Linda writes and shares photos of her new luxury Banana Island, Ikoyi home..:-)

I'm sure most of you have heard by now - that I recently bought a house...:-). Of course I had to bring it here and share my joy with you all...my amazing LIB family. God first and you guys second made it possible. So, I bought a two-storey luxury house in the exclusive Banana Island area of Ikoyi...and to be honest, I still can't believe it. It's everything I prayed my house would be. That's me standing in front of my house...:-). #ProudSelfMadeWoman...:-)

The house is on 3 floors consisting of 6 en-suite bedrooms, a master suite with a separate walk-in      closet/dressing room and a massive bathroom suite, 2 living rooms, media room, cinema room, gym room, laundry room, a fully fitted kitchen, with a large pantry. Two room boys-quarters, a gatehouse, swimming pool, waterfall wall, changing room, cabana, and amazing water-view. Absolutely my dream home. Dreams do come true, you know! Click read more to see photos of the house...

My house, my mum and my car...:-)

The compound

 

Sitting room

 

It's a glass house so you can see everything that's happening outside...:-)

Still the sitting room

The pool area

 

Happy woman. Had to wear my Selfmade Tee...:-)

The lawn - working on it to make it more lovely

 

Other side of the building...

They are cleaning the pool. Who wants to come teach me how to swim? :-)

And the master suite... my bedroom. I've never seen anything like it in real life...lol. It's so big, I don't even know how to decorate it...

Walking in my bedroom

Still my bedroom. Has a lounge area...lol. Choi!

And my walk-in closet...my bags and shoes are so happy! :-)

I'm having them add some things so work is on going there 

And the most grand part of the house is my luxury bathroom...it has a Jacuzzi, bathtub and shower...

 Me in my bathroom! Can't believe this is my life now...

The view from my Jacuzzi

My Penthouse Terrace

 My parents looking around in amazement...lol. My mum couldn't believe this is her new home...lol

The kitchen...my mum's favourite part of the house 

 

Living in the house with my family. When I marry, I will move out! *sad face*..lol

The house is spectacular at night...

Now to all the young girls looking at these photos, please read below..

My name is Linda Ikeji. I'm a blogger. I'm 35 years old and I have never...never ever in my life slept with a man for money. Not only have I never done it, I have never even considered it...and here I am with a house that cost me over half a billion naira.

Listen, you are beautiful and you are stronger than you know. There's absolutely nothing you can't achieve if you set your mind to it, put your heart and soul into it.
Up until five years ago, I was a struggling entrepreneur. I can't tell you how many offices in this Lagos I sat in for hours waiting to see people who could support my business...but most times, I never passed the reception area. But I never gave up and I never stopped believing and here I am today.

You too can be this..you can be better than this. No dream is too big, no dream is too small, no mountain is too high...it's all in your mind. It's all up to you. If you believe in you, in your God who is guiding you, then the sky is your starting point.

Please stop waiting around for a man to give to you...to put food on your table and put clothes on your back. I promise you, you can do it for yourself. Start thinking big, believe in yourself, be creative and start working. Realize that your dreams are valid...and nobody will make your dreams come true except you. Find what you are good at. Find something that you are passionate about. Work hard at it. Be consistent. Be patient. Start young. Even if you're not young, it's never too late!

I have been hustling since I left secondary school..started modeling before I entered university in 1998. Was running a modeling agency even while I was a student and made it a full time business after I left university. I never doubted that I would succeed one day, because I was determined. And please do not think this happened over night. I've been blogging since 2006...November this year will make it exactly 9 years. God, consistency and hard work brought me here today.

Unfortunately, a lot of our young girls aren't patient and some are lazy, they want it quick and fast but it doesn't work like that. Success takes time - takes hard work - takes passion - takes consistency - but more than anything else, it takes the Grace of God.

