Nigerians don’t just want to be paid; they want to be paid well. But earning a good salary is not a given. According to the Zikoko State of Income Report, three in four salary earners make less than ₦200,000 a month, making a well-paying job something many people can’t afford to take for granted.
For those lucky enough to land one, a high-paying job can make up for long hours, a stressful work environment, difficult bosses, and everything else work throws at them. If the money is good, surely it’s worth putting up with hell… right?
These Nigerians don’t think so. In this story, they share why they walked away from high-paying jobs, what they chose to do next, and whether leaving the money behind was worth it.
“I fell in love with my boss.” — Kayode*, 35, M.
I’ve worked in investment since 2013. After my first role, I job-hopped for a few years before finally landing a senior risk analyst role in 2019 that paid me ₦700k/month.
The work was boring, but I was good at it. However, my boss, Diana*, made things difficult for me.
I like strong women, and she was one of the toughest women I’d ever met, but she was still fair and kind when we deserved it. I didn’t even realise when I fell for her.
I’m not talking about a small crush either. I hadn’t liked someone in years, so my thing for her was intense. I thought about her all day and did everything I could to talk to her, even though I kept it professional. It got to a point where my best friend told me what I felt wasn’t normal.
I soon found out she was married, and the jealousy I felt was insane. Even though I knew my feelings weren’t normal, that didn’t make them any less real.
I became depressed, and my work started to suffer. This only made things harder because she started asking me if I was okay and if she could do anything to help. I even came close to paying for therapy.
After a year in the company, the impact of my crush was too much on my mental health, so I found another job paying only ₦500k/month, and I pivoted. I stayed at that new job and was promoted recently, so I’m back to earning ₦700k/month.
Looking back, what I felt for my boss wasn’t normal. It must have been spiritual.
“I chose sleeping over a career.” — Mide*, 26, F.
I finished NYSC in 2022 and, for months, I struggled to find any jobs worth my time or talent. I’d started to give up when my friend sent me a job offer for a talent acquisition officer at the beginning of 2023. The salary was ₦650k/month.
I was a late applicant, so I didn’t think I’d get the job. Plus, who would pay an inexperienced entry-level hire ₦650k? But to my surprise, I got the job.
At first, everything was great. I only had to go to the office two times a week, and my boss seemed chill compared to other Nigerian bosses. However, at least three people left in my first month. That should have been an indicator that something was wrong, but I just thought they’d gotten better opportunities.
I soon learnt what the problem was: no one was sleeping.
My hours were meant to be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but to complete the sheer amount of work we had, many of us would wake up at 7 a.m. and work for hours long after the sun went down. My job took over my life. I had to stop visiting friends because I used weekends to try and lessen my workload. Even my mum, who never lets me skip out on hard work, said the company wanted to kill me before my time.
My final straw was when I got malaria and asked my boss if I could take the day off, but he said, “Are you so sick that you can’t work when you come back from the hospital?” I resigned the following weekend after just five months on the job.
Now, I run a thrift business, and it’s doing well. Ironically, I used the money I saved from my first job to start it, so I guess that means it all worked out.
“I didn’t understand the job.” — Ifeanyi*, 55, M.
Before COVID, I sold cars, and I made really good money, above ₦500k a month. But COVID affected my business, and it never fully recovered.
I wanted my family to keep living the life we were used to, but I never wanted to work in an office. My daughter introduced me to online jobs, but I didn’t understand most of them. The only one that made some sense to me was being a virtual assistant.
My daughter took a virtual assistant course for me, and I started applying for jobs with the certificate she got. A few months later, in 2023, I got my first job for a Kenyan who paid me the equivalent of ₦1.2m a month. I told myself I would learn on the job.
Unfortunately, navigating a laptop was tougher than I thought. At least three times, I scheduled something for my boss on the wrong day, and my output slowed because I had to do extensive research to understand how to handle my tasks.
My boss was patient, especially since he was my agemate and understood why I struggled, but at a point, it was just undignified to stay there.
I quit six months after I started. I’m surprised I wasn’t even fired before then. Before I left, however, I recommended my daughter to him, and she now works there.
I’m still trying to get my business running, but I think I might pivot into farming.
“No one liked me.” — Yetunde*, 24, F.
Immediately after I graduated from uni about four years ago, my mum’s friend got me a position at her bank. I didn’t have a proper job title; I just worked as my mum’s friend’s assistant. They paid me ₦300k/month, and the role came with free lunch. It might not seem like much, but I was 21, barely did anything all day, and I used that extra time to build my copywriting business.
It was great. I was always going out with my friends and paying for everyone. Copywriting was also paying me about ₦70k a month, which was a nice extra.
However, there was one big problem at my office: All my coworkers were much older than me, and none of them liked me.
I don’t know if it was because I was young, or they were frustrated that I got the role via nepotism, or if my boss being really nice to me and then really hard on them was too much, but these grown men and women began to bully me.
