BN Book Excerpt: This Wasn’t For The Public by Biodun Abudu

Growing up in Aguda, Surulere made me believe almost everything could be traced back to a family curse. If a marriage failed, it was a family curse. If someone struggled financially, it was a family curse. If a woman could not conceive, if a child fell sick repeatedly, if a student failed an examination, somewhere in the conversation, a family curse would eventually appear. The idea was so common that it became part of how many people understood life. Long before I understood concepts such as generational trauma, conditioning, emotional inheritance, or learned behaviour, I understood curses. 

Looking back, I understand why the idea was so powerful. Families pass down many things. Some pass down land, names, recipes, stories, and traditions. Others pass down something far less visible. They pass down patterns, fears and wounds that were never properly addressed. 

I grew up watching people talk about inheritance in ways that went beyond money or property. Across Nigeria and throughout the African diaspora, it is often an unspoken belief that families carry more than DNA. They carry unfinished prayers, unspoken betrayals, unpaid debts, violence that was buried instead of healed, and decisions made in desperation. Many people believe those things continue to affect future generations. When those patterns repeat often enough, people stop calling it coincidence; it becomes a familial adoption, a curse: A family where marriages rarely survive. A family where financial stability never seems to last. A family where addiction, abandonment, conflict, or estrangement appears generation after generation. When people see the same outcomes repeating themselves over decades, it becomes natural to search for explanations beyond one individual. 

Church played a…