Nollywood actress and media personality Toke Makinwa has argued that Nigerian men bear responsibility for the perception that Nigerian women are overly materialistic, saying many men simply don’t offer much beyond financial provision.
Speaking on a recent episode of the MENtality podcast, hosted by Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, Makinwa framed the dynamic as one men have shaped themselves rather than one women invented on their own. “From time immemorial, a relationship between a man and a woman has always been transactional, right from the Garden of Eden, right from our parents’ days. And the degree at which it is happening now, I will blame the men. Sometimes, that [financial benefits] is all men have to offer. Nigerian men don’t have games aside from money. Once a Nigerian man makes money, he starts throwing it at the hottest girls. Sometimes, you meet a man and you want to know him but he is offering you money. Men have offered women strangest things and it made me realise that men feel cash is all they need to show you. Most girls who are materialistic today, men taught them how to make demands,” she said.
Her comments arrive on a podcast built specifically around unpacking men’s perspectives and behaviour in relationships, hosted by Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, who has interviewed a range of guests on the show about masculinity, dating norms and the pressures men face in modern Nigerian relationships. Makinwa’s appearance placed her in the position of turning that lens back onto men themselves, arguing that the transactional dynamics often blamed on women actually originate from how men choose to present themselves in relationships.
Makinwa is no stranger to candid commentary on relationships and gender dynamics in Nigeria. As a media personality who has built a substantial platform partly around discussing romantic relationships publicly, including her own experiences, she has previously waded into conversations about dating culture, marriage expectations and the pressures Nigerian women face in navigating both. Her latest remarks fit into that broader pattern, using a public platform to challenge a narrative, in this case the idea that Nigerian women are inherently materialistic, by locating its roots instead in the behaviour of the men she says trained women to expect financial gestures rather than emotional investment.
She views the materialism often attributed to Nigerian women less as a fixed trait and more as a learned response to a dating culture where men, in her words, lead with money because it’s the easiest and most immediate value they know how to offer.
