Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between.
What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.
Ebi*, 26, joined a PR firm fresh off her master’s degree and spent over a year there before a charming, softly-spoken colleague decided she was his next project. He pursued her methodically, chipped away at her walls one conversation at a time, and by the time she found out he had a long-term girlfriend, and was also seeing another woman in the same office, the three of them had already started talking. This is what she said.
Can you introduce yourself?
I’m Ebi, I’m 26. I grew up in Port Harcourt, but I’ve been in Lagos for a while now, since NYSC, really. Well, with a detour for my master’s abroad in between. Came back, got a job at a PR firm, and I’ve been there a couple of years now. Lagos is home at this point.
How have you found it, settling into the job?
It took time. I’m not the most immediately open person; I warm up slowly, so the first few months were just me figuring out the terrain. Who’s who, how things work, where I fit. But I’d found my footing well before any of what I am about to share happened. I knew who I liked, who I didn’t, who to have lunch with and who to just greet and keep moving. I was also seeing someone at the time, so my head wasn’t really available for anything else.
When did that change?
There’s this guy in a different department; we’d cross paths sometimes and work on things together occasionally. I knew him the way you know most people at a mid-sized company. At some point, he just started showing up more. In my space, in my conversations, more than he needed to. I noticed it, but I didn’t really clock what it was at first.
What did that look like up close?
He’s very good with words. He’s not loud or showy; he speaks quietly, and he looks at you like you’re the only person in the room. He had this thing he always did, where he’d say, “I know you, I see you,” like he fully understood you. Sometimes he made me feel like he was seeing something in you that other people had missed. And honestly, it feels good when someone pays you that kind of attention, so I wasn’t immediately on guard or anything.
He also knew I was with someone, and he made it into a thing. He’d say stuff like I’ll steal you very casually and confidently, like it was going to happen regardless. I’d laugh it off, but I was registering it. He was persistent. It wasn’t aggressive, just constant. And he always presented himself as very conservative and rooted in his faith. I noted it but didn’t think much of it at the time.
Did he ever get through to you?
Yes, but it took a while. I wasn’t just swept off my feet in a week; it was gradual. He was patient. There were weeks where I’d pull back, and he’d just wait, then show up again as if nothing happened. Eventually, you start to meet someone where they are because the resistance gets tiring. You start thinking, okay, maybe I’m being unnecessarily guarded.
What helped him was that he was genuinely interesting to talk to. I’m not going to sit here and say there was nothing there because that would be a lie. He read a lot, he had opinions, and his conversations didn’t feel like small talk. He asked me real questions, and then he’d remember what I said and bring it up later. Things that make you feel like someone is actually paying attention to who you are. I think that’s what made it work. It didn’t feel like flattery; it felt like interest.
At some point, I realised my walls had come down, and I wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened.
You mentioned his faith. Did that become a thing?
It came out in this weird way. We’d been talking more by then. I had been to his place, and one day he’d stayed over, and I woke up to him praying out loud right next to me. And then immediately trying to get me to join in, like that was just something we did. I’m lying there like, what is going on?
I grew up in the church, I know the whole thing, but I left it, and I’m fine with that. It’s not a sore spot; it’s just not my life anymore. But he kept asking questions about why I didn’t believe. And at some point, I caught myself quietly wondering, is something wrong with me for not being Christian anymore? Which is mad because I’d had zero confusion about it before he came along. That’s how much he’d gotten into my head.
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What was going on in your head during all of this, the pursuit, the growing feelings, all of it?
Honestly, I was having a full internal argument the entire time. Part of me was enjoying it; someone pursuing you with that kind of focus is not an unpleasant experience, I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But there was also this other part that was just quietly uneasy. Nothing specific I could grab and examine. Just a feeling that I kept deciding wasn’t loud enough to take seriously.
I’d catch small things. A vagueness about his weekend plans. A phone that was always face down. The way certain questions got answered with other questions. And I’d register it and then talk myself out of it every time. He’d say he was on and off with his girlfriend, that it was complicated, that I shouldn’t worry about it. And because I wanted to believe him, I did. That’s the honest version.
I think the religious thing contributed to it, weirdly enough. Not because it made me trust him more, exactly, but because it made me feel like I was the one being difficult. Like he’s sitting here praying and talking about God and being serious about faith, and I’m the one with the walls up and the questions. It quietly repositioned me as the problem in my own head. I only saw that clearly later.
What do you mean?
