Urgent 2K

There is no contract and no collateral, only who you are to the people around you. "Urgent 2K" is the small, urgent ask that keeps Nigerian friendships and families liquid: money for data, a plate of food, transport home, returned whenever God writes it. Jii sits with Oshin Praise, whose research gave the thing its name, and Sheriff, the show's money regular, to map how a lending system with no paperwork actually runs.

The anonymous panel answered first: nearly everyone has needed an urgent 2K, everyone has been asked, and the number is almost never really 2,000. From there, how you size up a borrower with no credit score, when trust curdles into being someone's crutch, the loan apps charging 300 percent, and why our most informal system might be our most honest one. This is not financial advice. It is a conversation about how we lend.

Read the research and the panel's findings at inskriba.com. How We Live is an Inskriba production.

Urgent 2K

Inskriba Conversations, Money. Jii with Oshin Praise, who wrote the research, and Sheriff, the Money anchor. Edited for readability: filler, crosstalk and connection drops removed; nothing added.

JII: Welcome back, Sheriff. And welcome, Praise. Good afternoon. How was your week?

PRAISE: I think it was perfect.

JII: Please explain perfect.

PRAISE: There is a dataset I have been trying to get for a long time. It has been very hard to come across, and I happened to find one on GitHub. I was hoping to train on five hundred to a thousand samples, and I saw about eight thousand. It exceeded my expectations.

JII: For your project. What is the project?

PRAISE: I am building an AI, basically, for simulation.

JII: Sheriff, your week?

SHERIFF: This was my last week at my previous workplace. A lot of handing over to the people taking over from me. Two of us were leaving, so the team did a send-off. They said a lot of nice things about me, my head got very big, they gave me a laptop bag. It ended on a good note.

JII: You cannot have too many laptop bags. It is good, when you are transitioning, to look back and hear what you did. My week was chilled. I had the whole week off, so mine was not ending well, because now I have to think about going back to work.

PRAISE: What do you do?

JII: I am an information security analyst. I work with hospitals to make sure they are doing the right thing on information security. It is mostly talking, spreadsheets, reporting and snitching. So they probably do not like me, and they probably will not say nice things when I leave. Praise, say what you do with Inskriba.

PRAISE: I write for Inskriba. It has been a good place to write, with some challenges here and there. When we first started, we could only put in essays. Then research came. I love the platform, and I love the subscribers.

JII: For context: Praise came in with the first cohort. Inskriba reached out to people, they submitted a sample, we called them in, and he has been writing since. I think he was the first person to write a research piece, and that research is what we are talking about today. Inskriba is trying to carry the Nigerian story from the Nigerian lived perspective. So, straight into it. What inspired this, and what is it about? Start with the title.

PRAISE: The title is "Urgent 2K". It is exactly how it sounds, and it does not have to be two thousand. It might be five hundred, a thousand, two thousand, more. A week before I wrote it, I needed money urgently, really urgently, and I messaged my mum. Any time I message her in the afternoon she already knows. She said, "I missed you at church," then, "how is work?", then, "you want to ask for money, abi?" She got me. I needed three thousand. She said she would not give me, she had just given me money recently. I said I would pay back. She said, "That is what you say every time. Urgent 2K." That was how it came to life. I needed it for data; mine was almost finished.

That is the point. The formal way of getting money is not easy. A bank loan wants your details, your BVN, all of that. Urgent 2K is just a message.

JII: It is architecture. Praise calls it a micro-lending network, and that is what is interesting. We sent a questionnaire to the panel on this and we will read from it as we go. Before that, the thing we must say every episode: this is not financial advice. In no place, time, space or words are we giving financial advice. We are talking about money as a conversation. Do your own research, and enjoy the conversation. Sheriff, a quick comment before we go into the results.

SHERIFF: The concept of urgent 2K I know well. In school there were periods you would be broke; you have collected your monthly allowance, finished it, and month end is looking like generations away. So you start thinking which of your friends you can bill this month. Or you have no cash, or your bank app is down, and you need someone to quickly send you a few naira. It is not alien to me. I have asked, and I have been asked.

