Maje Ayida, a fitness expert and the former husband of Nollywood actress Toke Makinwa, has shared his experience of struggling with depression after their widely known divorce.
He said he faced a lot of public judgment and felt so embarrassed that he distanced himself from people.
Ayida revealed these personal struggles while speaking at a church in the UK. A short video of his speech has now gone viral online.
He shared that his depression lasted for a year. During that time, he stopped working and missed business opportunities. He only began to heal after he chose to take full responsibility for what happened.
“I’ll be honest—I went through a very public divorce, and it made me depressed. I felt completely alone and ashamed. Not just for myself, but because I thought I had let down my family’s name. That pushed me into hiding,” he explained.
He said he didn’t want to see anyone or leave his house. He stopped showing up at work and found it hard to stay motivated. He didn’t even feel like getting out of bed. Because of this, he lost many job offers and started to feel worse.
Ayida said work is a big part of a man’s identity, and losing that made things even harder. Missing out on business deals made the situation more serious for him.
He said he eventually had to make a choice for his own well-being. He had lost hope and needed to find a way out of the dark space he was in. He had stopped being part of life for an entire year to recover.
He described how bad things got—he couldn’t sleep and was constantly paranoid. Even when he managed to go out, he thought everyone was judging him, which made him stay home again.
The feeling of hopelessness, along with the silent pressure he felt around him, became too much. But one day, he made a firm decision that he didn’t want to stay in that dark place anymore.
Ayida began researching how to deal with depression. The most important lesson he learned was to take accountability. At first, blaming himself made things harder, but eventually, it helped him begin to heal by taking real steps toward recovery.
Maje Ayida and Toke Makinwa got married in 2014. However, their relationship ended in 2016 after a rough patch.
In 2017, Ayida sued Makinwa for ₦100 million, accusing her of defamation after she wrote a book called On Becoming, which told her side of their failed marriage.
Before the lawsuit, Ayida’s legal team had already sent warnings about how the book hurt his image, but she didn’t respond.
In 2020, a Lagos high court ruled in Ayida’s favor in the defamation case. The court ordered the payment of ₦500,000 each by the two defendants to any charity of Ayida’s choice.
The court also stopped them from continuing to publish the book with the offensive content in it.
