When I started making money and moved abroad, I made a list of many of my old friends and acquaintances. I began reaching out to them one by one, and in some cases, I even asked other people to help me find them.
When we reconnected, I asked how life had been and what they had been doing. Almost all of them were genuinely grateful that I hadn’t forgotten them, even though I was in my own season while they were still waiting for theirs.
After those conversations, I asked each of them one simple question:
“Tell me one thing I can do for you right now that would give your life a meaningful lift.”
The answers were often surprisingly modest. Since I was financially comfortable at the time, I usually gave them far more than they asked for.
One friend asked for ₦1 million to start a small business. I told him, “Let’s think bigger,” and gave him ₦5 million instead.
Another asked for an okada (motorcycle) so he could earn a living. I asked if he could drive a car. When he said yes, I bought him a car worth about ₦12 million so he could drive for Uber instead.
I did similar things for several others.
Over the years, many of them assumed that because I had reached out first and helped them once, they could always come back and ask for more.
What they never knew was that I wasn’t trying to become their lifelong provider.
I did what I did to clear my conscience. I wanted to know that if God blessed me financially, I hadn’t forgotten the people I once struggled alongside.
I have learned something important:
Helping someone in a meaningful way is a beautiful thing. Becoming responsible for another adult’s life forever is not.
Kindness has no regrets, but it must also have boundaries.
Sometimes the greatest gift you can give is a genuine opportunity. What they do with that opportunity is no longer your responsibility.
The first and only time I ever bet on football was in 1990, when I bet that Cameroon would beat Argentina in the World Cup. The odds were 20-1. I bet £1 (that was all I could afford then) and won £20! Madam and I were living in one room in Seven Sisters, London, then. We were finally able to order egg fried rice and beef in oyster sauce from the local Chinese restaurant. Before then, it was just egg fried rice with chilli sauce and no protein.
I don’t suffer before for this my life o. And this woman suffered with me. Some days, we could only afford one meal and she would lie that she had eaten and give me the meal to eat when I came back from work. I grew up with many relatives living with us. So, by upbringing, I was raised not to finish everything on my plate. It was by watching how she wolfed down everything left on my plate that I finally realised that this woman had not eaten and had sacrificed herself to make sure I ate.
So, now, when anybody says “She’s the one eating all his money, I ask: “Before nko? Were you there when we were eating egg fried rice with no protein from Red Square Chinese Restaurant in 1990?” 😂
My wife @gechife has a remarkable facility with words. Always finds the right vocabulary to express her thoughts. And I must confess, her wordplay is both charming and enjoyable.
I’m a poor disputant in the crucible. Barely eloquent. Speech halting and fraught with incoherence. Too many ideas fill the head at the crucial moment overwhelming speech processing (Alas, the words get disjointed, and some are lost).
Over the course of our long marriage, I have done my best to be an upstanding gentleman who avoids arguments; Her verbal dexterity overwhelmingly a key consideration, like a nuclear deterrent (Whilst laboring on my opening point, she’ll be framing a perfect closing).
And so I come here vanquished, the casualty of many decisive defeats, owning my L and failing the Patriarchy, and embracing Prose, my fair mistress 🤣 🤣