work for globally. Less than 3 months into the 9 month long internship, the MD called me into a meeting where he told me they were interested in retaining my services after I completed the compulsory NYSC. For my NYSC, I served at one of the foremost indigenous software companies where I worked very closely with the CEO, who remains one of my mentors to this day, in developing products and managing clients. After my NYSC, I returned to the company I previously interned at as a Consumer and Market Knowledge manager. Suffice to say, I had a pretty good start to my professional career.
However, in December 2016, after one of our morning family prayers while at the village for the Christmas celebrations, I asked my parents and siblings, “how do I know the right time to quit my job and focus on building my dream(s)?” I had been thinking about it for a while: I had a couple ideas I had been developing, a couple ways I believed things like housing, education, research could be improved and I was keen to explore them. I had started the process with Paul, we had even registered the company on 25th May, 2015 but with the demands of a regular job, it was very difficult to keep up. This is why I started considering quitting to focus fully on them. After that day, I gave it a lot of thought and decided that I would resign in May, my birth month and also the anniversary of our registration of the company.
Turns out I didn’t have to wait that long as the decision was taken for me a few months early. This was the period when Nigeria was deep in recession and companies were struggling to stay afloat. Everywhere you looked, companies were either folding up, laying off staff en masse or slashing employee salaries. Mine wasn’t left out as a few days to the end of February 2017, an emergency meeting of the entire organization was called, at which the MD announced that as a result of the massive financial pressures the company was facing, it had to relieve about 30% of the workforce of their duties. I was one of that 30% and effective March 2017, I was out of a job.
I still remember that day very clearly. After the announcement that 30% of the workforce were to be relieved of their duties, there was a widespread anxiety among the staff as many wondered if they would be ‘safe’ or not. I, on the other hand, was relaxed and when I was told that I was one of the 30%, I just concluded that it was God’s way of answering my “how do I know the right time to quit…” question. After my exit interview, the first thing I did was call Daddy: “Daddy, I have good news disguised as bad news” I told him when he picked up. After I explained everything to him, he simply said “Thank God”, expressed his gladness at how I was taking the news and ended by encouraging me to ensure I always handle setbacks with similar calm. Later that day, as I relayed the events of the day to my good friend and business partner, Paul, I told him that the best part of it all was that I could tell one person that I decided to leave and tell someone else that I was fired and would be saying the truth in both cases😉. Over the next couple of days as I went through the clearance process, I was all smiles. Some colleagues tried to encourage me but many couldn’t find the right words as they apparently struggled to understand my unusual joy; someone even went as far as saying I should let myself feel sad so I don’t fall into depression (no, I didn’t understand it either; I still don’t). I just said “thanks” and moved on, all smiles and chuckles.
“Chuka, how many things are you doing sef? It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep up” — Ekene
I met Paul, my business partner, in 2014. He had just been hired among the latest batch of interns when his manager called me to ask if I would be his buddy. I agreed, and that was the beginning of our friendship. Later that year, at the end of our internship, we left for the compulsory NYSC program and when we both ended up getting posted to Lagos state, we decided to stay together for the one year duration of the program.
It was in that room that our company was founded, although it wasn’t incorporated until much later. It started by critiquing products, promotions, advertisements, distribution strategies, etc. of different companies — startups or big corporations. Almost every night, we would analyze different organizations: what we thought they were doing wrong, how they might have rationalized such mistakes, what we would have done differently if we were in their shoes, etc. After a while, we decided to go beyond just analyzing them in our room and actually do something about it. That was when we got our first client, a food vendor in Covenant University. Although he ended up not paying for our services, our advice has helped him scale his business to multiple other locations and more than quadrupled his revenues. We have so far, advised many other clients and even started building a few tech enabled products.
It was also in that room that we founded our Non-Profit Organization. As one of the “lucky” ones who got internships with multinational organizations even before NYSC, we had a good number of “mentees” who would call to ask for tips, career advice, etc. At a point, the requests got so many that we decided to formalize the arrangement and build structures that would make such mentoring relationships accessible to many more people than we can personally cater to and for many more years than we can possibly keep up with. Today, we have grown it to cover both undergraduates and recent graduates from 3 Nigerian Universities and in May 2018, we hosted a conference at which the richest black woman, Mrs Folorunsho Alakija was the keynote speaker.
On that morning of December 2016, it was to these ventures that I referred when I asked “how do I know the right time to quit my job and focus on building my dream(s)?” When I eventually left in February 2017, I dove right in. In the time since, in addition to my personal ethnography project, I have, with teams of the most amazing people, advised numerous local and multinational companies, built an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for pre-tertiary schools, a property listings and management portal, a financial inclusion: savings and investment application, and a platform for on-the-go access to lawyers and legal advisory services. I also volunteer in and contribute to 2 Non-Profit projects with a mission to build a better Nigeria and most recently decided to pursue a Masters degree in Research & Public Policy. I guess Ekene is right and I really do have my plate full. That is why I have commenced a pruning process to streamline my priorities and focus on the most important activities that’ll yield maximal impact in these projects as well as other aspects of my life.
However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. There have been rough periods, very rough periods. I still remember January 2018, one of such periods. I had started the year with about 30k in my account, but I wasn’t bothered as there was a project I was expecting to pull through and replenish my account. Less than 2 weeks in, when I realized that the project would no longer happen, I had already spent 21k. Of the balance 9k, I lent a friend 4k to meet an emergency need, fueled my car with 3k and had just 2k left. It was this 2k that took me through the just over 2 weeks remaining in January and into early February. That was when I learnt that if you can only eat 1 meal a day, it is best to eat it as late as possible. I initially tried eating it in the morning since “breakfast is the best meal of the day” but by evening, I was hungry again, and sleeping hungry is the worst thing to do. However, it became a lot easier to cope when I changed tactics and went without food until evening, when the hunger became almost unbearable. That was when I ate so I could go to bed on a full stomach and have a restful sleep.
At the end of the day, all the projects may end up being smashing successes, or they may not. It doesn’t matter much either way. What matters is that I look around me, identify challenges and actively try to solve them. So far, the journey has been immensely rewarding, even if quite demanding.
“Whenever I’m stuck in place, it’s because there is a lesson I should learn that I’ve refused to. As soon as I learn it, I move, I grow” — Chuka
I attend Covenant Christian Center. At the cross over service on 31st December, Pastor Poju introduced 2019 to us as the year of the quantum leap. A few days into the year, he also launched a 21 day challenge where we were to fast, according to stipulated guidelines, and pray everyday for 21 days. As part of the challenge, we were to clearly articulate our goals for the year and then, stay very sensitive to the directives and nudging of the Holy Spirit to make the right decisions at each step of the way. This reminded me of something profound which Chike once told me, which has remained with me ever since: “All the decisions that affect our lives the most get taken in our absence. So who’ll speak for us and make our case when these decisions are being taken? Only the holy spirit is sufficiently qualified”.
I judiciously completed the challenge. As I performed the challenge, in addition to realizing just how little food my body needed to function effectively, I also learnt a lot about gratitude. As I read the Bible and prayed, my eyes were opened more and more to see the beautiful aspects of even my most challenging circumstances. I learnt that sometimes, God can let us face experiences or make decisions that may seem terrible or like the wrong ones, but from which we will learn so much and grow as a result. As St. Paul said:
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Philippians 4: 12–13
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Romans 5: 3–4
