[center]A BILLIONAIRE AND HIS UNUSUAL WAYS
Jarus, January 2010[/center]


“Your billionaire friend is at it again”

“Who’s that?”

“How many billionaire friends do you have?”

“I don’t have any”

“Okay, that braggadocio from your alma mater”

“Okay. You mean Mr James Abrahamovic. So what has he done again o?”

“Didn’t you see The Nation newspaper of yesterday?”

“Yes, I did. You’ve started again. So what is wrong in a man putting his picture in a job advert?”

“Let’s hear word my brother. It’s jejune and absolutely profligate”

“Haba, that’s rather harsh. Hope that’s not bad belle”

“You think advertising job vacancy with your picture, and taking the whole first five full pages of a national daily, including the front page, is necessary?”

“We are talking about employing 500 people here and reviving a moribund national newspaper.”

“Na today? Ever heard of ‘paper employment’”

“Which one be ‘paper employment’ again?”

“Sit down there. Another publicity stunt from the Ondo man, if you ask me. What are the results of previous similar exercises?”

“Which similar exercises?”

“The automatic absorption of First Class graduates by his company, the hype on acquisition of filling stations across the country, and other lousy job adverts in the past”

“Are you saying there was no absorption of First Class graduates by his company. In fact they were given cars.”

“Point to one beneficiary of the scheme and still using the car”

“Just sit down there. It wasn’t sustained”

“What about mass acquisition of stations? Are you telling me it did not happen?”

“It definitely happened, only that I have waited forever and I have not been seeing the stations dotting our highways as he boasted. Maybe the stations are in the Mars”

“What has this man done for you? Are you not proud of him as a product of your university?”

“Yes, I am a ‘Great Ife’ too, but I’m afraid I prefer to have a role model in the ‘recharge card’ man or even Obasanjo’s twins”

“ Na wa o. Wetin this man do for you now?”

“It’s unAfrican to be proud”

“Ever heard of the saying: if you have it, flaunt it”

“Let’s hear word jare. Have wetin? I’m yet to see his name in the list of Top 10 billionaires in Nigeria”

“But he has refuted all those rankings and once said all those rated billionaires know him”

“So he even has time to comment on soft selling magazines’ billionaire ratings. The real billionaire entrepreneurs, ‘the bull’ and co, never have time for such frivolities”

“Remember, all of us have different personalities”

“I agree. But have you ever heard ‘the guru’, the cement Mallam or even the Diesel Sheikh talk about the depth of their pockets? They leave trivialities like that to celebrity magazines to speculate. They don’t care. It’s just unAfrican”

“Hmmmnnn, but maybe he learnt that from Harvard”

“Kakakaka, is he the first Nigerian to have a Harvard degree? Every small issue, he reminds us that he is Harvard-trained”

“Ol’ boy, Harvard no be moin moin o. It’s worth bragging about o”

“Okay, where they taught him printing money as a way of bailing out the economy?”

“I don’t know. But I know the guy is brilliant sha”

“No denying his smartness. He only needs to talk less. The Obasanjo twins and the ‘recharge card’ man employ people on daily basis, open fresh companies or acquire old ones where they create more than 500 jobs at once without any hoopla. When you talk too much, you commit many gaffes. Lamidi is another victim of ‘runny mouth’, only that his own is not about bragging.”

“Yeah, your mention of Lamidi reminds me of the infamous Onigbese list. You remember your friend once mentioned, like a couple of years ago, that all of them billionaires were onigbeses. Lamidi’s list proves him right”

“And so therefore? Who doesn’t know most billionaires have debts they are settling. Isn’t it almost inevitable in business?”

“Anyway, the ‘recharge card’ man’s name was not on that list”

“Not unexpected. He is one businessman I have always respected.”

“But Mr James also paid his debt almost immediately”

“Chei, after the initial denial.”

“Na you sabi. All I know is that he paid . . . and also published his accounts in the papers”

“Too much money”

“Na you sabi, bad belle.”

Nice one Jarus.

Please keep the conversation flowing.

ilugunboy:

Nice one Jarus.

Please keep the conversation flowing.

My latest piece prompted by something I saw in The Nation newspaper yesterday. Already sent to papers and online sites for publication.

I know one of them would be Mike A and the other has to be the Vs

tundewoods:

Please i am kind of lost ? How is Obasanjo's twin and who's this recharge card guy

Actually written for the consumption of newspaper readers in Nigeria, most of whom are familiar with these people.
If you know Nigerian politics/economy enough, I don't think that should be difficult to discern. Very simple. So keep guessing who they are:
-Mr. James Abrahamovic
-Obasanjo twins
-the 'recharge card' man
-Lamidi
-the Cement Mallam
-the Diesel Sheikh

Jarus, have u tot of going into scriptwriting?

Dimka 76:

Jarus, have u tot of going into scriptwriting?

