Social media is abuzz with unfounded rumours that Toke
Makinwa and Mercy Aigbe built their empire with the help of male sponsors. But
Omojuwa has an interesting take on the rumours.
The rumours claim Mercy Aigbe's house was bought for her by
a prominent man and Toke's lifestyle is also funded by someone. But Omojuwa
gave a very insightful opinion on the rumours as he came to the defence of both
women.
He wrote:
A society can never advance beyond the collective mentality
of its people. Poor societies are poor because their systems are set up to make
people poor but essentially because there is a mentality that drives poverty,
cultures it and amplifies it. The same mentality that kills or gets on the way
of enterprise.
I know these two enterprising ladies. Without knowing them
personally, you see them creating businesses and products and getting stuff
done. They create products, write, create platforms, movies, sign endorsement
deals...their path to wealth is apparent to any rational person.
But ours is a society that suspects progress and wealth.
When a young person is rich, even with an apparent value creation system, we
ascribe their success to everything other than the fact that they create value
and earn income.
These days, we have blogs and sites focused on damaging
people’s reputation than pushing progress. You create a product and they look
away; someone starts a dirty unfounded rumour and they jump on it. They
amplify. They drop denigrating comments. Some people subconsciously think that
the reason their own lives are failing is because others are progressing. We
need to do better.
When a lady succeeds or starts to shine, we ascribe their
success to the rich and powerful. Even some women with powerful platforms
either push or amplify this madness. We are disempowering young girls. We are
telling them being enterprising is a lie. That working smart and hard is
useless because to succeed you have to be dating a governor. They believe this
because of the lies we form and amplify about the successes of those they look
up to.
We go to church on Sundays, to the Mosque on Fridays, to the
Shrine and we pray to succeed. To thrive, we work hard too. But when we see
others succeed, we insist they had sex with someone, they are gay, and they are
anything but the culmination of their sweat and intellect. Our leaders are
mostly bad. Our collective mentality is actually worse. These are human beings.
Young girls making a living. For each time you push this
myth that these folks succeed because of some immoral acts with men, remember
your daughter, your sister...let’s do better!
