Efe Lucky-Fiapa, Bolanle Oseni, Doyinsola David, Maris Aondoakaa, Frederick Okonji sit with Chude Jideonwo, on a special episode of #ChudeExplains: Small Girl, Big God – an episode on transactional sex, sex workers, sugar daddies and different sides to the discourse. #ChudeExplains is a special series that tackles and gives in–depth insights on issues from criminal justice reform to Gen Z coming of age. 

Efe Lucky-Fiapa shares her thoughts on the debate on modern day feminism and the social construct.  “Don’t wait for anybody. Make your money, so that nobody would use you for ‘shakara’. I don’t think I can date someone that does not have a job right now because the problem is from the men, their ego gets in the way. If I want to buy something, you will tell me to give you the money so that you will pay in public so that people won’t say that your girlfriend is paying in public. Everyone should have their money, but it is important that you take care of your woman. You can take care of your man; it is a vice versa kind of thing. My own view of feminism is not about who pays when you go on dates, my feminism is for people who fought for girls to go to school, people stopping child marriage – this is my own idea of feminism.”  

Skincare Influencer and model, Frederick Okonji shared that “Small girl big God will be someone who does ‘runs’ but she doesn’t come out to say so. A sex worker is someone who provides a service, because sex is actually work. A sex worker is lower class while a runs girl is higher class. A sugar baby is totally different, as a sugar baby, sex can be part of the things you provide for the older partner, sometimes you might not be sexually involved, it might be just someone who is interested in you or who is just there for you emotionally. People have demonized being with someone who is older than you and is willing to provide for your needs.” 

“When it is more than one person, it is a personal morality thing. As a sugar baby, you don’t need several sugar daddies, if the man has sugar, he can take care of all your needs. They can also end up falling in love with each other. If there were no sugar babies in this world, destinies would not be fulfilled, house rent would not be paid, school fees will not be paid because some of these girls are breadwinners. I am not saying that women should be objectified but my point is that it is totally fine for you to have a need, and for me to want to take care of that need that you have, and you tell me you want to do the same,” he added. 

Sexual Health personnel, Maris Aondoakaa, said, “Instead of calling, ‘small girl big god’, I feel like we just call influencers. Influencers are people who have someone by their side and lie that it is the ‘cream’ that they are selling or boutique they have that is bringing the money, and they will come and be pressuring us. I feel like you will see those who make their own money, but how can you buy two range rovers in one month, who are you influencing?” 

Chude Jideonwo shared why he started #ChudeExplains on his Instagram page. “Even though I don’t read the news and I’m not personally on social media, I am extremely curious about both. So, I always want to understand: who’s that? Why is that happening? What’s behind all of that? It’s that curiosity that has birthed #ChudeExplains. This sub brand waits until the trend has crystallised – whether it’s silly or it’s significant – and then tries to tie a zoom-out view of what it really means, and what it says about who we are.” 

Watch the excerpt here

Founder of Eden Life and cofounder of Andela, Nadayar Enegesi sits with host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo on the first episode of the #WithChude special series- Code Black.

On the show, he shared about returning to Nigeria to start Andela and starting Eden Life on his path of finding his reason for existence. 

“I moved to Lagos to start a company called Andela. I was living in Toronto at that time. I like to say that it is like a spiritual experience for me because I left Nigeria to study on May 21st Canada in 2007, and exactly 7 years later I was on a one-way flight back to Nigeria to start Andela. And I have lived in Lagos ever since.”  

Speaking on the reason he took the big leap to move to Lagos, he said, “I think everyone has a vision of what they want their world to look like. So, when an opportunity presents itself to make those things a reality, the only response is, ‘Why not’. By 2050, Africa is going to have 25% of the world’s population. That also means, that the number of talents we have is ridiculous. We could power the whole world with our talent, if we wanted to. Prior to that, my friends and I were working on an Edtech platform, Fora. We were going to host North American course content for Africans. We were doing that in Canada. Tech wasn’t really popping up in those times; the internet wasn’t that great. People were paying for online learning. People still do not pay for online learning, because at the end of the day, what they want is the real outcome. Then, we thought, ‘what if we could create direct outcomes?’ At that time, for every engineer in the US, there were 5 open software engineering jobs, and we had brilliant people. We decided that we were going to close that gap by training an army of software engineers here. And we had that realization, and we thought that if we could train more 100,000 software engineers the impact will be great”.  

