You have the qualifications. You have the experience. You have done the work, built the proposal and prepared for the meeting.
Then someone asks you a question that seems to matter more than all of it.
“Who do you know?”
In Nigeria, the question can arrive in different forms.
Do you have anybody there?
Who can introduce you?
Have you spoken to someone inside?
Let me see what I can do.
Sometimes, these are perfectly reasonable questions about networking and access. At other times, they signal something more troubling: the belief that what you know may not matter nearly as much as who knows you.
And that raises an uncomfortable question about how opportunity works in our business environment.
Are relationships helping capable people find opportunities or are opportunities increasingly being reserved for people who already have relationships?
When an introduction becomes more important than the proposal
Imagine two entrepreneurs pursuing the same corporate contract.
Both have submitted their proposals. Both appear capable of delivering the work. One has spent weeks refining the technical details, pricing and implementation plan. The other has a personal connection to someone who can get the proposal in front of the decision-maker.
The second entrepreneur may not necessarily win. The introduction could simply help secure a meeting, after which the stronger proposal prevails.
That is networking working as it should.
But imagine a different outcome: the proposal is barely examined because the decision has effectively been made before the process begins.
Now the issue is no longer networking. It is whether the selection process gives capability a fair opportunity to compete.
The distinction matters because an introduction and an entitlement are not the same thing.
An introduction can open a door. It should not automatically determine who gets to walk through it.
Relationships really do have economic value
It would be too easy to conclude that Nigeria’s “who do you know?” culture is simply a problem of favouritism. That would ignore an important reality: relationships can be genuine economic assets.
A trusted contact can tell an entrepreneur which supplier is reliable, introduce a professional to a potential employer, help a small business find its first major customer or connect a founder with someone who understands an unfamiliar market.
Research into social capital, the resources people can access through their relationships—has examined these advantages for decades.
A 2019 study published in Heliyon surveyed 650 informal business owners in Ikeja, Lagos, to investigate how social capital related to business performance. Its findings were not a simple declaration that having more connections always produces better financial results. The relationships varied according to the type of social capital measured, the business outcome and whether the age of the firm was taken into account.
That nuance is important.
Relationships can provide access to information, advice, referrals and support. But their value depends on what those relationships actually make possible. Knowing many people is not the same as having useful relationships, and having useful relationships is not a guarantee of business success.
The problem, therefore, is not that Nigerians know people.
The problem begins when personal access becomes a substitute for transparent processes, demonstrated competence or fair consideration.
The hidden cost of not knowing anybody
Consider the qualified professional who keeps applying for roles without getting an interview, while hearing that someone else secured a similar opportunity through a personal introduction.
Or the small business owner who delivers excellent work for years but struggles to reach larger clients because they have no relationship with the people who control procurement decisions.
Or the entrepreneur who watches a promising opportunity disappear after being told, “You should have spoken to somebody before submitting.”
These experiences can create a particular kind of frustration. The person is not necessarily asking for preferential treatment. They want a reasonable chance to demonstrate what they can do.
When access depends heavily on informal connections, people without the right networks may find it harder to get their abilities noticed in the first place.
Research on social networks and economic opportunity has explored this wider issue. A 2022 study published in The British Journal of Sociology, using survey data from 4,007 adults in Norway, found that people’s social networks differed systematically by occupational status and class background. The study illustrates how access to networks is not distributed evenly.
That research was conducted in Norway, not Nigeria, so it cannot establish the size of this problem in the Nigerian labour market. It does, however, help explain a broader mechanism: people do not all begin with the same access to influential contacts.
If opportunities repeatedly circulate within established networks, people who are already well connected may find it easier to discover the next opportunity, while others struggle to get noticed.
This can become self-reinforcing. Access produces experience and visibility; experience and visibility produce more access.
The result is a difficult question for employers, clients and business leaders: are we identifying the best person for the opportunity, or selecting from the people who happened to be closest to us?
Is networking the problem—or is it how we use it?
There is an important difference between asking someone to introduce you and asking them to bypass a fair process on your behalf.