They would laugh at me when I tried to make contributions during meetings, then insult my generation as Nigeria’s fools. I won’t lie, I enabled them by laughing along, but only because I wanted them to like me.
One day, when I went on my lunch break, a particularly nasty co-worker told me all I do is eat, and I should continue because I’ll soon be even more obese. I’ve always struggled with my weight, so that really got to me. Another time, I’d just done red braids, and my boss said it was fine, but my co-workers held a grudge against it. They would pull my braids and tauntingly call me a nepo baby.
I stayed for about a year and a half, and most of that was because I did NYSC there, but the moment I finished my service year, I told my mum’s friend I wouldn’t go back. She begged me, telling me I was good at my job, but enough was enough,
Luckily for me, at this time I was earning about ₦200k a month from copywriting. It was less than my previous earnings, but I didn’t mind one bit. Now I’ve scaled it up and earn in dollars.
“I chose my husband over my job, and I regret it.” —Ezinne*, 44, F.
In 2000, I got a job as a receptionist at a new private school. Back then, my salary was ₦7k a month, which was good money for me.
The Head of School (HOS) and I quickly became good friends. Our school was like a family, so a lot of us who started with her got raises and promotions very fast.
That was my case. I was good with children, so I was soon promoted to teacher, and later to head of the math department. It was great. By 2020, I was earning ₦700k a month.
While I saw my growth as a good thing, my husband was disturbed by it. I got married a year before I became a receptionist, and at the time, I was only supposed to work until my husband got on his feet. After that, I’d quit. But I fell in love with being at that school.
Once I started earning ₦700k, my husband and his family began hounding me to quit, saying my husband would take care of me. My daughter and colleagues begged me not to listen to them, but the pressure became too much, and I left my job after 20 years.
True to his word, my husband takes care of me, and I lack nothing, but I miss my job so much. I’m still friends with the HOS, and she has told me that whenever I want to come back, there’s always a place for me, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to go against my husband’s wishes.
“My boss was weird.” —Muna*, 29, F.
In 2021, I got a job as an evaluation specialist for an NGO. It was ₦500k/month with healthcare and other benefits.
I loved that job. The people were nice, the pay was good at the time, and I was good at what I did. We were comfortable with each other, but my boss was… too comfortable.
During meetings, she would ask us what we did over the weekend; if we told her, she’d say, “That can’t be all. Give me details.” In the end, she was prying into people’s personal information. She did this so intensely that she even discovered my co-worker was having sex problems with her man.
During meetings, she would share those personal details and expect people to laugh with her. One time, she used a colleague’s mother’s death as an example in a training session. The colleague broke down in tears, so she told him to go to her office, and she would comfort him after the training.
I thought I could endure it for my pay, especially because I had a good chance of being promoted, but one day, my fiancé came to pick me up, and my boss saw him. Every day after that, she’d ask about him.
I never said anything, and this pissed her off. She started being passive-aggressive, saying I was keeping things from her.
I endured that crazy woman for two years before I quit without any prospects. Since then, I haven’t found another job I think I’d love as much as that one, but my husband takes care of me, so I’m comfortable for now.
“Someone died from stress” — Albert*, 40, M.
I worked as a corporate lawyer for most of my life until 2024, when I quit because a colleague died of stress.
The job I quit was at an international company, and I’d worked there for 10 years. Since only a few of my co-workers were Nigerian, we often rented a workspace together. One of them was Remi*.
We all worked long hours, even during weekends, and never took breaks. During lunch, everyone ate quickly so we could get back to work. Clients could also be hostile, and our bosses demanded perfection. The fast-paced environment worked for me because I do well in spaces where I don’t have time to overthink, but for Remi, it was a death sentence.
He was a decade older than me, and we weren’t anything beyond work friends, but I really cared for him. He wanted to be an artist, but he was working in law because, when he was younger, that made sense. But he hoped to pursue his dream one day.
However, Remi had long-standing health challenges, and the stress of our job made them worse. Any time he had to go to the hospital, my boss would joke on Zoom calls that the work would soon kill him.
Unfortunately, it did. One day, in 2023, he didn’t come to the workstation, so I called his wife. She told me he’d been hospitalised because of high blood pressure. He was dead within the hour.
I’ve never lost someone, not even my elderly parents, so this hit extra hard. During our meeting, my boss mentioned his passing once; we had a minute of silence, and that was it. It was as if Remi had never worked for our company.
It broke me. I stayed another year, but after that I couldn’t do it. He gave his life to his job, and for what?
After I resigned, my wife supported us for a year while I figured out what I wanted to do next. I eventually became a legal management consultant for another international company at ₦600k/month, and I’m still there today.
I’m getting paid way less than the ₦1.3m I earned at my previous company, but I’m much happier. I didn’t even realise the stress was getting to me too. I now spend more time with my family, but Remi is always at the back of my mind.
I considered picking up painting as a hobby in his honour, but I’m not artistic.