Now I am hesitant to ask. The first person I ask is my brother. As soon as he sees my message he knows: this boy wants money. But he still gives me. And when I ask my brother, I do not ask from a place of borrowing. I just say I need money, and he gives. With friends, I say, "I beg, borrow me this amount, I will return it this period." I have never defaulted, except where I forgot. For most young Nigerians, at one time or another you have either borrowed or been borrowed from. It is part of our lives.

JII: I agree. Because of the way we are set up, we are communal, so we borrow from family and really close friends. And shame and trust are part of our system. You know that your blood, people you grew up with, will not shame you. One thing I found: even if you do not pay back, you pay back by barter. If they need help later, you remember this person was there for me. It gets paid back in some way.

The first question we asked the panel was, what does urgent 2K mean to you? Praise, when you were writing this, what did it mean to you?

PRAISE: Urgent 2K means a lot, because it can mean a lot of things. It can be money for data, money for food, money for transport. It is also money you cannot forgo. If someone asks me for urgent 2K, most times I do not ask for it back, depending on the person. If it is someone very close, it is disturbing to be asking. If someone has done a lot for you, you look ungrateful asking. It is not a loan to start a business. It is money to get simple things. It runs on trust. There is no real collateral. It is just reputation.

JII: Some of the panel's answers. One said, "Means a lot, I must confess." One said it is money for survival: "It can get you a plate of soup and you would still have change left to go back home." Transport. Another said, "A quick, interest-free financial aid that you know you would return within the shortest time possible." Sheriff, as the finance person, is urgent 2K even inside the formal sector?

SHERIFF: In the formal sector, some new banks are trying to create something where people can borrow very small amounts and return them fast. With interest. The Islamic banks have non-interest banking, but I do not think they have gone to that granular level, because lending is expensive for banks; they need to make money somehow. The new banks, OPay, Moniepoint, are doing it.

For me, urgent 2K is a lot of things, as Praise said. You need cash for something small: data, food, transport. Your lecturer says you need to buy something for a project. Someone is sick and needs medical attention. It depends on context. Someone could need a hundred thousand and it is still urgent, because they are not liquid. Some friends of mine, when they ask, I give without asking what it is for, because they typically do not ask. It probably means their bank app is down. They return it within six hours; they do not like owing people. And there are some who, if they borrow, know that your money is gone until God writes it. So you understand the person, so it does not affect your relationship. Urgent 2K is emergency funds.

JII: Is a hundred thousand still urgent 2K? Let us define the range.

SHERIFF: It depends on context. When I was in school my urgent 2K was maybe five thousand, for foodstuff and transport. Now that I am working, it has changed. If a friend is at the filling station and his card is not working and he calls me, send me urgent 2K, let me pay for fuel, I will send it without looking. It is a lot of money, and it is still, in my opinion, urgent 2K. But if you are borrowing for business, to buy stock and sell, that is no longer urgent 2K. That is borrowing someone money.

JII: So urgent 2K does not have to be small. It is small in the context of the relationship.

SHERIFF: Exactly. And one more example. In 2007 and 2008, in the financial crisis, big banks needed cash urgently in order not to fold. In a way they needed urgent 2K to survive that period. It was money to survive, and it was urgent, because they could not get it anywhere else. Warren Buffett was lending companies cash. Some survived, some died. That is what urgent 2K did. It is complex.

JII: Have you ever needed an urgent 2K? Praise, that is how your story starts.

PRAISE: Of course. Always. And on the range: I categorised it into three. The baseline, which is small, for data or a plate. Then a functional range, maybe one to five thousand. I went through the panel's answers and some were talking about buying anti-malarial drugs; two thousand might not be enough for that in Nigeria. Then the trust threshold, which can exceed, it can be fifty thousand. At that point it becomes a serious debt if the person cannot pay back. And it is the amount where the person should know: I can let this go if they do not pay. It is an economic bracket, not fixed.