“Please introduce me to the hiring manager” is not the same as “Please make sure I get the job.”
“Can you help me get a meeting to present my proposal?” is not the same as “Can you ensure that my company wins the contract regardless of the competition?”
The first can create access. The second attempts to predetermine the outcome.
Of course, real situations are not always this neat. A trusted recommendation can legitimately influence a hiring or procurement decision because it provides information that a CV or proposal may not capture. Someone who has worked with a candidate may know that the person is dependable, ethical and capable of delivering under pressure.
That is valuable information.
But a recommendation should add evidence to a decision, not make evidence unnecessary.
Employers can use structured interviews and clear selection criteria. Businesses can establish transparent procurement processes and document how suppliers are evaluated. Professional associations can create meaningful routes for mentorship and introductions. Experienced professionals can make their networks more accessible by recommending people whose work they have actually assessed.
These measures do not eliminate every form of bias. They can, however, reduce the risk that personal familiarity becomes the only route to consideration.
The business risk of choosing familiarity over capability
There is another side to this conversation.
When organisations repeatedly choose people because they are familiar, well connected or personally recommended, they may overlook capable alternatives. A familiar supplier may be reliable, but that does not mean the supplier is always the best fit for the next assignment. A trusted candidate may be excellent, but that does not mean every other candidate is inferior.
The danger is not the existence of relationships. It is the absence of meaningful evaluation.
A business that relies entirely on personal networks may also limit the range of information, skills and ideas available to it. People tend to know others through their existing social and professional circles. If decision-makers only consider those circles, the pool of potential talent and suppliers can become unnecessarily narrow.
The solution is not to discard recommendations or pretend every candidate arrives with equal access. It is to combine the useful information relationships provide with credible evidence of capability.
Who recommended this person? What have they actually delivered? Can we verify the claim? Does the proposal meet the requirements? Would we make the same decision if the candidate’s identity or personal connection were different?
Those are better questions than simply asking who knows whom.
What can professionals do if they do not have powerful connections?
First, recognise that networking is a skill that can be developed. It does not have to mean attending expensive events, collecting business cards or pretending to be close to influential people.
It can begin with former colleagues, professional communities, alumni groups, industry discussions, useful online contributions and genuine relationships with people whose work you respect.
Second, make your competence visible.
Share useful ideas. Document your work. Build a portfolio of results. Ask satisfied clients or colleagues for honest recommendations. When you approach someone for an introduction, give them a clear explanation of what you do and why the introduction makes sense.
Third, ask for access rather than demanding an outcome.
A request for a conversation, a referral based on demonstrated work or an opportunity to present a proposal gives the other person something reasonable to support. It also allows your ability to stand on its own merits.
Finally, do not mistake every rejection for proof that connections were the reason. Some candidates are not selected because another person is better suited to the role. Some proposals lose on price, timing or execution. Sometimes the process is unfair; sometimes it is not.
The point is to build both capability and relationships while recognising that neither guarantees success.
We need to make room for people we do not already know
There is a question Nigerian organisations should be willing to ask themselves: how many capable people never get considered because nobody inside the room knows their names?
A recommendation can be a powerful starting point. But it should not become a closed gate.
The healthiest professional networks do more than circulate opportunities among familiar faces. They introduce new people, share information, recognise good work and create opportunities for people who have not yet had access to the right room.
That is how relationships become a source of wider economic value rather than a private advantage enjoyed by a select few.
So, the next time somebody asks, “Who do you know?”, perhaps the better follow-up question is:
“And once I get through the door, will what I know—and what I can do—still matter?”
THE LION TAKE
There is nothing wrong with knowing people. There is nothing wrong with asking for an introduction. Relationships are part of how trust and opportunity move through the world of work.
But a healthy business environment should not require every capable person to find an insider before their competence can be considered.
Let connections open doors. Let competence help decide who gets the opportunity.
Because the real measure of a professional network is not just how many doors it can open for the people already inside.
It is how many deserving people it can help bring in.
Your turn: In your experience, does “who do you know?” mostly help people discover opportunities—or does it too often determine who gets them?
