Obsession with money and greed at any cost in pursuit of foreign tastes and finished products displaces local moral values, killing local initiatives and industries. Greed may be an incentive to be creative by Ivan Boesky’s standard, but it excessively destroys, as in past centuries, the slave trade. When the chiefs had no more slaves to prey on, they turned on one another like Neanderthals. As ancient chiefs exchanged gold for mirrors, our money-miss-roads pay 48k for Brioche bread!
What is more alarming is the number of miseducated Africans defending the Champagne market in Africa as people’s drink in a niche of nouveau riche of a poverty-stricken community. There was a trend when some of them wash their hands with champagne they do not make in the country, but that created more workers in France. While people raised alarm then, today’s generation is willing to defend it if designer Akara or Rice in Abuja or Lagos cost more than Brioche bread.
Late Chief Stephen Fajemiroku advised that wealth must be created before you can distribute it to the masses, since you cannot distribute poverty. What he never envisaged is a country called Nigeria today where enormous wealth was created but distributed poverty instead. It is like a leaking basket in constant thirst for water. Nigeria was so overwhelmed with Oil Income; the Military declared that money was not their problem but how to spend it.
We cannot deny the usefulness of money. It can actually buy comfort, love, and material items, but it takes more than money to keep them going. It can also invite the attention of unsavory elements whose desire is to milk you dry. Apart from the motivation and delusion that comes with money, it also attracts countries looking for the loot of war, foes and friends for casualties. Everything melts like ice cream in our mouths as we lose money. Though sweet when it lasted.
Essentially, all we need for survival are basic needs for food, water, shelter, and sex. Initially, humans got each of these without money. When we interact within and outside our communities, we started trading by barter. We grew our own food, stored water for use, built shelter from the environment, and married wives with dowry in order to start a family. Survival needs in terms of food, shelter, and sex do not mean more of each gives pleasure after 2 cups of water for thirst.
The fear of losing what we have motivates us to acquire more so that we would not do without in the future. Beyond this, it is making sure we are in positions to provide for our family. Extended families also demand more from those they consider can afford to give or have more than they need. Watch those who flash money in the midst of poverty. A screw or something is missing somehow or somewhere. Otherwise, why would one want to tempt or dare the poor?
While basic needs are universal for human survival, they are the same from one community to another. It may be different foods, but they all boil down to carbohydrates, protein, fat, fruit, and vegetables. Shelters may be built differently in communities, but each uses what they have from their environment. The mold and shape may differ, but the main purpose was to cover ourselves so that we are not exposed to sun, rain, and snow in cold weather.
As the worth and value of farmers decreased, the new generation abandoned farming for white-collar jobs that pay more. Tai Solari founded MayFlower School and made Agriculture the epitome of education. Many parents and children shy away from MayFlower School mainly for that reason. In retrospect, he was right. Farmers and Teachers used to be highly respected in African communities with high degrees of value.
Moreover, it is difficult to become wealthy as a farmer unless the government subsidizes them the same way the corporations are subsidized through tax breaks and accessible favorable loans. Africans throw a great amount of earned foreign incomes to unproductive sectors by patronizing foreign goods and services that could have been directed to local agricultural industries. Ironically, foreign interest on loans is lower than our interest on loans in Nigeria!
Those trading agricultural commodities on Wall Street do earn more money than the producers of those commodities. While trading agricultural products on Wall Street fit into the Judeo-Christian capitalist system, it has destroyed the African economy. Simply by speculation common to world markets. Even worse, exporting them as raw materials to be turned into finished products and sold back to raw producers at source for huge profitable prices.
Secondary needs are personal and emotional wants to enhance our social comfort and status in the community or around the world. They are not essential for survival but enhance our comfort and status for our social well-being. If you fail to achieve both the ultimate goal of money acquisition, which is power and happiness, you have failed because power is transient. Look around and watch the end of those with absolute power but no love, happiness, or satisfaction.
Wealthy people thank their maker each day that they get up in the morning for his blessings and another day to spend some of their accumulated wealth.. Yet, some need bigger toys for an extra “high” that never lasts as you sober off. Then explore something else, new or a higher dose. This is who we are, never satisfied until we get another new game. Designers are quite aware of this. So, they make another model, another edition, another style, and in another year.
Trying to play to the gallery, friends become worse than enemies. Money can turn friends into foes and enemies into friends. How those outside your financial affairs determine how much you have and what you can afford to give is based on your position, promises, conspicuous spending, and speculation. When your actual worth is below each of these, you are expected to face scorn, ridicule, or outright hostilities.
Nigerians are celebrated overseas as the most successful Africans without weighing the cost of their success. It is very difficult to compare Nigerians to successful Europeans or Americans who can raise a family with one income in the household. Most Africans work two or three jobs to acquire the same level of material wealth as successful Europeans or Americans enjoy. African wives and husbands have to work twice as hard for the same toys without the same comfort.
If all the greed is that Africans must acquire billions for the sake of “good” education for their children overseas, it is misplaced. Even then, they would be disrespected in the same rich neighborhood by neighbors and Police on suspicion of being wealthy and Black. Black children, especially Black boys, earn less in adulthood than white boys, even when they all grew up in the same wealthy environment and surrounding neighborhoods with good schools.
