7 Nigerians Share Why They Quit High-Paying Jobs — From Falling for a Boss to a Colleague’s Death

Nigerians don’t just want to be paid; they want to be paid well. But a good salary is far from guaranteed. According to the Zikoko State of Income Report, three in four salary earners take home less than ₦200,000 a month, which makes a well-paying job something many people cannot afford to take for granted.

For those lucky enough to land one, a high salary can seem to justify long hours, a stressful 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 disagree. Below, they explain 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

Kayode has worked in investment since 2013. After his first role, he job-hopped for a few years before landing a senior risk analyst position in 2019 that paid ₦700k a month. The work was boring, but he was good at it. The problem was his boss, Diana*, who made things difficult for him.

He describes her as one of the toughest women he had ever met, yet still fair and kind when the situation called for it. He didn’t even realise when he fell for her. It was not a small crush — he hadn’t liked someone in years, so his feelings for her were intense. He thought about her all day and did everything he could to talk to her, while keeping things professional. At one point, his best friend told him what he felt wasn’t normal.

He soon found out she was married, and the jealousy he felt was overwhelming. Even though he knew his feelings weren’t normal, that didn’t make them any less real. He became depressed, and his work began to suffer. That only made things harder, because she started asking if he was okay and whether she could do anything to help. He even came close to paying for therapy.

After a year at the company, the impact of the crush on his mental health became too much. He found another job paying only ₦500k a month and pivoted. He stayed there and was recently promoted, so he is back to earning ₦700k a month. Looking back, he says what he felt for his boss wasn’t normal — it must have been spiritual.

"I chose sleeping over a career" — Mide*, 26, F

Mide finished NYSC in 2022 and spent months struggling to find jobs worth her time or talent. She had started to give up when a friend sent her a job offer for a talent acquisition officer role at the beginning of 2023. The salary was ₦650k a month. As a late applicant, she didn’t think she would get it — and who would pay an inexperienced entry-level hire ₦650k? To her surprise, she got the job.

At first, everything was great. She only had to go to the office twice a week, and her boss seemed chill compared to other Nigerian bosses. However, at least three people left in her first month. That should have signalled that something was wrong, but she assumed they had simply found better opportunities.

She soon learned the real problem: no one was sleeping. Her hours were meant to be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but to complete the sheer volume of work, many staff woke up at 7 a.m. and worked for hours long after the sun went down. The job took over her life. She had to stop visiting friends because she used weekends to try to reduce her workload. Even her mum, who never lets her skip out on hard work, said the company wanted to kill her before her time.

The final straw came when she got malaria and asked her boss if she could take the day off. He replied, “Are you so sick that you can’t work when you come back from the hospital?” She resigned the following weekend, after just five months on the job.

Now she runs a thrift business, and it is doing well. Ironically, she used the money she saved from her first job to start it, so she feels it all worked out.

"I didn't understand the job" — Ifeanyi*, 55, M

Before COVID, Ifeanyi sold cars and made really good money — above ₦500k a month. But COVID affected his business, and it never fully recovered. He wanted his family to keep living the life they were used to, but he never wanted to work in an office. His daughter introduced him to online jobs, though he didn’t understand most of them. The only one that made some sense to him was being a virtual assistant.

His daughter took a virtual assistant course for him, and he started applying for jobs with the certificate she obtained. A few months later, in 2023, he got his first job with a Kenyan client who paid him the equivalent of ₦1.2m a month. He told himself he would learn on the job. Unfortunately, navigating a laptop was tougher than he had thought.

At least three times, he scheduled something for his boss on the wrong day, and his output slowed because he had to do extensive research to understand how to handle his tasks. His boss was patient, especially since he was Ifeanyi’s agemate and understood why he struggled, but at a point, it felt undignified to stay. He quit six months after he started, surprised he hadn’t been fired before then.

Before leaving, however, he recommended his daughter to the client, and she now works there. He is still trying to get his business running, but he thinks he might pivot into farming.

"No one liked me" — Yetunde*, 24, F

Immediately after graduating from university about four years ago, Yetunde’s mum’s friend got her a position at her bank. She didn’t have a proper job title; she simply worked as her mum’s friend’s assistant. They paid her ₦300k a month, and the role came with free lunch. It might not seem like much, but she was 21, barely did anything all day, and used the extra time to build her copywriting business. It was great. She was always going out with friends and paying for everyone. Copywriting was also paying her about ₦70k a month, a nice extra.

However, there was one big problem at the office: all her co-workers were much older than her, and none of them liked her. She doesn’t know whether it was because she was young, because they were frustrated that she got the role through nepotism, or because her boss was really nice to her and then really hard on them — but these grown men and women began to bully her. They would laugh at her when she tried to contribute during meetings, then insult her generation as Nigeria’s fools. She admits she enabled them by laughing along, but only because she wanted them to like her.

