 |
| JESSE ADENIJI (Jazzey Bay) |
Most Nigerians under 40 are quite familiar with the character referred to as Hush Puppi, real names being touted as Ramoni Igbalode or something. I am not going to waste my time going over the obvious. The ostentatious lifestyle, the unexplained wealth, the obscene and needlessly lavishness with which is greed played out like a Netflix series on Instagram, Tik-Tok, Twitter and all other social media sites was difficult enough for the self respecting to stomach.
Worse still, is the adulation the so called ‘young generation’ Nigerians and even the old ‘adagbamadanu’ generation bestowed on a man that could barely string well constructed sentences together. Formal education is not a prerequisite for getting to the top of the social pile, but a bit of finesse would be the evidence of self consciousnesses of the journey, allowing for some kind of mental and personal development. This was missing from the Hush Puppi private and public repertoire.
All that mattered to him was glitter. Image of overcompensation for a life formally lived in utter poverty, was the reckless display of overwhelming jewellery, vulgar exhibition of culinary delights, acquisition of wonders on wheels on a whim and other forms of debauchery and pornographic penchant for the ridiculous and spectacular made him more of a show pony than a respectable and trusted human he actually wanted to be.
And this is the paradox about Nigeria and Nigerians. We value respectability so much we’d kill, maim, blackmail, beg, bribe, trick, command or gun our way to it. That avenue of nurturing good traditional values, building a collective conscience and framework where no one needs to become a criminal to attain it is always the road less travelled.
Hush Puppi, to my mind, is only a reflection of the absurdity and mindlessness we have made into the dominant social and personal values within the contemporary Nigerian society.
All of these off my mind, i am happy he’s been caught and justice will now be served. I hope he gets a long time in the prison to have a long hard think about his crimes and puerile idiocy.
This conclusion has been reached by many social commentators, except the Hush Puppi worshippers on Instagram. So i don’t need to belabour the subject.
Perhaps the bit that have failed to see, which in itself is a matter for another day, is the fact that the statistics of the crime as painted by the Dubai police is a sham. Don’t be surprised that a lot of unsolved cases and the ones they want to disappear may have been lumped into the Hush Puppi file.
For a brainless mannequin like Ramoni Igbalode is the delight of dodgy statistics and a system invested in demonising Black folk. And he certainly played into their hands. Online fraud is a major dark operation globally. And African players represent less than 5% of the game. The White players are a lot more suave and have the mindset of professionals. They know where the Interpol have massive powers and have big legal firms behind their actions. They also know how to funnel and clean their dirty cash. So in effect, our criminal here is a dunce in the final analysis.
My intention for penning this piece, then, is to point out a salient issue to you about the VALUES we have accepted as a people and made the dominant traits people must have to survive the jungle. And i want to let you understand that this is the reason why we are backwards and seemingly hopeless in building self sustaining and highly efficiently fair and competitive societies.
It is about MINDSET.
What is a mindset? There are many angles from which it could be defined. Here are a few.
“A mindset is a mental attitude. It shapes our actions and our thoughts” (Meier & Kropp, 2010, p. 179)
“...the sum total of the activated cognitive procedures” (Gollwitzer, 2011, p. 528).
Gary Klein, a senior scientist at MacroCognition gave a definition i find extra useful for this article. He defined it thus: “A mindset is a belief that orients the way we handle situations—the way we sort out what is going on and what we should do. Our mindsets help us spot opportunities, but they can also trap us in self-defeating cycles.”
I particularly like the Gary Klein definition because of its dual qualities.
Once can explain it this way, we can seek to understand its application at the individual and group levels.
Individually, we cannot initiate the process of change and becoming, without having the mental and spiritual navigational tools to engage with our environment, other people and obstacles, even success. If our mindset is not established and weaned properly, we would fail to build a recognisable identity, ethos and way of doing things.
The same goes for the collective. When nations are built, there is always a mindset that brings the people together into the same frame of reference for organising their societies. Subscribing to these ideologies, attitudes, assumptions, methods, rituals comes from a deep seated belief in a way the individual and the larger society must engage with each other, the outside world and the natural environment.
Now, these belief system can be coated in religion, nationalism, rituals, fashion, art of war, negotiation or even culinary practices of a people, interwoven and having dominant parts, but they are all connected by that single thread of belief.
So, in effect, the mindset of a people is part of their belief system, an integral part which can be seen, sensed and heard in the way the society is ORGANISED and MANAGED.
