Why Nigerians Love Agony Aunts

On 04 November 1998 in P.M. News another episode of the advice column ‘Agony Aunt’ with Temi Peters was published; just like any other episode in the four years that it had been running. Beneath the column’s title was a bold white subheading in a black text box: ‘How Do I “Toast”?’. This letter, drafted to ‘Aunty Temi’, was a cry for help from a 27-year-old working-class man named Prince (whose full name and address are included in the publication, as was the culture at the time). Prince claimed to be ‘living quite well’ but he had a problem: He did not know how to toast a woman. The word ‘toast’ refers to a few other things but in this context, peculiar to Nigerians, it loosely denotes the ability to woo a person, much similar to the modern-day slang, ‘rizz’. It is reasonable to suggest that prior to the advent of social media a situation like this is one the average Nigerian man would have been reluctant to admit publicly, especially with the boldness to include his full name and address in a newspaper that circulated across Lagos and its environs.