Jenny* (31) and Mercy became friends in 2006 and they quickly became almost inseparable. To outsiders, they were best friends forever. But things weren’t as they seemed — something always shifts when money enters a friendship with an uneven power dynamic.
In this story, Jenny unpacks how money and power shaped their friendship, and how her relatively late but rapid income growth might have been what broke it.
This is Jenny’s story, as told to Toheeb.
It was an evening in December 2022, and I was sitting at a table in a ridiculously expensive restaurant that my best friend, Mercy, had invited me to. I was flanked by her friends, whom I barely knew. The thing, though, was that she had pitched the dinner for both of us to celebrate a raise I’d gotten at work.
“You’re now a big girl,” she said. We should go out and celebrate this.”
So, I thought it would be just us. But this wasn’t entirely strange either. Dinner with Mercy almost always meant hanging out with her friends.
When the night ended, the group’s bill was ₦150k. Then Mercy passed the tab to me and asked that I pick it up. Her response to my puzzled look was, “You’re the richest person here. You’re now our big boss.”
I tried to meet her in the middle, offering to pay for both of us and emphasising that I didn’t care about anyone else at the table. It was only fair, as I didn’t invite them.
When I told her I couldn’t — wouldn’t — pick up the whole tab, she cried, “Why are you trying to embarrass me in front of my friends? I’ve hyped you up to them.”
I thought it was madness and didn’t want to be a part of it. I’d only told her about my raise because I wanted to share an important win.
Big mistake. The night was the beginning of the end of our friendship.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Mercy and I met during a transformative period in my life. The year was 2006, and my family’s fortunes had started to change after my father passed. That’s a whole ‘nother story.
Let’s just say that before my dad’s death, it didn’t occur to me that I had certain things that other people didn’t have. I thought everyone else was in the same tax bracket as my family.
My mum sold everything to keep us in our ‘elite’ school. When it wasn’t enough, we were ultimately forced to switch schools.
Mercy and I met at my new school and bonded over our shared experiences. We were both new students, and she’d also recently lost her dad.
We became fast friends, hanging out for hours after school. Sleepovers followed, because we didn’t think we could spend enough time together.
Fast forward to 2009, and it was time to write JAMB. I couldn’t write the exam that year due to a registration mishap. Mercy did, and was accepted to study at a university. Me? I had to try again the following year.
I didn’t realise it then, but we’d started to take different paths. And in the first act of our lives, Mercy would get her lucky breaks much earlier than I did.
During one of our sleepovers, when she returned home for her first semester break, she woke me up in the middle of the night. The conversation went something like:
Mercy: “What are you doing with your life?”
Me: “Huh?”
Mercy: “You know me. I like to hang out with people who are up there. So I can be up there with them.”
Me: …
Mercy: “You’re not in school and don’t have a job. You need to figure out your life, or we can’t be friends.”
I stayed up all night, thinking, “What the hell just happened?”
We barely talked for two years after that.
I still couldn’t figure out how to get into university in those two years. But I found some success with something else: modelling. I didn’t make life-changing money; just the odd ₦5k – ₦50k from runway gigs at fashion shows to pageants, but it was enough to make a living.
To anyone outside looking in, I was doing all right. I guess Mercy thought so, too.
On her birthday in 2012, she called and asked me, “Why did we stop talking?”
I replied, “You made it obvious that you didn’t want to be friends.”
I thought she reached out because she missed me, so I gave her grace. We were back in each other’s lives.
Still, university wasn’t happening for me. I couldn’t get an offer into my university of choice — the one my dad wanted me to attend. Besides, my sister was in uni, and my mum couldn’t put us both through school simultaneously.
I finally got into a polytechnic in 2016, seven years after graduating from secondary school. In one last-ditch effort, I tried to transfer to the university, but when it didn’t work, I decided to see my time at the polytechnic through.
Now, we’re in February 2020.
I’d just graduated from the polytechnic. Mercy had left school and had been working for years. We’d hang out every few months when she came home, and she’d pay for everything. Believe me, I didn’t feel a type of way about it. I was just super happy that one of us had some stability. I called Mercy my “sugar mummy.”
In true sugar mummy fashion, Mercy asked me to leave our town, where nothing ever happens, to hustle in Abuja, where she lived. She was going to introduce me to all the right people. I wasn’t in a rush to leave. My job paid me ₦25k/month, and I was making it work. I was fine living in my mum’s house. But Mercy also offered me her place to stay.
So in 2020, I quit my job, packed my bags and moved to Abuja.
Mercy shared a spacious mini flat with a roommate, and when I moved in with them, one of the first things I asked her was the rent. The plan was to start figuring out how to chip in.
She told me, “₦2.8m.”
Ah.
I’d just moved to a new city and hadn’t found a job. Even if I had, I didn’t think I could afford such an expensive apartment. I told her all of this, suggesting finding somewhere cheaper might be more practical.
She argued, “Why would you assume you can’t pay for it? Do you know what kind of job you will get? This is Abuja. You’re going to move with the movers and shakers.”
I found a job, and it paid me ₦50k. I wasn’t moving with the movers and shakers.
More importantly, Mercy and I had different lifestyles and money habits. I liked to plan for the basics — rent, for one — while she didn’t. She hadn’t paid her rent since 2018. I found out when the landlord came and threatened to throw us out. Again, I asked her if we should consider moving to more affordable housing. She didn’t budge.
“Don’t worry, this is Abuja. You have to package yourself. This is how you blow,” she protested.