You don’t need to hear or see the notion of the resilience of the Germans. You would have heard about ‘the German machine’. That translates into work ethos, education and production. The moment you set your eyes on a BMW, Mercedes, Audi or VW, you could touch the products and ‘feel’ the ethos of the people behind that product.
You can watch the Japanese football team play and not see flair. But you will not mistake the relentless work ethic, attention to detail and that ‘die trying’ efficiency you can see in their cars.
I believe you get my drift. You may do the research on other countries and cultures and you will begin to see things in a different light.
HUSH PUPPI, RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP.
Having built the premise of the mindset idea, it’s going to be less of a hassle (i hope, against hope) to get to the point i want to make about Hush Puppi.
To my mind, there’s not a world of difference between the MINDSET operating in Hush Puppi, the biggest names in the religious circles, the highest circles of the movers and shakers in the political and economic arena of Nigeria.
Hang on. I will explain.
INFERIORITY COMPLEX - Hush Puppi somehow developed the IT skills to steal money from individuals and corporations, the same skill-sets he could have used to start a business, getting a good job. He could have decided to build the companies he was stealing from. But his mind was set on taking the stealing route. Crime, he figured, got him to where he needed to be faster than hard work.
What was the result? HE GOT ALL THE MONEY HE COULD AND THEN RAN OUT OF IDEAS AS TO WHAT TO DO NEXT! You see, easy money is good but it’s a killer of the idea and becoming (the concept of progression) needed to progress. Life isn’t an end in itself. It’s an endless stream of discoveries and recoveries. The experience we garner at each stage of the journey helps to stimulate the pathways to new experiences and realities.
Does the Hush Puppi reality in the light of the above explanation resonate with you in terms of the leadership at the religious, economic and political life of Nigeria? Awolowo is still the best example of great leadership to reckon with in Nigeria. His ethos as suggested in his book? He dedicated himself to learning by doing.
LEARNING BY DOING. That’s it.
Once a person gets into the position of authority in Nigeria, they stop doing. ‘Doing’ here means competing with peers by becoming better at life - making sure the learning and ACTION loops are deployed in a way that doesn’t make one left behind by contemporaries in every field of human endeavour.
Awolowo was studying, implementing the ideas studied, writing his own speeches and mingling with intellectuals to aggregate the new ideas and bringing it to the table to be considered. He was doing and becoming and you could feel the effect on the polity. He didn’t just sat behind, appear to share the allocations and retreat into the dark recesses of hotels to expend his energy on the Queens of the night like the current crop of political leaders do.
Being committed to the course of an action and the people and the system has magic in itself. I could have mentioned names but this will rile a lot of the followers of these people. But ask yourself why the richest man in Nigeria and his company HATE and UNDERMINE competition? Especially when it can actually serve to improve his own creativity in the marketplace?
Ask yourself why religious leaders sit atop piles of cash but lack the idea to contribute to the socio-economic life of their adherents like the Churches in England did? Nobody sings the song of tithes in the English traditional churches because they have made investments with the ones received in the past and built enormous wealth out of it.
Are we saying that the Nigerian mega churches, some of the richest in the world cannot make the same types of investments?
Hush Puppi upped the sticks and made his home abroad. He loved to enjoy foreign things. Is this not the same attitudes of the Nigerian elite? The president would rather go to London to treat a hear ache. Dangote wanted to move his money and wealth to New York. In fact, 80% of the riches of the African elite resides abroad keeping the foreigners in good jobs and prosperity. It would shock you to realise how much money religious leaders stash in foreign vaults. These are the people who wants you to be like Jesus. They are far off the mark.
These people make all their name and wealth in Nigeria, but too ashamed of the place in which they sot atop the food chain. This is inferiority complex of the mind.
2. WORSHIP OF MONEY - Money will fail you in certain societies. Never in Nigeria. This evil mentality and mindset has made a mockery of the social classes in Nigeria. As you may know, the 419 Kingpins have become emboldened by the Nigerian warped mindset that money is an end in itself. Unlike societies where money is just the beginning point for acceptance into the higher echelons of the realm, in Nigeria, all you need is money and the inner chambers of power open up to you.
Oluomo is a prime example. Defend him to the heavens if you may. But i know that members of the Yakuza helped Japan to defeat the American occupation after their surrender after the 2nd World War and you’d never hear of them taking the center-stage of the power structure.
