Financial abuse can be defined as the use of finances to manipulate a person’s ability to have access to necessities. Although commonly thought of as one which occurs mainly between husbands and wives, it also occurs amongst parents and children.
Urban Woman Magazine recently spoke to some women and asked how they regained financial freedom.
Read their responses below.
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For the first half of my life, I was an only child, so it goes without saying I got everything I ever wanted. My family is what I would consider upper middle class. We didn’t travel every year, but we lived in our own house , maids and all of that. All of this to say my dad has always been financially secure even though he wasn’t earning millions a month.
My mum is a civil servant in a ministry where people either made a lot of money or not much depending on where they were posted, and they got reposted every few years.
Their relationship wasn’t perfect but it was okay in the beginning. Every year they would plan the moves they wanted to make and come together to make it done.
My dad earns more than my mum but still she would support any project they wanted to do with whatever she had.
If he wanted to buy a flat of 6.5, she would take a loan of 1 million and add to it.
If he wanted to buy 15 cows, she would pay for 3 or so. And what she didn’t have in physical cash, she made up with her time and energy.
We’ve always joked that for someone who studied business admin, she had too much technical knowledge. From building to farming, she knew everything about everything.
Sometime in 2017 they had a huge falling out, a huge business deal fell through and my mum refused to lie against the person he thought was responsible and send him to jail. She told the police the truth which got the man released.
I had thought that was the end of the marriage. But you know how Nigerian parents are, my brother was only 5 then and she wanted him to grow up with a relationship with his father. But from then on everything went to shit.
My mum has always been a patient type. Not quiet but not troublesome but after then something in her changed.
It’s like she suddenly realized he was always cheating her when it came to money.
He sold both houses ( she bought the land, he built the houses) and put all of it into investment, but when the investment really started paying off, he would think of it as his money and insult her that she had no money.
Up until this point she had a stake in every single thing he had, even if it’s 5 percent. But he would look down on her and her government job.
They had 4 cars and she worked on the island around this time. They used to share cars but because he had started seeing her as his enemy, he would turn off the car remotely from his phone while she was driving. On multiple occasions. He would refuse to give money for the house or pay for certain things.
So she refused to take all his wahala lying down. She went from praying for her husband to come back to normal to ignoring all his jabs and being irreverent. She started to focus on herself. She went and bought a car which annoys him till today because he had to sell one of his (he thought it was ridiculous to have 5 cars).
At this time I was still unaffected, it was just them. As first born I was used to playing diplomatic mediator.
But he began to realize that he couldn’t get to her, and started taking it out on us.
He knew that would hurt her more than anything because she didn’t depend on him anymore, but we did.
I was in uni already so I didn’t know on time how bad it was until one day my mum called and said my brother was at home because he didn’t pay school fees.
I was bawling like a baby in public, because this was someone who could more than afford it, but now my brother was at home suffering because he wanted to teach my mum a lesson.
He would go on to do this multiple times, refuse to pay school fees when he was pissed at my mum, or one time he blocked an opportunity for my brother to travel abroad because my mum “disrespected” him.
That was when I decided to start working. I was in 200 level and my allowance was still steady, but I never wanted to be in a situation where I had to beg for anything. I started to work like an orphan who had no parents, selling everything and doing smm, creative writing and stuff.
Sometimes I would go days without sleep and my friends would ask me why I was working so hard. Shebi my parents are well to do.
They couldn’t understand that it was a situation where everything could get taken away for something I didn’t even do.
Now I’m financially free, still live with my parents and not where I want to be yet, but I know that I can never ever be stranded.
My mum has started investing in the stock market herself and is doing okay by Gods grace . Even though she had to start from zero because she invested her money and time and youth into a man that thinks he’s more intelligent than anyone else and got there all by himself.
Unfortunately he still does the not paying school fees when he’s mad schtick , but my mum can now comfortably pay for it and brush him off. Now he thinks she’s proud because she’s making small change.
Me? It has created a complex where I never spend on myself and I am super obsessed with saving. But if that’s what it takes to never go on my knees again begging someone to give me money so be it.
Women please invest in yourself twice as much as you’re investing in a man, it’s almost always a bad deal.
It’s one thing to want to be taken care of, but it’s very ugly to have your whole life and ability to do certain things depend on someone else.
The only person you can bank on is yourself.
NK
I grew up in a nice family and home. There was money to an extent and I was super comfortable. One day it’s time for WAEC and me and my senior brother are to write.
He is two years older than me but we were in the same class cause I loved him so much and followed him everywhere and just skipped classes to always be with him when we were younger.
My dad said he wanted to send one of us abroad for school and that whoever did better would get the opportunity. I took that challenge more personally than I’ve taken any mission in my life. I did the research, I printed pamphlets, I was going to the library and getting information for my father about schools abroad. I was doing everything possible and read like I had never read before.
Throughout secondary school, I was always part of the second ten. I was never top three or whatever but I pushed myself and ended up being top five in S.S 3 which was WAEC year. I read so hard and changed my circle of fucking friends. I was determined and I did that shit. I remember one of my friends telling me to put my projection as 9 A1’s for WAEC.
When my WAEC result finally came, I got 4 A’s and 5 B’s. It was a very sweet result and I only had B2’s and A1’s. Then I wrote JAMB and I got 300 on the dot. I broke records in my school and people were all over me. I went to an all girls school and all the girls wanted to talk to me.
It was really nice and I felt I had done a great job and I did not know how my brother could beat that. My brother? My brother is a very lackadaisical person. He still is and we are not that close anymore.
My brother does the only thing that you could possibly do to beat me, which is fail so bad that my father couldn’t send him to any school in Nigeria to study any reasonable course which meant that he had to make him travel abroad.
It was obviously misogynistic because that was a stupid excuse. He wanted to send his first son. At the time, my dad had sold the house so he used the money to kind of like choose who he would send. Then he bought a car. Sending my brother abroad anf buying a car were what he used the money from the house to do.
I was even being deceived that I would be sent in September because my brother went in January and that did not happen.
I realised that was a lie and that spurred on my financial journey and my villain origin story. I became obsessed with making money of my own.
Part of my gifts for my results was a laptop and it was a key part of my journey into cybersecurity. Currently, I earn over 2M per month working in cybersecurity and my financial security had given me the ability to be “audacious” where my parents are. I also have more choices around who I date and who I let into my space.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.