JII: Depends on context, depends on relationship. The panel: have you ever needed an urgent 2K? Eleven said yes, one said no. Have you ever been asked? Everyone said yes. When people reach out for an urgent 2K, what is it usually for? Most said food, which tells you it is the immediate survival need. Do you ask people what they need it for? Is there a requirement for lending?

PRAISE: It depends on the amount. If I have ten thousand with me and someone asks for five or six thousand, that is more than I can give without asking. If it is a very small amount, a thousand, I do not have to ask. Above a threshold, I will ask, even if I end up not giving.

SHERIFF: For me it depends on the person. Praise wrote about trust, social capital, reputation. If I know you as a serial person that does not pay back, even if it is two hundred, I will ask what you need it for. If it is a close friend who always pays back, I may not ask even for a high amount, because you have been responsible before. Though if it is very high, even I will say, bro, what is happening, maybe it is something I can help with, and it changes from borrowing to giving. And there are people who have never asked you anything, and suddenly they ask for a big amount. You have to ask: is everything fine? Then there are people who have betrayed different people over small amounts and come to you for the same. Tell them no from the beginning. As they say, banks do not want micro-credit because chasing small loans is expensive. You too should not lend problematic people money, because you will start chasing them.

JII: Which goes into part two of your research, the credit bureau of social capital. You have both described a mental risk assessment: first-time borrower, this person looks responsible, their reputation is not bad. It runs on appearance, on knowing the person, on things that are not tangible like a credit score. So let us do it properly. Someone comes to ask you for urgent 2K. How do you perform the risk assessment on the borrower? Is that called underwriting?

SHERIFF: It is almost like underwriting, to be sure the person has a good credit score. I would say you reach out to people around the borrower, especially if the money is a lot. Personally, I do not like chasing you for my money. I expect you to remember. If it is small and you do not, I will not remind you, but next time I will not be enthusiastic to lend. If it is a lot, I will remind you often, and if you are not enthusiastic to pay back, I let you go, but you know it is one hundred percent unlikely you will get anything from me again. So: reach out to his social network. Not his closest friend, who will tell you to pay him back. An acquaintance. "This guy, you think he will pay back?"

As a borrower, I only borrow from people I assume know me, close friends or family. I do not borrow outside my very close circle. And because I do not borrow often, it is easy to ask out of the blue; they know I pay back as soon as I have it.

JII: That makes sense. If people borrow and pretend, that is the whole point of urgent 2K: it is too small to chase. It is expensive for banks and it is expensive for individuals too.

SHERIFF: Exactly. They will say, "It is only two thousand you are chasing me for, I beg." And there are some who will tell you, "What can you do if I do not pay you back?"

JII: Praise, your mental model.

PRAISE: Normal banks, depending on the amount, take physical collateral. The loan apps, OPay, PalmPay, go through your BVN and your recent history. If you borrowed somewhere and defaulted, that determines whether they lend. The same thing applies to human beings. Most times it is reputation. When someone asks me for urgent 2K, I go through the person's credit score, and it does not have to be whether they have borrowed before. It is their history: has this person ever shown integrity? Someone who is not trustworthy with little things, how can you trust them with larger things? It is character and historic data. And it works the same way the formal system works. If someone borrows from me and does not pay back, and then goes to someone else, the record follows him. That person has no BVN with us.

JII: Most of the formal systems we find ourselves in are built on the informal systems we already operate. That is one thing I look at in Nigerian startups: founders do not use existing systems to evaluate what they are building. They force how another part of the world does it, without recognising how the informal systems here work. The mental model is interesting because sometimes we do not know we do it. "This person does not pay back, I am not giving the whole amount. Let me reduce it to an amount I will not be angry to lose."

SHERIFF: One reason it is difficult for small and big banks and startups to do micro-lending is the trust deficit. It is a trend online: people who borrowed from different apps and insist they will not pay back. The apps have their faults; a lot are loan sharks using tech. People borrow a hundred thousand and by the time you see the interest they are paying four hundred thousand back. When they do their ads it seems like a chill choice. It is a chicken-and-egg situation. People do not want to pay back because they are dishonest, and the loan sharks charge high interest because the risk of recovery is so high. Is it because people are dishonest that interest rates are so high, or because interest rates are so high that people are dishonest?

