Fitness coach and media figure, Maje Ayida, has spoken openly about his battle with depression following his messy divorce from Nigerian media personality, Toke Makinwa.
Ayida, who shared his story during a talk at a UK church, said the emotional pain after the split pushed him into isolation. The video of his confession started trending on Tuesday.
According to him, the backlash from the public after the marriage breakdown in 2016 took a heavy toll on his self-esteem and mental well-being.
“I went through a divorce, which resulted in my being depressed. It was a very publicised divorce,” he said.
“I withdrew from society. I was really ashamed of my situation. Not just for myself, of course, my self-esteem was affected, but legacy is very important to me. I was ashamed of what I felt I had done to my family’s name. As a result, I went into hiding.”
The businessman admitted that losing work opportunities hit him the hardest.
“As a man, your work is your identity, and I started to lose work, business deals. So, it became a real problem for me,” he said. “I was living in hopelessness. It went on for weeks.”
He said the depression lasted for a year, during which he struggled with sleep and even paranoia.
“I was out of the look for a whole year. I checked out of life for a year to recoup. I realised that I was in a very dark space. I was in a hole, but I needed to get out of it… I was on the floor. What’s sleep? I didn’t even know what that was. I had insomnia.”
Ayida later revealed that taking responsibility for his actions helped him start healing.
“I did research on how to deal with it. The top of the list of the research that I did was accountability. I took the blame on myself. It made me feel worse at first until I began to take practical steps,” he added.
Ayida married Toke Makinwa in 2014, but their marriage crashed in 2016 following allegations of infidelity.
In 2017, Ayida filed a ₦100 million defamation suit against Makinwa over her memoir ‘On Becoming’, which detailed some issues in her marriage.
A Lagos High Court later awarded him ₦500,000 damages and barred the book’s continued publication.