Well, the irony is, he was doing all this while actively deceiving multiple women. This man, who wanted to pray next to me, had a girlfriend he’d been with for years and was simultaneously involved with a woman we both worked with. But yes, very concerned about my relationship with God.
Wait, a woman at the same office?
Yes. Simi*. We’d always been cordial. She’s a bit shy, a bit awkward in that way where you can tell she’s warm once you get past it. We weren’t close, but there was no issue between us. I’d noticed at some point that she and this guy seemed to have some kind of energy, but I didn’t ask questions because he’d already told me they kissed once, and this was ages ago. He said it was nothing. I took that at face value because I had no reason to, or I told myself I didn’t.
How did you find out the truth?
One day at the office, Simi and I were just talking, actually properly bonding, the kind of conversation where you realise you should have been friends with this person from the start. It came out that I’d been to his place. That I was the person she’d seen coming and going. She’d caught a glimpse once, just never saw the face.
We both went quiet.
What happened after that?
We started comparing. When did this start for you? What did he say, did he do this, did he say that? And it became clear very fast that “we kissed once ages ago” was nowhere near the truth. They’d been ongoing the whole time he was pursuing me while he had a girlfriend.
He used the same lines on both of us, almost word for word. The “I know you” thing, the praying and then immediately pulling you into God talk, all of it. When she described it, I nearly laughed because it was so identical. It’s one thing to suspect someone is lying to you and another thing to sit across from someone and hear your experience coming back at you in a different mouth. That was a strange afternoon.
What were you feeling while all of this was coming out?
Honestly, less devastated than I expected. I think because I’d always had this quiet feeling that something wasn’t right. Nothing I could point to, just something I kept pushing down. So when everything came out, it was more like, oh, so that’s what that was. I was angry, but I wasn’t shocked. It felt like confirmation more than anything.
Simi had a harder time with it. She’d been in it longer, and she actually lived in the same compound as him; he’d helped her find the place. So her whole situation was more tangled; it wasn’t just ending something emotional, it was also practical. We sat with all of it for a few days before we decided we needed to contact his girlfriend. She deserved to know.
What was that like to decide?
It wasn’t easy. We went back and forth. There’s always a version of that conversation in your head where the girlfriend turns on you instead of him, where you become the villain of the story, and neither of us wanted that. But we also couldn’t just sit with what we knew and do nothing. So we reached out.
What was she like?
She came in very composed. Her first reaction was basically “I already knew.” And I understood it, that’s what you say when the information is too big to take in front of people you don’t know. But I didn’t believe it.
Did she eventually drop that?
Yes. Once the full picture came out, the timelines, how deliberate all of it was, the specific way he’d run the same script on multiple people at the same time, she couldn’t hold the I knew thing anymore. You could see her recalibrating in real time. She got angry. Properly angry. The words community dick were used at some point, and honestly, fair. That’s a reasonable place to land when you find out the person you’ve been with for years has been this calculated about it.
It got messy after that in the way these things do. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of him trying to manage each of us separately once he knew we’d spoken, sending messages, doing damage control. That period was exhausting. You’re processing your own feelings and also watching someone try to spin a story in four different directions at once.
Did anything happen to him professionally?
HR got involved. I’ll leave it at that. Some things don’t need to be in the streets.
How were things at work after all of it?
Uncomfortable for a while. That’s the thing about workplace situations, you don’t just get to close the chapter and move on. You see the person. You see people who know. You have to decide every morning how you’re going to carry it when you walk through the door. I’m not someone who wears things on my face easily, so I managed, but it took energy. Energy I’d rather have been spending on literally anything else.
What do you think he actually wanted?
I’ve thought about it. I don’t think there was some big plan. I just think some men need women constantly choosing them, and he was good at making that happen. The whole thing, the intensity, the I see you, the religion, it’s all built to make you feel like you’re the exception. Like he looked at everyone else and then looked at you, and it was different. And when someone does that well, it works. He did it well.
The problem is that he was doing it to multiple people in the same building, which means eventually the women would talk. And when that happens, the whole thing falls apart immediately because it only works if everyone thinks they’re the only one.
You and Simi, where are you two now?
Close actually. Which is probably the only good thing that came out of any of this. She’s funny, she’s sharp, I like her a lot. We should have been friends before all of this. Better late than never.
What would you say to someone reading this who’s in their own version of this situation?
Trust the thing you keep pushing down. That feeling you’ve decided isn’t loud enough to act on, it knows something. And talk to the other women. I know it’s the last thing you want to do, but they usually have half of the story you’re missing. You deserve the full picture.
*Names have been changed.
