By Ola-Abraham Oluwafemi E.

Sir, there is only one question I want to ask.

In this our country, how can a man from a humble background build wealth? How long do we have to work hard and diligently to help ourselves and our community? Please I need your guidance.

Ooni of Ife

I have followed you since you became the king, and I appreciate your support and believe in the Nigerian youth. This informed my decision to ask you this question.

Sir, we can’t continue to blame poverty on personal failure and attributes wealth to personal virtue because everyone that became successful had a leverage. If we start from Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu had his mother, a foremost trader and Iyaloja of Lagos. Dangote had his uncle who could borrow him a loan. Femi Otedola had a father who was a Lagos Governor. I do not mean to say these men are not geniuses in their own field, they are great men. They have their own intelligence and are very hardworking and creative. But they have the advantage children like us probably will never have.

Bezos’s parents gave him $245,573 to stop amazon from failing in 1995. Infact the story of Bill Gates that he dropped out of college to pursue his dreams when in fact his mom Mary Gates was the president of United Way. She convinced IBM to hire Microsoft to build their operating system. Gates is talented but his career probably wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t the child of wealthy and well-connected parents. We were also told that Warren Buffet had a scrappy upbringing when his dad was a congressman.
Mark Zuckerberg was sent to Phillip Exeter Academy with tuition almost $57,000 for boarding and he got himself a private software developer David Newman to give him private tutoring in computer science.

Sir, I have done fairly well for myself but like a great man once said being an average is risky. Because you are as close to the bottom as you are as close to the top. I want to help more people I want to create more jobs. Not because I desire fancy holidays, an exotic car or a designer wear but because I understand and have experienced a first-hand relationship with poverty and I wish to take more Nigerians out of that quagmire.

Unlike my peers I have been greatly helped. By man and God. Many of my peers earn less than 100k a month.
Sir, I won’t bore you further but read this little experience. I went to Abuja by air with a staff of mine who finished from a private university. In the airport and on onboard She was just greeting different people. On our way back it was the same, so I was forced to ask her where she knew all of those people, she said they were school mates. The only time I met my school mate at the airport, she was working as airport security.
If any or most of the people I went to school and grew up with would go to Abuja, they would go by road.

Sir, I believe no man can effect change without wealth and/or protest. I can’t carry placards. The only thing I can do is business. I can be like Rockefeller, I can make money for the good of my neighbor. But how do I go about it?

I need your wisdom and prayer sir.