The day the generator broke down was the day everything began to unravel.
In our Lagos office, heat sits on your skin like a second shirt, and without power, the air feels thick enough to chew. I was leaning against the corridor wall when Ify, our overly curious intern, waved at me from the server room.

“Aunty Ada, see wetin I find o,” she whispered, her eyes wide.

On her laptop was a folder buried so deep in the system that even Kunle from IT didn’t know it existed. It was labelled Bayelsa Flood Control – Revision 4. Revision 4? I’d only ever seen Revision 2. My heart thudded.

I called Kunle. He plugged in his flash drive, lips tight. “These files… they’re not supposed to be here,” he muttered. “And if they are, e mean say somebody wan bury am.”

---

We were working on a federal government contract to design flood prevention systems for a low-lying community in Bayelsa. On paper, it was a dream project, big budget, international attention. However, these new files told a different story. The designs had been deliberately altered. Reinforcements removed. Weak foundations specified. Five years after completion, the structures would fail. And when they did, a private oil company, already holding documents to buy the land, would move in, calling the area “uninhabitable.”

It wasn’t just corruption. It was a calculated displacement.

---

We argued for hours in the conference room. Bashir, our field engineer from Kano, slammed his fist on the table.
“My uncle’s people live there. Their farms. Their graves. Everything is in that land. We can’t keep quiet.”

Kunle leaned back, rubbing his forehead. “I’ve done this before,” he said quietly. “Exposed something like this. I lost my job, my pension, everything. Truth no dey feed man when dem blacklist you.”

I felt my throat tighten. My brother’s dialysis bills were piling up. If I lost my job, what would happen to him? But as I stared at the blueprints on the table, I saw more than lines and numbers. I saw the faces of families wading through chest-deep water, children clutching plastic bowls to stay afloat.

---

That Friday night, Ify didn’t come home. Her sister called me, panic in her voice. “She left the office late… her phone is off.”
By Monday morning, she returned, shaken, silent, refusing to talk. On my car windshield, I found a note written in red ink:

Some waters are not meant to be drained.

---

The fear settled in like harmattan dust, impossible to shake. We stopped using office emails. We whispered in stairwells. Kunle encrypted the files. Bashir claimed sick leave to “visit family,” but I knew he was scouting safe places to hide backup copies.

Then came the stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja, televised nationwide. All the ministers, contractors, and journalists were there. The project’s lead director smiled into the cameras, calling it “a legacy of hope.”

I felt something snap inside me. I thought of Ify’s trembling hands, of Bashir’s family in Bayelsa, of Kunle’s quiet resignation. I stood, interrupting the speech.

“With due respect, sir… the designs are a lie.”

Gasps rippled across the hall. Security began moving toward me, but Kunle was faster; he plugged a flash drive into the projector system. The blueprints, emails, and oil company contracts flashed onto the massive screen for all to see.

Bashir slipped a folded note to a journalist in the front row, the one known for fearless exposes. Cameras zoomed in. Microphones crackled with chaos.

---

By the time security reached us, the room was no longer under their control. Questions flew like arrows. “Who signed this?” “Why were the foundations altered?” “What’s the oil company’s role?”

The director’s face turned a dangerous shade of red. “This is an internal matter,” he barked. But it was too late. The truth was out.

---

The aftermath was a blur. International news picked up the story, praising the “courage” of our firm. The board took credit for “internal transparency.” We weren’t mentioned. Officially, we were “rotated to other assignments.” Unofficially, we knew we were being watched.

Weeks later, as I locked up my new project office, a text buzzed on my phone. It was from an unknown number:

In Lagos, water always finds a way, and so does the truth.

I smiled. Not because I felt safe, but because I knew somewhere in Bayelsa, children would sleep dry this rainy season.

And for now, that was enough.

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All images created with Canva AI, I would like to invite @etoro @kwinberry @blessedlife to join this challenge.