Meet Blessing, Nigeria’s first female skater who is the brain behind Nigeria’s first and only female skate community: Dencity
Though her father didn’t agree with her newfound passion, Blessing knew she had to be a skate girl, in Nigeria. She watched skate movies at home and fell in love with the sport. Blessing picked up her first skateboard last year. Today she’s managed by West Africa’s biggest skate community waf. and set up a thriving skate community for girls in Nigeria.
Blessing (24) moved from Calabar to Lagos. She visited Lagos in 2017 with a cultural NGO and got a feel of the city “…ever since that visit I knew my future would be here. Calabar is too calm for me, here it buzzes, there’s a creative sector and just more energy”. She applied for a job at a pharmacy, one that matched with her studies, and moved in with her cousin who was already staying in Lagos to find out upon arrival that the job was a scam. “The phone numbers of the people that hired me were all switched off and the Instagram didn’t exist anymore”.
Blessing had an interested in skating and knew there’s a skate community in Lagos: WAFFLESNCREAM - now known as waf. She looked them up online and decided to chill at the places the skaters hang out. She soon realized she wanted to be like them, a skater. “My friends were skeptical, they said these things aren’t for girls but I didn’t care”. She borrowed boards from the boys and started skating with them at the National Stadium. “Some of them work for waf., in their skate shop. After skating we went there to chill, that’s how I met Jomi”.
Jomi Bello is the founder of waf.; besides the community he runs a store where you can get skate supplies, boards and clothes from the brand. Jomi set up the brand some/around ten years ago when he moved from the UK back to Lagos. He was a skater in the UK and realised there wasn’t a skate community in Lagos, or a place where skaters could buy their supplies. Enough reason for him to build a community of like minded spirits around his passion: WAFFLESNCREAM. In 2021 waf. signed the first West African professional skater, participates in skate tournaments around the globe, builds Nigeria’s first skate park and took Blessing, Nigeria’s first female skater, under its wings.
“My friends told Jomi about me and at some point he gave me a board”. Blessing was the only girl amongst boys but that soon changed “They shared skate videos of me on Instagram and other girls from all over Nigeria approached me saying they also wanted to skate”.
Not much later Blessing set up Dencity, a skate community for and by girls from Nigeria. “I focus on Nigeria because there are still so many stereotypes towards girls, challenges we girls have to overcome”. Blessing has been stopped several times in the streets by strangers “they tell me that what I do is for boys”. She knows she’s not the only girl facing these struggles “I therefore want Dencity to motivate and inspire other girls, show them that we as girls can be who we want to be and do what we want to do”. Today she runs the platform via Instagram and WhatsApp where girls from all over Nigeria connect and motivate each other. “Often girls are scared to fall, so we talk about that in the chat. I share my experiences and tell them that’s a different kind of pain when you fall, it’s that sweet pain”.
Blessing is proud of the platform she’s building and wants to impact more girls all over the country. “At the beginning it was just me and the things I was going through, now it’s a community with girls from Abuja, Calabar, Port Harcourt. Because of me more girls are going out to skate in Nigeria!” Being managed by waf. is not only good for her own career, but also for her goals with Dencity “Jomi and Slawn, another known skater, give me supplies to send to the girls in other cities, because the girls don’t have access to boards and other skate items there”.
Blessing is a young role model to many, though she doesn’t experience as such “I’m just doing what I like doing, I’m being me”. That includes a cover shoot for Native Mag, a Lagos-based magazine that celebrates contemporary culture. The theme of the issue was ‘pride’. Blessing was asked to be part of the shoot, not realising it was the cover shoot. “I love it! The subject is important to me, being on the cover is me fully coming out”. The shoot came with an interview about being a female skater and about being queer. “The impact was amazing, I got DM’s from girls telling me they want to come out because of me. For me it was just my own coming out, not knowing it would inspire others”.
Inspiration might be the key word when it comes to this young star; whether it’s through her style, her presentation of self or her skating - Blessing is showing us that there is a new generation of girls in Nigeria that is doing things their way - of which some on a skateboard.