I shut my mouth as she bought her bone-straight wigs and expensive clothes. She often bought me clothes, and I was incredibly thankful for them. That said, she never asked for my input on these things. She just bought them, and it didn’t matter if I liked them or not.
That’s how it was with us. I was — forgive the pun — at her mercy. I was the broke friend, after all.
Dynamics like this often rob you of your autonomy — your sense of individuality. There was a limit to how freely I could express myself or what I could say no to.
On my birthday in 2020, I planned to buy Suya and watch movies. Mercy wouldn’t hear of it.
“Why will you eat Suya on your birthday? I keep saying you have to go out to network and mingle,” she said.
Later that night, I was at a restaurant she picked, in a dress she picked out for me, and in the company of people she selected. At the end of the night, I was asked to cough up ₦35k to pay for a meal I didn’t even want. That was 70% of my salary.
Naturally, I was upset. And she was pissed off by my reaction.
She was like, “I’m trying to give you a good time. I went all out for you, and you’re giving me attitude because I told you to pay. It costs money to have this lifestyle.”
That’s the thing; I didn’t want a lifestyle I couldn’t afford. The biggest realisation was that Mercy could be mad at me, but I wasn’t allowed to be mad at her. I couldn’t afford it.
And she was mad at me a couple of times.
Once, a guy she was seeing called her, and I asked her not to pick up the call. For context, the guy was one to send her flowers and then ask her to pay for them.
Their calls usually ended with her in tears. But she refused and went into her room. She didn’t come back out, so I went to check on her — and there she was, in tears.
I blurted, “You need to open your eyes and see that this guy is trash. Why are you acting as if you cannot get someone better?”
This girl stood up, walked a few steps towards me and slapped me across the face, yelling, “How dare you treat me like a child?”
Thankfully, that was the only time she hit me. But I had moved out of her apartment when this happened, so I had a home I could return to. I moved into a single face-me-I-face-you room in the biggest slum in Abuja. It cost ₦140k, but it was mine. I could plan my life without the threat of a landlord throwing me out.
In October 2020, things looked up. I got another job at an agency, and my salary moved from ₦50k to ₦65k. Man, the job was tedious — I was the content creator, admin officer, and HR — essentially running the place. But the job gave me a semblance of income growth. I was there for two years.
More differences between Mercy and me, especially with money, are coming to light now. I optimised for functionality; she did not. One time, she made fun of me endlessly for a secondhand travel box I got for ₦12k. It was a good bargain, but Mercy was like, “God forbid.”
But yeah, she could ‘afford’ the pretty things. I couldn’t.
Around this time, the agency I worked at started crumbling. A key executive left the business, and everything fell like a pack of cards. So I started looking for work. I was spending so much time on LinkedIn job boards that I wondered how I got any work done. But it paid off, and I got a new job. My new salary was ₦175k/month.
It was now July 2022. I moved into a new apartment, which cost ₦400k/year. There was now a strong sense of growth.
My new boss was great. He rewarded strong work ethic and excellence. He wasn’t bound by a strict salary increment schedule, either. When impressed with an employee, he’d ask Human Resources, “Can you bump up X’s salary?”
The structure helped me, and I got rapid raises. By December 2022, my salary had increased to ₦250k. The next milestone was ₦400k, then ₦450k. My income had increased by 592% in only three years. My life was turning around.
I told two people about this development — my mum and Mercy.
Now you’re caught up. This is where you met us at the beginning of this story.
After the restaurant situation, I extended an olive branch and bought her an apology gift. But I also knew we couldn’t hang out outside anymore — our tastes were wildly different. Subsequently, when I wanted to see her, I’d visit her at home and bring food with me. She invited me out a few times, and I said no every time. If this bothered her, she never complained.
The dynamics were changing. For the first time since we’d known each other, I could do what I wanted with little protest from her. There were small jabs and comments now and then, but they were tamer compared to the attacks I was used to.
However, she told people about my raise, leading to one of the most stressful periods of my life. We had multiple mutual friends because we’d known each other for so long. Then, I started fielding calls from multiple people in our friend group asking for money or financial favours.
“Hey. I’m getting married and would like to be one of my aso-ebi girls,” one text read.
Someone else reached out with “My car is at the mechanic. How much can you spare?”
Then there were the multiple “Please, I need money.” or “My rent is due.”
This was my life almost every day. I was happy to help in the beginning, but the calls and requests never stopped coming in. I was exhausted that this was happening — and that it was happening because my best friend shared a piece of news that wasn’t hers to share.
Again, I didn’t cut her off because of this.
In 2023, during a random conversation with a mutual friend, Mercy came up, and she revealed a few things Mercy had said about me. It was a bunch of stuff, but a few phrases stood out:
“You should have seen her when she came to Abuja with her Ghana-must-go.”
“She was poorer than a church rat.”
“I clothed and fed her, and she didn’t pay me a dime.”
“She’s so ungrateful. She now has wings.”
It was weird, and I suspected we couldn’t be friends for much longer. But I was deep in something else at the time: planning my relocation. I was going to join my husband in the UK — yes, I got married earlier in 2022. I left Nigeria in July 2023.
Mercy was one of the first people I called when I landed. When the call ended, I deleted her number and blocked her everywhere. That was the last time we spoke.
She hasn’t tried to reach out, so I imagine we’re both aligned that this had to happen. It sucks not to be friends anymore after being in each other’s lives for so long.
But I guess even old friendships run their course. Ours ended when I finally had autonomy.
It’s a fair trade.
Editor’s note: Names have been changed for anonymity.
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