The Fear I Refused to Live With

People often ask me what inspired me to build Quida.

They expect me to mention a brilliant business idea, an exciting market opportunity, or a moment when I suddenly knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur.

The truth is far less glamorous.

Quida was born from fear.

Not the kind of fear that disappears after a few minutes, but the kind that quietly settles into your everyday life until you stop noticing it’s there.

Growing up in Nigeria, insecurity was never an abstract concept. It wasn’t something you only saw in newspaper headlines or watched on the evening news. It was woven into ordinary conversations, family gatherings, and phone calls. Someone always knew someone who had been robbed, kidnapped, assaulted, or worse. Every few weeks there seemed to be another story, another warning, another reminder that safety could never be taken for granted.

At first, I thought these stories belonged to other people.

Then they started finding their way into my own life.

My father’s driver boarded what looked like an ordinary commercial bus on his way home. It turned out to be a one-chance vehicle. Everything he had on him was taken.

Not long after, my aunt was kidnapped. For days, my family lived with the uncertainty that no family should ever have to endure. Eventually, a ransom of thirty million naira was paid before she was released. Relief came, but so did a painful realization: sometimes survival depends on resources that many families simply don’t have.

Then came another tragedy that was almost impossible to comprehend. My mother’s staff and her son were murdered by someone they knew and trusted. I remember struggling to understand how ordinary people could leave home expecting another normal day and never return.

Those experiences changed something in me.

Without realizing it, I began to adapt to fear.

Like millions of Nigerians, I developed small routines that felt completely normal. I checked the time before leaving home. I sent “I’m here” messages after every journey. I shared my live location with family. I mentally noted which roads to avoid and which buses looked suspicious. None of these habits felt extraordinary because everyone around me was doing exactly the same thing.

Fear had quietly become part of our culture.

One evening, after my sister and I closed from fashion school, we boarded a korope heading home. The vehicle was almost empty, so we took the seats at the back. I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable, though I couldn’t explain why. I dismissed it as overthinking.

As the journey continued, the driver stopped repeatedly to pick up more passengers.

Every person who entered was a man.

One of them wore a black hoodie that partially covered his face. My sister leaned towards me and whispered that the men seemed unusually familiar with one another. They were speaking quietly, almost as though they were having a conversation the rest of us weren’t meant to hear.

I looked around the vehicle and, for the first time, felt completely trapped.

My mind raced through possibilities.

Should I call my parents?

What if I was wrong?

What if making a phone call drew attention to us?

What if this wasn’t dangerous at all and I was simply allowing fear to control me?

In those few minutes, I realized something that has stayed with me ever since.

If the situation became dangerous, I had absolutely no idea what I could do.

There was no discreet way to alert someone.

No silent call for help.

No system quietly working in the background.

Only fear.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I prayed.

Silently.

I watched every road sign, hoping we hadn’t passed our bus stop. When the vehicle finally stopped at our junction and we stepped out safely, I felt relieved. To this day, I don’t know whether the danger was real or imagined.

But that’s no longer the question that matters to me.

The question that stayed with me was this:

What if it had been real?

Around the same period, stories like the murder of Christianah Idowu dominated conversations across the country. Every week seemed to bring another heartbreaking headline. Another family devastated. Another reminder that emergencies don’t send invitations.

I found myself asking a question I suspect many Nigerians have asked before.

Why do we accept this as normal?

Why have we become so accustomed to relying on forwarded WhatsApp messages, frantic phone calls, and luck as our safety system?

At some point, that question changed.

Instead of asking why no one was building something better, I started asking whether I could.

That question became Quida.

Today, Quida is our attempt to build the public safety infrastructure I wish had existed years ago. We’re creating technology that helps people access help faster, receive verified safety information, quietly call for assistance, and make safer decisions before emergencies escalate. It is not built on the belief that technology can eliminate every crime or prevent every tragedy. It is built on the belief that people deserve better systems than uncertainty.

When people hear that I’m building a public safety company, they often assume it began with a business opportunity.

It didn’t.

It began with a young woman sitting quietly in the back of a korope, wondering whether she would make it home.

It began with families waiting for phone calls they prayed would come.

It began with the realization that courage was never the problem. Nigerians have shown extraordinary resilience for generations. What we’ve lacked are the systems that make safety predictable instead of accidental.

That is the future I hope Quida helps create.

A future where parents worry a little less.

Where asking someone to “text me when you get home” becomes an act of love rather than necessity.

Where making it home safely is no longer considered good luck.

Because safety should never depend on luck.

It should be based on systems.