Fitness entrepreneur and media personality Maje Ayida has opened up about the emotional trauma he endured following his highly publicised divorce from actress and media star Toke Makinwa.
Speaking in a now-viral video during a church programme in the UK, Ayida detailed his battle with depression, insomnia, and paranoia. He revealed that the backlash and shame from the split in 2016 pushed him into complete isolation.
“I went through a very public divorce, and it left me in a very dark place,” Ayida shared. “I withdrew from society, I was ashamed not just for myself but also for what I felt I had done to my family’s name. I went into hiding.”
Ayida said he experienced a total shutdown — both mentally and professionally. “I stopped working, I lost motivation. I couldn’t even get up in the morning. My self-esteem was destroyed.”
For Ayida, the loss of professional momentum hit the hardest. “As a man, your work is your identity, and when I started losing business deals, it crushed me. That’s when the depression truly took over.”
He revealed that the depression lasted for about a year, during which he battled severe insomnia and mental paranoia. “I couldn’t sleep. And whenever I did go out, I felt like everyone was talking about me. That thought alone would send me back into isolation.”
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He described the emotional spiral as relentless. “The silence around me was deafening. The mental noise was overwhelming. I finally reached a point where I realised I didn’t want to stay there. I had to choose survival.”
Ayida said his journey toward healing began with personal accountability. “My research into recovery led me to understand that I needed to take ownership. At first, it made me feel worse, but it was the only path toward recovery.”
Ayida and Makinwa married in 2014 but separated two years later amid infidelity allegations. In 2017, Ayida filed a ₦100 million defamation lawsuit over claims made in Makinwa’s memoir On Becoming.
By 2020, a Lagos High Court ruled in Ayida’s favour, awarding him ₦500,000 in damages and barring further publication of the memoir’s defamatory content.
The candid testimony from Ayida marks a rare public reflection on mental health from a male celebrity in Nigeria.
PunchNewspaper
