By Demola Olarenwaju
© CC BY-NC-ND 2014Tunde Leye wrote this interesting piece about how the Dangotes of this nation would never survive in a truly competitive capitalist society. We’re surely not on their level but can we say the many of us who would look wistfully at others and wish we had what they have are poor? Surely not.
In debating the merits and demerits of a revolution a while ago with a friend, an elderly man shut him up by pointing out that if revolution comes in Nigeria, it’ll consume those of us seated in that posh bar where a bottle of malt sells for 300 naira and beer cost 500 naira. If revolution indeed comes, those area boys that hail you on the road and you give some change one in a while will number you among the oppressors of this land.
Another friend who works with a telecoms company told me of a party they host regularly for middle-range airtime users on their network and I asked him what qualifies as middle-range. He said NGN50,000 upwards per week and I exclaimed loudly about how many people would that qualify and he casually told me that his company was even considering raising the bar because too many people were qualified and the party was becoming more like a carnival.
Some of us may be below that line but we are not as poor as those I described in this piece. In the last decade of democracy, things have surely got better, even though we’re not where we can be just yet. The opportunities in real estate, telecoms, banking, transportation, entertainment and so on have improved our lot vastly. Broke boys like Wizkid who used to trek all over Aguda in Surulere or skate-roll down Brown Road now fly first-class all over the world. Girls who used to sleep with any man with some sexual desire for money now glitter on television as movie and music stars. As the money pours in, we need to spend it so food joints, beer parlours, football houses etc are all over the place to create a subtle cash transfer from your pocket to theirs. A bus conductor today buys a bus tomorrow because he played the lucky numbers of a Baba Ijebu or sports betting lottery. He still has enough change to spend on his wife and kids at home and his prostitute-concubine in one of those seedy hotels.
‘Money no dey’ is the usual refrain but flashing credit no dey finish for your phone and you subscribe your BIS every month. If you have a relative who works in a bank, telecoms company or in the lucrative oil and gas world, you are not poor because if they made it, it creates a belief in you that you can also make it in life and the real difference between being rich or poor is the hope that one carries in his heart.
We all want more money and we’ll always do – even Dangote and Adenuga want more money and though we’re not in their class just yet, we could surely be worse off. We live however because we have this hope that anything can happen. The poor are truly poor when they have no hope and they rich are only rich because they have some hope.