The Day I Became “Oga’s Favorite” and Lost All My Friends at Work

The generator coughed twice and died at exactly 9 a.m, and that was how I knew the day was going to test me. I worked at a logistics company off Aba Road in Port Harcourt, the kind of office where the air conditioner only worked for the manager’s corner and everyone else fanned themselves with old invoices. My name is Chidinma, and for three years I had been the quiet one, the one who submitted reports on time and never joined the gossip circle by the water dispenser.

That morning, our branch manager, Mr. Ikuku, called me into his office. He had a habit of clearing his throat before saying anything important, like his voice needed permission to speak.

Chidinma, sit down, he said. I have been watching your work. You are the only person in this branch who understands the new inventory software. I want you to lead the Lagos handover project.

I should have known trouble was coming the moment he smiled like that, the kind of smile that costs you something later.

Thank you, sir, I said, because what else does one say to a man who signs your salary.

By 10 a.m, the whole office knew. Ngozi, who sat two desks from me and had been my friend since my first week, stopped mid-sentence when I walked past her desk. She was telling Bassey something, and the something died in her mouth.

Ah, Chidinma, oga’s favorite, she said, not quite looking at me. Congratulations o.

I laughed it off, but the laugh didn’t land. It just sat there in the space between us, awkward, like a chair nobody wanted to sit in.

By lunch, things had curdled properly. I went to buy garri and soup from the woman who sold food under the almond tree behind the building, the one everyone called “Mama Put Small Money.” When I got back, my desk had been rearranged. Not violently, just enough. My stapler was missing. My mug, the one with Real Housewives of Lagos printed on it, had somehow migrated to the shared shelf where nobody claimed anything and everything got dusty.

Somebody should tell oga’s favorite that staplers don’t grow legs, Bassey said loud enough for the whole floor, laughing at his own joke like it was the funniest thing since Brekete Family radio drama.

I sat down and ate my garri in silence, watching the ceiling fan spin lazily above me, doing absolutely nothing to cool the room or my temper.

By 2 p.m, Mr. Ikuku called another meeting, this time with the whole team, to announce officially that I would be leading the Lagos handover, that I would be traveling there for two weeks, that my salary would see a small bump for the “responsibility.” He said it with such pride, like he was giving me a wedding ring instead of a headache.

The room clapped. It was the saddest clapping I had ever heard, thin and half hearted, the kind of applause you give when your mouth says one thing and your face says another.

After the meeting, Ngozi cornered me by the stairwell, the one place in the building where the phone network somehow worked better than anywhere else.

You didn’t tell me you were angling for that project, she said, arms folded, not quite an accusation but close enough to sting.

I wasn’t angling for anything, I said. He just called me in.

Just like that.

Just like that.

She looked at me the way you look at soup that smells fine but you’re not sure you trust it. Then she walked away, her heels hitting the tiled floor harder than necessary, each step a small declaration of betrayal I hadn’t actually committed.

The rest of the week became a masterclass in silent treatment. Nobody said good morning to me properly again. My emails got shorter replies. Someone, I never found out who, started calling me “Small Madam” behind my back, loud enough that it always somehow reached my ears by evening.

I thought about quitting. I thought about it seriously, lying on my bed at night in my one room apartment in Rumuola, staring at the ceiling, wondering if a promotion was worth losing the only office friendships I had built brick by brick over three years.

Then Thursday happened.

The software I was supposed to understand so well, the one Mr. Ikuku claimed only I could handle, crashed spectacularly during a client call. Numbers disappeared. An entire shipment manifest for a client in Onitsha vanished into the ether. Panic spread through the office like NEPA had taken light in the middle of a wedding reception.

I didn’t panic. I had built a habit, quietly, of backing up everything onto a personal drive, not because I was some genius, but because I didn’t trust anything in that office to survive a power surge, including the wifi router that hummed like it was perpetually on its last breath.

I restored the manifest in twenty minutes. The client never even knew there had been a crisis.

Mr. Ikuku came out of his office sweating in a way that had nothing to do with the heat, and he thanked me in front of everyone, properly this time, no throat clearing, no performance. Just relief, raw and unguarded.

Something shifted after that. Bassey was the first to crack, coming to my desk with a bottle of Chivita like a peace offering.

Chidinma, abeg no vex, he said. We were just feeling some way. Nobody wan see person dey shine reach us.

Reach una? I asked, genuinely confused.

You know how office be now, he said, shrugging like that explained everything, and in a strange way, it did.

Ngozi took longer. She apologized on Friday, quietly, no audience, just the two of us by the almond tree where Mama Put’s smoke curled up into the grey Port Harcourt sky.

I was scared you’d forget us once you started moving with oga, she admitted. Stupid, I know.

Not stupid, I said. Just Nigerian office logic.

We both laughed properly this time, the kind that actually lands.

I still went to Lagos two weeks later. I still lead that project. Bassey and Ngozi still work two desks away, and things are almost back to how they were, almost, because something in an office never fully returns to its original shape once envy has touched it.

But I learned something that week under that dead generator and that lazy ceiling fan: promotion in a Nigerian office is never just about you and your boss. It’s about you, your boss, and everyone else who has to watch you rise while their own ladder stays exactly where it was.