Fitness entrepreneur and ex-husband of Nollywood star Toke Makinwa, Maje Ayida, has opened up about his battle with depression following their highly publicised divorce.
Speaking at a UK church event in a now-viral video, Ayida admitted that public backlash over the failed marriage deeply affected him. He said the shame led him to withdraw from society, impacting both his mental health and professional life.
“I went through a divorce which resulted in me being depressed. It was a very publicised divorce,” Ayida said. “I was really ashamed of my situation. I withdrew from society. I stopped going to work, and I began losing business opportunities.”
He revealed that the depression lasted for a year, during which he battled low self-esteem, paranoia, and insomnia. According to him, he felt like everyone was talking about him, which further pushed him into isolation.
Ayida said he eventually found the strength to heal after taking accountability for his role in the failed marriage. “I decided that I didn’t want to stay in that dark space,” he said. “The top of the list in my research on how to deal with it 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 married in 2014, but their union ended in 2016 amid allegations of infidelity. In 2017, Ayida sued Makinwa for defamation over her memoir On Becoming, which detailed their troubled marriage.
A Lagos State High Court ruled in Ayida’s favour in 2020, awarding N500,000 in damages against the author and publisher, and prohibiting further distribution of the book with the defamatory content.