UK is the second on the list of narcotics ingesting countries in the world. This means there are many drug billionaires in cahoots with the system. Powerful ones. But never will you see them being feted on the pages of newspapers and in full public glare.
Today, in our National Assembly, we have people who have been connected with crime and the underworld. They were actually sponsored by the top political leaders. Apart from them being NATIONAL SECURITY RISKS (Not hard to imagine that America or any other country in which these criminals have their case files might influence their actions at the National assembly by coercion or threat), this action suggest that the class structure in Nigeria is made accessible by means of accumulation of filthy lucre.
That Oluomo is now a political power broker is a thing that shows Nigeria and Yoruba people as weak and lacking the right fortitude to run a country.
Hush Puppy was mingling with all sorts of people from across all the class base in Nigeria. Word on the grapevine suggested he was preparing to enter into the political scene.
Across the sections of society mentioned (religious, political and economic) you’d see this observation of mindless subservience to money. Ostentatious display of wealth is elevated to a ritual status. There are no red lines between these classes. You’d be amazed at how many Imams/Pastors/Dibias/Babalawos actually criss-cross the maze of fraternal associations on the basis of attachment to money.
3. HEADLESS CHICKEN, IDEA-LESS SYNDROME. - A person and people with the right mindset would be known by the evolutionary progression of their development. For example, lets mirror the evolutionary progression of the former Arsenal footballer, Mathieu Flamini against that of Hush Puppi.
Mathieu earned a decent income from his footballing trade to make him really comfortable. But he wanted more. He looked around and in 2008 He co-founded his company with business partner Pasquale Granata. GF Biomechanicals are the only company to produce levulinic acid directly from biomass - including things such as grass or woodchips.
Financial experts have mentioned that his tech business has been way more successful than his footballing career in terms of income. Mathieu has legitimacy, respect and a platform to become someone in the global community and amongst his peers.
(Of course there are other footballers who progressed into management or even real estate - Dublin Dion went into real estate and also broadcast - so the comparison to Mathieu is not meant to follow any statistical accuracy. It’s much of an example thing)
Hush Puppi became really good at online fraud. That in itself reveals a man that has not only mastered the skills required in understanding IT management systems, but he also was able to beat the cyber security and state security experts for a long stretch of time from Nigeria to Malaysia, then Dubai and the US. The organisational skills he demonstrated in hiring and maintaining his little army of hackers and money launderers is not to be sniffed at, purely from a research perspective.
But why wasn’t he able to stay under the radar, transform himself and show creativity? His mindset. It was still in the antediluvian epoch. There are many underworld kingpins in Europe, America and Asia who have cleaned up their acts by investing in well run, competitive and excellent ‘front room’ legit operations.
Ok, look at it this way, If Hush Puppi was a white slave trader and plantation owner who made stupendous wealth out of the Americas, my conclusion is that he would not have invested that money in the architecture, global multinationals and the systems we see today in Europe and the Western world! Yes it was blood money. But did they use it to clean up their acts setting up universities, trade charters, industries and tech?
When i read a book about the purported best criminal mind in history, mobster Lucky Luciano, he was famously said to have been asked what his regret was on his death bed. His answer? That he in spite of having the nous and the talent to build Mafia activities into a stunning blue-chip operation which could rival the best of American corporations at the time, he would have preferred to do it legit. That was because, according to him, that he lack of formal education didn’t stand in the way of becoming better than the Ivy league players in Wall street whom he had beaten at their own game.
Luciano had built liquor running businesses, protection rings, funded law firms and built hundreds of thousands of distribution channels that Coca-Cola would be proud of. The Pizza stores were strewn all across America as front room legit operations. But back room, drugs was exchanging hands as well as money being cleaned up. The US could not pin him down to any crime except ‘prostitution’. His help was sought by the US Navy to stop the German moles from putting devices into the ships at the American shipyards which helped the German U-boats spot and torpedoed them.
Hush Puppi was said to have made around $500 million from his crime operation. If he;s got the right mindset, instead of being surrounded by the Hallelujah boys, he could have built up a team of astute investors and innovative minds OUTSIDE and little connected to, as much as possible to himself. These would have helped him invest in many areas of endeavour. THIS WOULD HAVE DEMONSTRATED TO HIMSELF FIRST, AND TO US THAT CIRCUMSTANCES MAY HAVE FORCED HIM INTO THE CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD, BUT THAT HE HAS ENOUGH INTELLIGENCE TO BECOME EXCELLENT IN A LEGIT WAY.
