I checked out of life for a year, Toke Makinwa’s ex-husband Maje Ayida opens up on post-divorce depression

Fitness entrepreneur and media personality Maje Ayida has opened up about his emotional breakdown following his highly-publicised divorce from media personality and actress Toke Makinwa.

Ayida shared his story during a talk at Pastor Bolaji Idowu’s church, in a video that went viral on Tuesday. Speaking to the congregation, he admitted he fell into a deep depression after the marriage ended, overwhelmed by shame and public scrutiny.

“I will be honest about the fact that I went through a divorce which resulted in me being depressed. It was a very publicised divorce,” he began.

The businessman said the intense pressure from the media and public reaction left him emotionally paralysed.

“That left me feeling very alone. 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.”

Ayida added that he stopped socialising, working, and lost his sense of purpose. “I didn’t want to interact with anyone. I wanted to be alone, stay at home. I stopped going to work. I found it very difficult to work. It was very hard,” he said.

“I not only lose focus but also motivation. I lose the essence of to even get up in the morning. What am I getting up for? Everyone already feels a certain way about me. So, I started to lose work as a result of it. That was when it really started to get to me.”

According to him, the collapse of his career hit him 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 explained.

“That was when I made a decision. I had to make a decision for my own survival because I was living in hopelessness. It went on for weeks.”

Ayida said the depression lasted for a year. “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.”

He also struggled with paranoia. “I was overly suspicious as well so the few chances that I do get to go out, I have created a scenario in my own mind that everybody is talking about me, people are looking at me. And that would just send me back into my own home.

“That feeling of hopelessness and the noise that was going on around me even though I was in silence was out of control. I made a choice. I decided that I didn’t want to stay in this space.

“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.”

Ayida and Makinwa began dating around 2006 and got married on January 15, 2014, after eight years together.

Their marriage, however, collapsed in 2015 when it was revealed that Ayida had impregnated his ex-girlfriend. The scandal sparked widespread public reaction and placed their relationship under intense scrutiny.

Toke Makinwa later filed for divorce, citing cruelty and emotional distress. On October 5, 2017, the Lagos High Court dissolved the union on grounds of adultery committed by Ayida.

In 2016, Makinwa released her memoir On Becoming, in which she detailed the pain of the betrayal and the emotional toll of the failed marriage. In response, Ayida sued her for N100 million for defamation, alleging that the book contained damaging falsehoods. His legal team also demanded the removal of the allegedly defamatory content, a request that was ignored.

In November 2020, a Lagos High Court ruled in Ayida’s favour, awarding N500,000 in damages to be paid by the first and second defendants to a charity of his choosing. The court also barred further publication of the book containing the defamatory content.