One day, during her lunch break, a particularly nasty co-worker told her all she did was eat, and that she should continue because she would soon be even more obese. She had always struggled with her weight, so that really got to her. Another time, she had just done red braids, and her boss said it was fine, but her co-workers held a grudge against it. They would pull her braids and tauntingly call her a nepo baby.

She stayed for about a year and a half, mostly because she did her NYSC there. The moment she finished her service year, she told her mum’s friend she wouldn’t return. The woman begged her, saying she was good at her job, but enough was enough. Luckily, by then she was earning about ₦200k a month from copywriting. It was less than her previous earnings, but she didn’t mind one bit. Now she has scaled it up and earns in dollars.

"I chose my husband over my job, and I regret it" — Ezinne*, 44, F

In 2000, Ezinne got a job as a receptionist at a new private school. Back then, her salary was ₦7k a month, which was good money for her. She and the Head of School (HOS) quickly became good friends. The school was like a family, so many of those who started with the HOS got raises and promotions very fast. That was her case. She was good with children, so she was soon promoted to teacher and later to head of the math department. It was great. By 2020, she was earning ₦700k a month.

While she saw her growth as a good thing, her husband was disturbed by it. She had married a year before becoming a receptionist, and at the time, she was only supposed to work until her husband got on his feet. After that, she would quit. But she fell in love with being at that school. Once she started earning ₦700k, her husband and his family began hounding her to quit, saying her husband would take care of her. Her daughter and colleagues begged her not to listen, but the pressure became too much, and she left her job after 20 years.

True to his word, her husband takes care of her, and she lacks nothing, but she misses her job so much. She is still friends with the HOS, who has told her that whenever she wants to come back, there is always a place for her. But she doesn’t think she is brave enough to go against her husband’s wishes.

"My boss was weird" — Muna*, 29, F

In 2021, Muna got a job as an evaluation specialist for an NGO. It paid ₦500k a month with healthcare and other benefits. She loved that job. The people were nice, the pay was good at the time, and she was good at what she did. They were comfortable with each other, but her boss was… too comfortable.

During meetings, the boss would ask staff what they did over the weekend; if they told her, she would 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 a co-worker was having sexual problems with her partner. 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 come to her office and she would comfort him after the training.

Muna thought she could endure it for the pay, especially because she had a good chance of being promoted. But one day, her fiancé came to pick her up, and her boss saw him. Every day after that, the boss asked about him. Muna never said anything, and this angered her boss. She started being passive-aggressive, saying Muna was keeping things from her. Muna endured that for two years before quitting without any prospects.

Since then, she hasn’t found another job she thinks she would love as much as that one, but her husband takes care of her, so she is comfortable for now.

"Someone died from stress" — Albert*, 40, M

Albert worked as a corporate lawyer for most of his life until 2024, when he quit because a colleague died of stress. The job he left was at an international company where he had worked for 10 years. Since only a few of his co-workers were Nigerian, they often rented a workspace together. One of them was Remi*.

They all worked long hours, even during weekends, and never took breaks. During lunch, everyone ate quickly so they could get back to work. Clients could also be hostile, and their bosses demanded perfection. The fast-paced environment worked for Albert because he does well in spaces where he doesn’t have time to overthink, but for Remi, it was a death sentence.

Remi was a decade older than Albert, and they were nothing beyond work friends, but Albert really cared for him. Remi wanted to be an artist, but he was working in law because, when he was younger, that made sense. He hoped to pursue his dream one day. However, Remi had long-standing health challenges, and the stress of the job made them worse. Any time he had to go to the hospital, their boss would joke on Zoom calls that the work would soon kill him. Unfortunately, it did.

One day in 2023, Remi didn’t come to the workstation, so Albert called his wife. She told him Remi had been hospitalised because of high blood pressure. He was dead within the hour. Albert had never lost someone, not even his elderly parents, so this hit extra hard. During their meeting, his boss mentioned Remi’s passing once; they had a minute of silence, and that was it. It was as if Remi had never worked for the company. It broke Albert.

He stayed another year, but after that he couldn’t do it. He felt Remi had given his life to his job, and for what? After he resigned, his wife supported them for a year while he figured out what he wanted to do next. He eventually became a legal management consultant for another international company at ₦600k a month, and he is still there today. He is getting paid way less than the ₦1.3m he earned at his previous company, but he is much happier. He didn’t even realise the stress was getting to him too. He now spends more time with his family, but Remi is always at the back of his mind. He considered picking up painting as a hobby in Remi’s honour, but he is not artistic.