I was a 30 year old broke woman and on my birthday, a very sad and depressed me turned to God and begged him. I told Him you promised me, when will You fulfill Your promise? Am I not Your child? Have I not lived according to Your teachings? When will You bless me? Please God help me...and with tears in my eyes, I begged Him. I cried and I begged and I begged and I begged. A few months later my life changed. Never underestimate God's love for you and the power of prayer.

And never stop working. Listen, I make enough money to hire so many people to work on this blog while I go do other things and enjoy myself...but I don't do that. I'm up while some of you are sleeping, and already blogging before some of you wake up. I don't take this for granted. I know to stay on top, I have to constantly work and nobody will be as dedicated as I am because this is not their own thing. It's mine and I have to keep feeding it. So I'm constantly here!

Young ladies, I promise you...you too can do this. You don't need to spread your legs for any bladdy man - because of how much? N200k? That's how much my shoes cost - so why should you give up your body for that? Your sacred body? God's temple? N200k that you can make in a week or even in a day if you pursue your dreams and still have your dignity intact? You think people don't see that you're messing around with all dem old married men and talking about it? Think ladies, think! When next a man propositions you...tell him to get lost, that you will get yours yourself! Abi, aren't you a woman? You know what they say about women? "A woman is like a tea bag, you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.". You are so strong, you don't even know!

Also, if you want God to bless you, you have to have a clean heart. All these backbiting, hating on others, trying to bring people down with hateful words/actions etc - God doesn't like ugly. He has over 6 billion people to look after and you think he will pay extra attention to you if your heart is ugly? Wish people well, help people when you can. Be good to others. But more than anything else be good to yourself. Believe in yourself. It's very easy to give in to feelings of self-doubt and back down when things get tough, but you have to know that God will not give you anything you can't handle.

I swear to you, you are underestimating yourself. If you know the power that you have inside. If you know the things that you are capable of. If you know how far you can go...how high you can reach but you are holding yourself back because you're afraid of failing, because you don't think you have it in you. If only you know that you're stronger than you think. You are so powerful, you don't even know it. I'm not more special than you are. I don't have two heads. We serve the same God. Why can't you succeed? Think ladies, think.

Like Barack Obama's sister said, poverty is not an excuse! I used to sell/market beer at Sheraton hotel, Lagos when I was in university for N1,000 a day. I once lived on 'puff puff' and garri for weeks in UNILAG and I was supposedly a top model but nobody knew what I was going through.

Trust me, I knew poverty. Did you know I lived in Idi-oro, Mushin for 15 years? Up until when I was 25? Did you live in Mushin? Eh, so what's your excuse? I can't even say some things here for my family's privacy but here I am today because I never doubted myself and I never allowed all the doubters to distract me. I was focused. I was determined. I worked hard and I knew the God I served won't let me down. The road was long, sometimes very frustrating and painful but look at me now. God did it because he saw that I was willing!

"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”

Please believe in yourself and watch God use you to set as an example for others.

May all your dreams come true!

Kisses.

Oh by the way (addressing the argument I read online this weekend) I don't do anything else. I blog from 4am till midnight, where do I have time to do anything else? When God wants to bless you, He will bless you...even if you're selling toothpick.

Cheers!

Bride-to-be dumped an hour before her wedding - writes heartfelt letter

Cyndi Maisonneuve, a bride-to-be whose fiancé dumped her as she stood in her veil an hour before their wedding has written a letter detailing her heartbreak.

In her letter, she speaks about how she was about to marry a man that was her best friend, who she'd met two years earlier at a baseball game. She describes them as besotted and said when he proposed after six months on a beach at sunrise, it didn't feel too soon. What she wrote after the cut...

"I was 23 and it felt as if life was coming together. People would say how good we were as a match." But somehow everything went wrong.

She said she was "blindsided" when her fiancée broke things off as the wedding guests waited on a beach in Hawaii where the ceremony was due to take place.

In her letter to the Guardian, Cyndi says:

"He came into the room and said we needed to talk alone. "He was crying.

