By Fola Ojo
Someone once asked: “What’s better than money?” Money! Money is sweet. Money is honey. Money is sweeter than honey. Money is the resolver of many problems. The handy helpmeet you need in making crucial decisions. The drawer of many friends both fake and real. The rallying daddy triggering standing ovations. The mystifying magnetic force. Without money, a man’s moon is unable to stay in its course. Without it, a man’s sun stands still. Over money, wars are fought. For lack of enough of it, battles are lost. Many of life’s battles are lost for the dearth of money. Dreams die, and visions vanish when money says bye-bye.
Decades ago, my pastor told me: “Money is nothing, my son”.
‘Say what?” I muttered under my breath.
My head spun in confusion at the utterance of the statement. For every Sunday, my pastor asked for money. During the week, he asked for more of it. During revivals, he stomps for more. Why then did my pastor ask for what is nothing? Anniversaries become adversaries when money won’t stand by. Why ask for what makes somebody nobody? My pastor wasn’t alone. In courtship, the woman occupying my tender heart preached the same homily.
“Money doesn’t matter to me, darling”.
“Really, honey?”; I asked.
Without money, how stoutly strong is love? Without money, how do we feed the gnawing worms troubling our stomach when hungry? Without money, how do we send the kids to the best schools we had no chance to experience ourselves growing up? Without money, honey, how does our world revolve away from stagnation and untimely annihilation? Where is our humanity, and what happens to our sanity without money? Hhmmn! You are dead without money! You are deader than dodo!
Okay. What about love of money? Aha! That’s a different beast. Love of money. The poisonous fragrance. The killer venom. The destroyer of destinies of men and women going somewhere great in life. Jailor of the recalcitrant. Prosecutor of the offender. The hammer. The slammer. The exterminator. The terminator. The annihilator. Love of money is an enemy that appears like a friend. It deceptively whispers falsity in your ears. It sings falsehood into your spirit and lies to you that you must want more of money. It screams that you must do anything to get more of moola. It says you must kill. You must lie. You must betray. You must make your friends, enemies and enemies, your friends. Love of money is a monster. A mauling monster that breezes through telling you that human ritual is okay. That kidnapping is okay. That robbery is okay. That what is not okay is hunky-dory. Love of money makes the malodorous smell good to human nostrils. It trolls. It pushes. It shoves until you are off the cliff into blazing and infernal Gehenna. Love of money hates men. It is man’s worst enemy. Yes; money is sweet; but love of money? How bitter thou art!
There is a mad dash for money the world over. But in Nigeria, it’s a different flavour. It is a williwaw. Young boys and girls surge around in a mad rush to make it. To them, to make it is to make money. To those desperate to make it making money, they don’t care if it’s funny money. They aren’t bothered if it’s blood money. All they want is money. Oldies love money too. They sell a plot of land to a thousand people and they don’t think it’s wrong. They run for political office not to serve but to make men serfs by stealing from the treasury. Put them in charge of arms and ammunition procurements and the funds disappear. Charge them to grant pension disbursement oversight to retired civil servants and the funds vamoose. They have forgotten what one old wealthy sage once said about money:
“The pursuit of wealth is not a bad thing in itself because without food and comforts which wealth provides, life will be penurious and drab. But any wealth accumulated on a selfish basis at the expense of the State in defiance of social injustice helps to create a disorganised society in which everybody will eat everybody, and no one person can be safe”. The voice of Obafemi Awolowo from his grave. Much love for money flows freely among my people. Love of money; the beginning of eternal mourning.
Ask the young man next door, success to him is not just the fulfillment of personal desires; not just the salivation for unhindered inflow of happiness; and not only becoming who God has created him to be. Success to him is defined by the fatness of his bank accounts, the luxuriousness of cars he drives, and the ultra-expensiveness of garments he straps around his mortal body. mad dash for fast cash is everywhere.
My son, if you are reading this, process precedes success. No man attains the highest peak in his career or endeavour by precluding process. You cannot possess anything of value if you don’t surrender to process. Any attempt to beat requisite processes is launching out into a shortcut that cuts short LIFE. Don’t put yourself under the pressure to have your name sung in songs, and published on the pages of newspapers as the newest Nigerian millionaire in town. Stay the course and stay focused on the process than brings a man to possessing what God has for him.
No man runs ahead of God and runs well. Quickness of feet does not necessarily win a race; and the muscular man may be emasculated easily in a brawl with a bony being. Whoever is in a hurry to get the honey will get bitten by wild hornets, and stung by beastly bees. Mad dash for fast cash takes people to places undesired and undesirable because there are no shortcuts to any place worth going. You want to hit a goldmine? Shortcuts will not take you there, my son. You want to keep your dream alive? Shortcuts never bring a dream to fruition; it accelerates it to ruination. Give respect to process; it is the essential prerequisite to possessing possessions that God has inscribed and tattooed your name on. When you pay your dues in process, you will not be unable to pay your bills when they come due.
Those who take shortcuts to success miss out on the experience that the struggle of the long road offers. The long road provides a foundation that will serve you well when you reach the top. Someone once said that taking shortcuts will get you to the place you don’t want to be much quicker than they get you to the place you want to be.
On Twitter: @folaojotweet
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