I Lent My Best Friend ₦150,000 For Her Business. She Blocked Me On WhatsApp
Residual money in my account used to feel like a small miracle. Then Chiamaka called me at 11pm, voice shaking, saying she needed just one push to finally launch her thing properly, and I forgot everything my mother ever taught me about money and friendship.
I promise, before December, I’ll pay you back in full, she said. You know how tight things have been. This is the one that’s going to change everything for me.
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We had been friends since JSS2 at Command Secondary School in Ojo. Fourteen years of sharing puff-puff at break time, sharing clothes in university, sharing rent for six brutal months in Yaba when neither of us could afford our own place.
So when Chiamaka said she wanted to start a thrift business, buying bales from Katangua market and reselling on Instagram, I didn’t think twice. I sent her one hundred and fifty thousand naira from my UBA account on a Tuesday afternoon, in between attending a Zoom meeting for my actual job, the one that barely covers my own cost of living in this Lagos.
For the first two weeks, it was beautiful. She posted pictures of jeans and corset tops on her page, tagged me in every caption, called me her silent partner. I felt proud. Like I had done something real with my small side hustle income instead of just watching it disappear into data subscriptions and Bolt rides.
Then the posts slowed down. Then they stopped.
I didn’t panic immediately. Everybody in Lagos knows business has its quiet seasons. I sent a message, something soft, something that wouldn’t sound like I was chasing her for money I lent my own best friend.
Hey babe, how’s the thrift business going? Haven’t seen new posts in a while.
Two blue ticks. No reply.
I told myself she was probably busy sourcing new stock, maybe traveled to Cotonou for better bales, maybe her phone spoilt. Chiamaka had always been the dramatic one, the one who disappeared for days when life got heavy, then resurfaced acting like nothing happened. So I gave her space. Three weeks of space, to be exact, while my own bills piled up and I quietly regretted not keeping that money for myself.
By week four I called her. Straight to voicemail. I called again the next day. Same thing.
I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t think about all the signs of a toxic relationship, except this wasn’t romantic, this was fourteen years of friendship suddenly acting like a stranger who owed me nothing. I sat in my room on a Sunday evening, Burna Boy’s Last Last playing low from my speaker, and I typed her name into my contacts just to stare at it.
I decided to visit her house in Ikotun. She still lived with her mother, a woman I called Mummy Chi since I was thirteen years old. When I got there, Mummy Chi opened the door with a strange, apologetic look on her face, the kind that tells you the news before the mouth does.
She traveled to Abuja, Mummy Chi said. Business trip.
For how long, ma? I asked, already knowing the answer would be vague.
I’m not too sure, my dear. You know how she is.
I stood on that veranda in Ikotun, mosquitoes biting my ankles, and I felt something shift inside my chest, that particular Lagos feeling of being played by someone you trusted with your whole heart. I didn’t cry. I just thanked Mummy Chi and left.
That night I opened WhatsApp to send one last message, the kind you write when you’ve stopped hoping for money and just want closure. My message wouldn’t send. No profile picture. No “last seen.” She had blocked me.
Fourteen years of history, blocked, over one hundred and fifty thousand naira.
I told my cousin Tega about it over the phone, and he laughed in that way people laugh when they’ve heard the same story too many times. Welcome to the club, he said. Everybody in this Lagos has one Chiamaka in their life.
I wanted to be angry, and some days I was. I scrolled her old Instagram posts at 2am, staring at pictures of us at her twenty-fifth birthday party, at the thrift jeans she used my money to buy, calculating in my head what one hundred and fifty thousand naira could have done for my own financial freedom instead. New job clothes. Half a semester’s rent. A cushion for the next time work paid late.
But some days I just felt sad, the kind of sad that has nothing to do with the money at all. I missed her voice notes at midnight complaining about traffic on Third Mainland Bridge. I missed the way she used to send me random “see this one na scam abi?” screenshots whenever a stranger slid into her DMs asking for her account number. The girl who taught me to smell scams from a mile away had somehow become the person I couldn’t smell coming.
Three months later, I saw her. Not online, not through mutual friends, but in person, at Tejuosho market of all places, haggling over the price of a wrapper with a trader who clearly wasn’t giving her a discount. She saw me before I saw her fully processing it. Her face did something complicated, guilt and fear and something like relief all at once.
Chiamaka, I said, because what else do you call someone you’ve known since JSS2.
I’ve been meaning to call you, she said, eyes already wet. Things just got so bad. I lost the money. All of it. I didn’t know how to face you.
I didn’t shout. I didn’t even feel the anger I expected to feel. I just asked her one question, the only one that mattered to me at that point.
Why block me instead of just telling me the truth?
She didn’t have an answer for that. She just stood there in the middle of Tejuosho, traders shouting prices around us, danfo horns blaring somewhere behind her, and she cried without saying another word.
I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the money. Some days I tell myself to let it go, that fourteen years of friendship is worth more than one hundred and fifty thousand naira. Other days I open my banking app, look at that Tuesday afternoon transfer, and feel my chest tighten all over again.
We’re not really friends anymore, not the way we used to be. We’re two women who occasionally like each other’s posts and pretend the block never happened. I don’t know if that’s forgiveness or just exhaustion.
If you ever have to choose between lending money to your best friend or protecting the friendship itself, I hope somebody tells you before it’s too late that sometimes you can’t have both.
