Who’s seen the just published Forbes List?
There is new entrant to the Billionaires Boys Club. And he is Hausa. I am driving somewhere with this.
An elite Hausa friend of mine from the powerful Adamawa dynasty once told me that you can rarely see a northern Nigerian grass to grace story and I disagreed. And then the newest Nigerian on the Forbes List this year is Abdulsamad Rabiu. He is the Chairman of BUA, makers of sugar and cement. Let’s trace his wealth, Rabiu set up his own business in 1988 after working for his father and started importing rice, oil, iron rod and steel. The government leverage brokered by the northern Caliphates and emirates seems to be a constant. This story sounds like that of Dangote. After working for his father?
So, welcome to my point. Grass to grace stories are rare, except you understand positioning and the concept of grace. Where you currently stand and with who you are standing is one of the greatest prediction of where you are going to. And its not a northern Nigerian story, its the universe story.
What if Bill Gate’s house as a child wasn’t a walk able distance from Washington University, where the first mainframe computer was first accessible? He went to Lakeside high school where he met Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen, then Harvard. They were among the first 100 kids to have access to a computer in the world!!!
Stop looking for luck. It’s hidden in a place called connection.
Did you know that Alicia Keys was that little girl trying to play the piano in the 80’s TV show, the Bill Cosby Show? Years later, she’s won numerous Grammy awards.
At a CBN retreat we facilitated, one of the assistant directors happens to have attended our Masterclass, she happens to have grown up in Enugu. We happen to have mutual connections with Chimamanda Adichie who happens to be the daughter of her lecturer in Nsukka in the same house where Chinua Achebe lived. Wait a second, Adichie lived in the same house as Chinua Achebe???
Chinua Achebe by the way was friends with Prof ChinwEizu, a deep mind, a writer and facilitator, the person my father named me after.
Can you connect the dots.
My point is, it does matter your circle and connections.
The tallest tree in such a big jungle didn’t grow to become the tallest tree because it was just meant to be the tallest tree.
Deciphering luck.
The tallest tree grew that way because there was no other tree drastically blocking its sunlight, no one came across its path to cut it down and that the surrounding soil was more fertile and it understood how to leverage it for extraordinary growth. It’s lucky. It’s logical. Success in life, including luck can be very logical.
It all starts up from where you grow up, who you know and then what you know. These are the 3 things that changes a man destiny. You can influence 2 of the 3..
Tell your circle to tell their circle about our circle. #HBC
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