And like Hush Puppi, the same demonstrable trait of the lack of BIG IDEA/S from the Nigerian ruling elite is evident.
We have heard of politicians who stole so much money they dug huge pits in their back yards and stuffed it with cash! We have heard about pastors stashing tithe cash in tax havens using shell companies! We know that the Nigerian banks don’t lend cash to the brightest and glorious ideas that will revolutionise the industrial and social landscape. They’d rather stake our cash on the loot of public officers and connected but corrupt businessmen.
The majority of the areas they invest money is in quick fixes - real estate, hotels, licenses for statutory enforcement, oil and gas related deals, in general, what you’d consider casino banking.
You wonder why any of these portfolio billionaires in Nigeria have not bothered to create the African eBay, Facebook, Google?
You wonder why the criminals now occupying seats in the National Assembly aren’t even moving motions to create industries through which they can ‘wash’ their criminal stash?
It’s the mindset that is not productive. It’s the mindset of money being an end in itself. It’s shown by a life that’s not ambitious in spite of hoarding the resources needed to galvanise a change.
We often forget that the glorious Las Vegas that many people love to go holiday in today was once a piece of godforsaken land with inhospitable weather that a mobster had as a BIG IDEA of turning into the entertainment capital of the world. The name of this mobster was Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Look him up.
What do we see in Nigeria? Pastors with mansions abroad. Fraudsters showing off cars every other week on social media. Bank Managers fraternising with thieves. Imams harbouring and defending religious nuts and killers. It’s that base of the Abraham Maslow’s pyramid cravings. Material fixes.
It’s about politicians living ostentatiously even when the pockets of the country can no longer afford it. It’s a culture of dependency on the state at all costs. Political, religious and industry offices becoming personal survival hotseats instead of a place of advancing the society. ALL BECAUSE WE HAVE A PEOPLE WHOSE MINDSET IS THAT POSITION AND MONEY ARE AN END IN ITSELF.
In terms of emergencies or difficulties, you know the quality of the mindset of many a leader. When the stock market collapsed in America in the 30s, President Franklin Roosevelt and his team came up with a BIG IDEA called the New Deal. The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations to help restart the economy and American prosperity.
It worked so well by the end of the 2nd World War, America emerged the global power.
What do we see with the Nigerian politicians? Total lack of idea. They kick it into the long grass. They come up with asinine ideas like ‘By the year 2010’, ‘By the year 2020’. Meaning they won’t solve zilch on their watch.
Look at the current government in Nigeria. What is their BIG IDEA for leading the country out of the quagmire it has found itself? We are talking about the most expensive to run government in ratio to income in the whole world!
So you tell me, what is the difference between the government’s clueless nature and that of Hush Puppi? Show me the role that the Nigerian industries and banks, daily dipping their hands in the pockets of individual accounts in the name of card maintenance and COTs, play in the big ideas that will help the Nigerian entrepreneur?
What we see from the actions and the mindsets of the Nigerian elite is the same from the top to the bottom of the food chain.
Get money by any means necessary.
Use that power to depress the operating environment and society.
Display ostentatious wealth in an obscene manner.
Indulge in total debauchery.
Build oases of luxury in the midst of grinding poverty.
Take the resources away from the country and the people and stash it in other countries where it works for their systems and citizens.
Piss down on the hapless, hardworking people with silly motivational quips.
It’s the same thread running through all the class of money miss roads.
Concluding, we know that the days of any career criminal is always numbered. So fools know that the fool called Hush Puppi would be nabbed eventually. Just like hundreds, if not thousands of his mates have been nabbed after they studied the their connections.
The lesson i want everyone to take away from the story is simple. YOU CAN STEAL ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, WITHOUT A MINDSET THAT IS PROGRESSIVE, ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD WOULD NOT BE ENOUGH.
The Nigerian mindset is designed to grab and oppress. It is not designed to build and progress.
We have to be conscious of this to change it. And that would start with us RECOGNISING people with the BIG IDEAS and supporting them instead of the mindless demagogues.
The dominant mindset in Nigeria at the moment is that of a HUSTLER. We have hustlers in our political, religious, business and social spaces.
THE HUSTLER MINDSET DOES NOT, AND CANNOT BUILD ENDURING SYSTEMS.
No comments:
Post a Comment