"I assumed he was letting the emotion of the day get to him. "Then he said it. 'I don't think I can do this.' "I stood there – with the veil already in my hair. "This man who was supposed to be the love of my life was telling me he was calling off the wedding less than an hour before we were due on the beach.

"I didn't even ask why. "I told him to leave. "

"I had to watch from the window as my sister went to the beach and let everyone know," she told.

"While I'd been out that morning, he had taken all his clothes and passport. "He'd actually left me. "I was heartbroken."

Cyndi had to stay at the holiday resort for a week, bumping into her ex-fiancée who also stayed on the island. She describes how she tried to pack her days with activities to stop her thinking about things, and to try and tire herself out so she would fall asleep at night.

The devastated woman ends the letter with: "The reason he gave for calling it off was that he didn't want children and I did. He never said why that became an irresolvable issue only on the day itself.

Beyonce and Nicki Minaj seen leaving a studio in NYC

Queen Bey and Nicki Minaj were both seen leaving the same music studio in New York last night. Another song in the works for the duo?

Boko Haram Escapee Invited By UK Parliament

A Nigerian schoolgirl, Victoria Yohanna,
was invited by the House of Lords, the
second chamber of UK Parliament, to
narrate her terrifying ordeal during one of
the biggest ever mass abductions carried
out by the Boko Haram sect.
Victoria Yohanna will tell House of Lords of
brutal Boko Haram attack
According to The Telegraph, a 15-year-old
girl was one of more than 400 people
abducted by the terrorists during an attack
on the north-east Nigerian town of Baga in
January.
Today, October 13, Victoria, who managed
to escape, will recount her experiences to
an audience at the House of Lords. The
event will mark the launch of a major new
report on the persecution of Christians
worldwide, which has been compiled by the
charity Aid to the Church in Need.
It is the first time when one of Boko
Haram’s thousands of schoolgirl victims
has travelled to the UK to narrate her
horrible ordeal.
READ ALSO: Boko Haram Used Us like
Animals – Rescued Nigerians
Speaking to journalists ahead of the
report’s launch, Victoria told how she was
abducted along with her mother and five
siblings when insurgents attacked her
hometown just after New Year.
“We heard shooting and the sound of bombs
in the early hours of the morning, and at first I
thought it was the Nigerian army trying to
protect us. Then I realised it was Boko Haram.
Those Boko Haram members whose duty is to
take women and children for their caliphate
took our entire family and made us walk on
foot to one of their camps,” she said.
Victoria recalled that en route she saw
numerous corpses of people who had been
killed and beheaded by terrorists.
Then she spent two weeks at a Boko Haram
camp in the outskirts of Baga.
“Every morning they took the hostages for
training at Islamic school. They would say the
Koran is the religion God had for you,” she
added.
READ ALSO: Boko Haram Escapee
Recounts Experience In Sambisa Forest
The girl revealed that she was able to fool
the militants into thinking she was a Muslim
by pretending to perform the “buta”.
Although there were Muslim captives
among the hostages who knew she was a
Christian, they did not give her away.
One night, when terrorists went out to
kidnap more people, Victoria and the rest of
her family managed to escape from the
camp.
“I knew what had happened to the Chibok
schoolgirls and was very scared. Were it not
for God we would probably all be dead by
now,” she said.
Victoria has been accompanied to the UK
by Father Gideon Obasogie, a priest from
Maiduguri.
Victoria has been accompanied to the UK
by Father Gideon Obasogie, a priest from
Maiduguri, where she is now living.
He recalled that when he met the girl for
the first time, she found it impossible to
narrate her ordeal without breaking down in
tears.
“The church has been trying to organise
counselling sessions for these victims of
Boko Haram. Simply offering them
confessional is not enough,” he noted.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari
has recently hosted the United Kingdom’s
Chief of Defence Staff , General Nicholas
Houghton. The president told the top
security chief that Nigeria still needs more
support from the British government in its
quest to defeat the terrorists.