TRAPPED IN CREDIT

The knock came at 6:45 a.m.

“Madam! Open this door!”

Gloria froze. The voice outside was firm, angry. Her neighbor peeked through her curtain. Another knock—louder. Her phone buzzed again: PAYMENT OVERDUE – FINAL NOTICE.

She sat on her bed, staring at the message. How had a pair of shoes turned into this?

Three months earlier, she’d been on top of the world.

A rising admin assistant in a tech firm in Allen, Gloria loved looking the part—smart blazers, sleek hair, sharp confidence. She lived off Opebi Road in Ikeja, surrounded by people who believed appearance was half the hustle.

It began with her colleague Femi.
“Glo, you’re missing out,” he’d said, showing her his phone. “Buy Now, Pay Later. You can get anything—pay small-small.”

That was all it took. ₦30,000 shoes with ₦5,000 down. Then a phone. Then a laptop “for freelance gigs.” Her boyfriend, Tunde, an events planner with flair, didn’t complain. “You’re glowing, babe,” he said proudly.

But Lagos has a way of humbling people. When her mother fell ill, her savings vanished. She missed payments, and the friendly BNPL reminders turned into daily threats. ₦30,000 became ₦42,000. Then ₦100,000.

When the debt collector finally came, Tunde found her trembling in the dark.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “We’re fixing this.”

He took out a notebook and drew lines. “Income. Expenses. Debts. Savings.”
They wrote it all down—every loan, every naira. Then he said, “If you can’t pay for it twice, you can’t afford it once.”

That night was the turning point.

Gloria deleted every BNPL app. Together, they built a plan: ₦5,000 into savings every Friday. No impulse buys. Every expense tracked. Within months, she cleared her debts. With her side gig earnings, Tunde helped her invest ₦20,000 in a low-risk mutual fund.

One evening, at a buka near Allen Avenue, a notification lit up her phone.

Tunde smiled. “Another debt alert?”

She grinned back. “No. Dividends.”

He raised his Coke bottle. “To buying later—and thinking first.”

Gloria looked out at the Lagos traffic—billboards flashing BUY NOW, PAY LATER like neon traps—and whispered, “Never again.”

Then she deleted her last BNPL email.
And for the first time in months, she felt truly rich.