“My parents thought I had I lost my mind. For things that are a drastic change, but you really think that this is what you should be doing, the last place to go for advice is to friends and family. Because they will respond out of love and care, and all they can see is the downside. But only you really know the thing that is in your mind that needs to exist in the world”, he added. 

Nadayar shared on how Eden Life started, “After I had the period where I was searching for my own reason for existence. At that same time, my sister (the only family I had in Lagos) decided she was relocating to the UK. Some of my friends and colleagues were also on the japa wave. What I decided was that I wanted Lagos to be a place people wanted to stay instead of wanting to leave. Andela had unlocked that resolve because it has shown me that it is possible to create some sort of access. It is possible to create access to the good life – that is what Eden Life is, like the garden of Eden. When I had that realization, I went to our team, I was like, ‘Guys, I really have to do this, because without this, I don’t think my life can function’. They were super supportive. In fact, our first backers at Eden life were the cofounders at Andela”. 

Watch the excerpt here

Music Producer, Olumide Ogunade, popularly known as ID Cabasa sits Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude to discuss, his marriage, his relationship with 9ce and Toni Payne, and taking criticism.  

Speaking about his marriage, he shared, “I am definitely enjoying my marriage, but it is a scam if I tell you that it is perfect. There are a lot of times when I wake up and I just want to leave. But in all those curiosities and disbelief, I have enjoyed marriage because I think I married a friend and someone that even when the chips are down, I really don’t want to leave. The morning I was going to face this thing was the day I realised that ‘I can’t leave this babe’ and I had a flashback. It was the day I realised that if there is problem in marriage ‘it is see finish’. It was then I said, rather than creating a vision of the woman in front of me, why not create the woman I want to see in her’. That helps me to work more on helping her and helping me too. People will say they stay because of children but I think I stayed because of my wife”. 

ID Cabasa also shared about the time he didn’t want to be in the spotlight. “I had opportunities. I was hiding because I didn’t want to be seen and I was losing money. There were endorsements that was coming, and I will say, ‘God forbid, I can’t do it because it is not Christian’. There was stuff that was coming to me; People that I was supposed to enter into a room with and be bold to just get business done, and I was showing too much respect and they took advantage of me. This was why I told Olamide, 9ice and all of them – when they were starting, that they should never prostrate for me outside. I was losing business and respect. When my eyes got open, I was scarce again but this time to reach me you have to go through a particular process, I changed my location. I left Akoka, to create scarcity. Now I have fewer people I am dealing with, and I am doing way better. Unlike those days when everyone will enter the studio, ‘Baba come and help me’. I go out of my way to help people; I went broke at some point trying to help the whole world. All those experiences, especially my failures, have shaped me.  

Speaking on the separation between 9ice and Toni Payne, and how it broke his heart, he said, “I think that’s the way the devil works, he will isolate you. I think a lot of things happened that till date I can tell you 9ice cannot sit down and say, ‘this was what happened between Cabasa and I’. Because if I was in the whole picture, what happened wouldn’t have happened. It’s one of the most painful episodes in all of this. Because Seun was 9ice and 9ice was Seun. Both of them were good together. By the way, both of them are still very fine now. Ah! They’re ‘padis’ now. And thank God 9ice is married to a very beautiful soul again, and Seun is doing fine, and Zion too is doing very well. But that particular episode, I’ll give some insights today which probably I’ve never shared with anyone. When I heard that all of that stuff happened, I was angry, majorly with 9ice. Because I felt in my head that, ‘look, guy, you’re one of the luckiest that I see around here, this babe is your friend’. When they told me the things that happened, none of these things had the potential of even causing (the problem). It was not infidelity. Although, some mischief makers came up with the song, ‘Once bitten, twice shy’. The day we were making that song, Seun was in the house with us. She was the one that made food for us. That song had nothing to do with Toni Payne. I was angry all of those times, I wanted to talk but my guys were like, ‘Cabasa, it is none of your business’”. 

Watch the excerpt here.