There is a version of loyalty that is conditional. You see it most clearly when something is at stake — an election, a business launch, a moment where someone needs to be seen. That is when you find out who was actually in your corner and who was simply in your orbit.
I learned this in two distinct chapters of my life, and the contrast between them is everything.
Queen's College, Lagos · Class of 2001
My Queen's College years gave me the purest version of friendship I have ever known. We were still becoming. Still figuring out who we were going to be before the careers, the marriages, the titles, the versions of ourselves we would later perform for the world. What we had then was uncomplicated. We were just girls, building something without knowing we were building it, and those friendships carried forward in ways I didn't fully appreciate until much later.
The adult friendships that came after were different. Some of them were transactional in ways that took me years to name correctly. Loyalty showed up only where it could be seen. Support arrived only where it could benefit the person giving it. I kept showing up anyway, going above and beyond for people who treated my moments like background noise. When it was my turn, they went quiet. You know the sound. Crickets. They have a very specific frequency.
The QCOG Exco election came and I realized something. My classmates, women I had grown up alongside, women I had watched become wives and mothers and entire people, came out in a way I was not prepared for. Women who had never spoken in the group chat suddenly had something to say. Someone dropped out of the race entirely to become my campaign manager. People showed up, made calls, pulled others in, made sure I was seen and heard.
The Moment That Reshuffled Everything
And even when I lost by twenty five points to the winner and relative to the other two candidates, I did not walk away with a loss. I walked away with the knowledge of who I was to people who actually knew me. It was the experience that reshuffled everything and clarified who my people were and who had simply been nearby.
I also have what I call my silent friends. We don't speak every day. We don't always make plans. Weeks can pass, sometimes months. But if I call, they come. If I need them to follow through, they do, without needing the situation to be public enough to make their support worth giving. That is its own kind of loyalty. Quiet. Consistent. Not performing anything for anyone.
"Loyalty is a character trait, not a calculation. It should not be decided by what is in it for you."
It should not be decided by how visible the moment is, or whether the person you are showing up for is currently winning. The moment loyalty becomes conditional it becomes something else entirely, strategy dressed in the language of friendship.
What I have done with the transactional ones is not cut them off. I have simply lowered my expectations to match their actual capacity. Not in bitterness, in clarity. When you stop expecting a screwdriver to function as a hammer, you stop being surprised when it doesn't. You just reach for the right tool.
The boundary is not punishment. It is just honesty about what the relationship actually is.
Nigerian women, the ones I grew up with, the ones who showed up in that election season, the quiet ones who follow through, have taught me that loyalty at its best is not dramatic. It does not announce itself. It simply shows up when showing up costs something.
And the women who do that, consistently, without needing an audience? Hold on to them. They are rare everywhere. They are especially rare here.
To any woman who has shown up for me in any capacity, in any season, in any small or large way — if you are reading this: thank you. You may not know what it meant. But I do.