The government needs to look into it. The FCCPC needs to regulate the way loan companies lend: a maximum interest rate, and above that, close them down; the apps should not even be downloadable. Then there need to be consequences for borrowing and not paying back, and Nigeria is not a rich country; how do you punish someone who has nothing to seize? Economists, analysts, psychologists need to look at how people treat money. A lot of countries survive on credit; their middle and low income classes live a somewhat comfortable life on credit and sort out their debts. If we build better structure, a credit system for the middle class first, it can go down to the low income classes, where people can borrow, pay back, buy on credit, without the fear of someone posting their picture online saying this person has HIV and will die in two days, come and pay back his money. There are very obscene cases.

JII: From the panel: "When you ask for urgent 2K there is no contract and no collateral, only who you are to the people around you. How does that kind of trust actually work?" One said, "It is a kind of money one can forgo. Whether they pay back or not, I can easily let it go." I think a lot of people answer from their own experience; maybe they have defaulted and they are deciding for the borrower. One said, "Sometimes it is not trust. I see it as help, since most times we do not expect it to be refunded." Because sometimes what you are asking for is food. Another: "That kind of trust usually works from people who know me and feel empathetic about the situation I explained."

Have you ever rejected an urgent 2K request from someone you feel bad for, but their social credit score is blinking red? Not to shame anybody's situation, but there are times you become a crutch for someone who is constantly coming to borrow, maybe not making the right decisions, and I know it is hard to make the right decisions in Nigeria. Have you ever said, I cannot keep being your enabler?

PRAISE: There are cases. When I notice this person, every time, gives different excuses, and most times the excuses are genuine because of the country we are in. There was one during my industrial training. A friend. We would go together to get things, and most times it was, "I cannot pay, help me." This went on for about a month. Then one time I had nothing on me, and I noticed this person had money, and I asked, can you help me to pay, and the answer was no. About a week later we went out again and the same person said, "My card is not working, abi?" and I said no, I cannot. Something that happens to you once should not happen to you a second time. Sometimes they have genuine reasons. Sometimes they just believe it is a small amount you can afford. The same way they cannot pay for it is the same way you do not want to lose it. And sometimes it is circumstances; there is one person who does not pay back, but once something happened and she used the money to pay me for something else.

JII: Once bitten, twice shy.

SHERIFF: A scenario. There are people who like to ask you for money; they have their own money but they do not like to spend it, so they frame it as urgent need. I know a businesswoman. People always came to ask her for help, and she considered them close friends. She assumed they came because things were not going well for them. Then she heard they had built a house. She does not have her own house. They did not even tell her. It pissed her off, because of all the help she had rendered. She was not expecting loyalty, but she placed them on a pedestal and assumed they took her as a friend. It felt like betrayal. Since then she does not give people money the way she did. There are also people who can take, but when it is time to reciprocate you do not find them. I am not the type that likes reminding people of what I have done for them. If it gets to where I am tempted to, I know we will not be friends much longer. If you are my friend, you have met some criteria: I trust you with money to a good extent. So apart from being bad at returning money, there is lack of gratitude and lack of reciprocity.

JII: The research established it: peer to peer, running on trust. And people will always want to play that network. It starts small. "Quickly borrow me," and because they know you are nice, or you need validation, they keep borrowing. I have seen people borrow from ten people at once because they do not want to spend their own money. They are filling their own basket.

And shaming used to be expensive. If you shamed someone you lost part of your social network. We are getting to a society where it is no longer expensive. You can be paid for shaming someone: put it on social media, go viral, get paid for the content, and the audience pays you back for shaming that person. The ecosystem is so informal that it is easy to exploit. So you put principles in place for the lowest risk: I will not give the whole amount; I give because it will not hurt me; or no, I am not giving you.

One more variable before we end. It is not only men asking. It is two ways: men asking women, women asking men. When a female friend or colleague asks you, do you use the same risk assessment?