Writes a lot, but just for fun, as a hobby, not as a profession. Got over 50 articles to my credit in virtually all Naija dailies.
But can't take a career in writing. Not that financially rewarding.
Thanks

I have a pretty idea who the others are but am still not sure about the Obasanjo's twins. Jarus can you please a clue?

This jarus guy is a smart a$$ social commentator , that's why sokoto govt wanted to  victimise him. This story uses personification and innuendos smartly. Typical social satire from an Ife bred .

This jarus guy is a smart a$$ social commentator , that's why sokoto govt wanted to victimise him. This story uses personification and innuendos smartly. Typical social satire from an Ife bred .

Dat James Abrahamovic guy is JIMOH IBRAHIM.
I think He's d numba one debtor dat brags alot abt buying the whole gas station in naija area.

^^^
grrr u beat me to it

-the Cement Mallam - dangote
-the Diesel Sheikh - otedola b4 b4

This suraj guy has a problem with Jimoh because he didn't employ him and give him a car as he promised first class graduates.

I happen to know 3 first class guys absorbed by jimoh and YES they still have the cars. . .put that in your bad belle pipe and smoke it!

^^^^

suraj is rolling in the employ of genuine moguls - no need to beef some incompetent noisemaking showboat - see as recession don silence the Arrow

So why can't suraj just move on and stop crying over spilt milk?

They didn't employ you, fine, move on! No be by force. Haba

me and Suraj get beef plenty
but

line up him and Jimoh Ibrahim (with his mythical billions), i know who i go choose.
One day the truth about Jimoh Ibrahim shall be told in public.
Suraj is a genuine fellow, i doubt that can be said about Jimoh Ibrahim.
Forget all these billions and filling station drama.
Suraj just thank God say the guy no employ you, if God answered all our prayers, wahala for dey o!

.

What's wrong with being a millionaire billionaire

What's wrong with creating wealth, creating jobs, and creating posperity?

Know the process?

My economist friend likens it to making sausages; sausages?

Yes, good old sausages. Don't know what sausages is?

Understandably, not many sausages in Nigeria and not many billionaires either.

Uhm, sausages? Do you mean suya? Not quite, but you're on the right tract.

Think of making sausages as mixing suya meats with left over chickens from christmas, plus some left over ram from edel fitir. While you're mixing, compounding, and preserving the meats, don't forget to add the excess pork from the local butcher----we don't want to waste anything.

All the meat is preserved, and in form of sausage for the rainy day. The rain is here!

And I knew this article wouldn't be complete if Jarus didn't reference Lamidi in it!

Anyways, one of the Obasanjo twins, the cement mallam to be specific has now towed James Abrahamovic's path by bragging all over the media how he paid his debts of $1.27billion 5 years before schedule! It's all Lamidi's fault sha!

So, now the rain is here, and the sausage comes in handy, and useful. Thank goodness, we have some sausage in the house.
Thank goodness, what do you mean thank goodness? I don't mind enjoying some of those sausages, but next season you begin to make them, please don't call me. Just don't want to get involved in that dirty process.

Dirty process? Do you have a better technique? No
Do you have a better method of preserving these excess meat for the rainy day? No.
Do you have an alternative food item for the rainy day? No.
No, no, and no.
Just don't like the idea of one person having too much sausage and food at a time when it's raining so hard out there. Do you know how many people are without basic food this rainy season, and yet you have so much sausage stacked in your house?
Is that legal? This must against some islamic/socialist/communist principles.
Call the police, call the army, and the EFCC.

Wealth creation has been rightly likened to making sausages. It's necessary, could be dirty(need for tough regulation), and important for our advancement.
If you don't understand how wealth, jobs, and prosperity is created, it's easy to get caught up in religious, tribal, and political sentiments.

A wealthy man and his money are soon parted away.

When the poor are comfortably so, nobody cares about how rich the greedy are or how greedy the rich are.
Read someone say that probably less than 1% of Nigerians earn 200k(Naira) a month, which is like minimum wage in the real world. We're uncomfortably poor.

edoyad:

When the poor are comfortably so, nobody cares about how rich the greedy are or how greedy the rich are.
Read someone say that probably less than 1% of Nigerians earn 200k(Naira) a month, which is like minimum wage in the real world. We're uncomfortably [/b]poor.

"Uncomfortably"? I think the word might be "incredibly".
The average Nigerian is so blissful in wretchedness, that they never cross the border (even to Togo), talkless of believe that they are pauperised beyond credulity.

View the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_African_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita]list of African countries by GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Parity ([b]Zimbabwe is an eye popping 18 places above us, Ghana is 20)[/url]

Dam.n man ! Zim fcking babwe ! ! Are we even alive ? For real, we just exist but don't really live life.

edoyad:

This jarus guy is a plagiarist, that's why sokoto people wanted to behead him. I know the site this story was stolen from. Let him come and deny it. But then again what do you expect from an Ife bred ?

Excuse me