PRAISE: Gender is complicated. If your circle of friends is mostly women, you have no choice but to borrow from them. With outsiders, when a lady asks a guy, there is this thing of maintaining a social balance. I would say I am more lenient when a lady asks, but I take it both sides.

JII: A lady comes: "I need urgent 2K." What is your response?

PRAISE: Yes. But there will definitely be a background check.

JII: What are you checking? Do you have a crush on her?

PRAISE: Some stuff like that.

JII: As a friend, are you going to help me in my time of need? There is a popular idea that some people do not help across gender because it is not reciprocated. We are not talking about anything else. We are talking about: when I am in need, can you help me too, or is this one way?

PRAISE: I would use the same criteria. It has gone past the stage where I give for giving's sake. If I give, I want to know that in the long run I can get help from you too. And can I ask a lady? I can. We have this patriarchal thing where a man asking a woman does not make sense to people, but at this point I can ask. My closest friends are women.

SHERIFF: I have friends, males and females, in equal numbers, and I have borrowed from both. When I graduated I attended a programme in Abeokuta with no cash; it was the 2020 cash crunch and there was no cash anywhere. One of my closest friends, a woman, was feeding me for a month and sending money. So it is not an issue for me to ask my close female friends, or for them to ask me. If I can afford it, I give.

For someone I have a romantic interest in, I am more lenient, to be honest. Even if I suspect this person will not pay back, I am rational, I calculate how it affects me if they do not, and if I can cover it I go through with it. If it is an acquaintance, I have to know what kind of person it is. I have female friends outside my current circle who may not have spoken to me in six months; they call and say they need this, I send it without asking, because they are very good friends and there is no romantic interest. In formal lending, the data says women pay back loans more than men. In microfinance banks, in LAPO, in the numbers, women pay back more. In informal lending I do not know the numbers; there needs to be more research. My own female friends pay back as soon as they can. With a romantic interest there is a form of entitlement where you cannot pursue your money with the same rigour, so you have to be calculating, or just let it go. In a relationship, you need to understand who your partner is; one partner is frugal, one is a spender. Have the conversation about money.

JII: I agree. In my most dire need it was women who helped me out. During my NYSC I needed money badly and it was a female friend who bailed me out. On the borrowing side, we are socially groomed that when a lady asks, you try as much as possible. But now that I am married, I cannot. There is no rational behind "let me be lenient." It goes for guys and girls: it passes through one more stage before I decide.

SHERIFF: Can I put you on the spot? If your wife borrows from you, do you expect her to pay back?

JII: Very good question. She does. I do not expect it, and I never go around saying you have not paid me back, but she pays. She has a background in accounting and economics, but I think it is who she is.

SHERIFF: It is a character issue.

JII: I also have a standing principle. When anybody asks me for money, I will most likely give, but I never give the full amount. I give what I have. I still do the background check, and sometimes I override it, because I understand how things are. It is context. Any shout-outs?

SHERIFF: To my friends who fed me at different periods when I was down in school. My parents tried their best, but there were times you just did not have money and did not want to ask. During the 2020 lockdown I did not go home; I was in the school area, and a friend, my namesake, was cooking with me and eating with me because there was nowhere to go. And the female friend, and my family. And my elder brother, my number one. When I was in school he never expected me to pay back; he just gave, as an elder brother. I am really grateful to all of them.

PRAISE: I have a friend who is an accountant. She is very considerate when it comes to paying back. Everyone should have an accountant friend. And shout-out to my friends, my sponsors, and to your boss for holding this platform.

JII: It is a blend of character and background. I do not think it is gender; I have had more guys not pay me back than ladies, which maybe goes with the formal-sector numbers. Shout-out to my siblings, two sisters, for coming through when I begged. And to my wife; between us I am the less financially prudent one.

We will post the research and the panel's responses with this episode. And if you borrowed an urgent 2K, pay it back. That is what keeps the informal economy moving. Do not take people's trust for granted, and do not lend with shame. Thank you both. See you next time.