SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRES INDEED!
In the lexicon of “oxymoronity,” no expression is more oxymoronic than self-made riches except a self-conceived human. In Nigeria, oil belonging to the commonwealth is allocated to some individuals who become stupendously rich by collecting royalties on wealth belonging to the commonwealth of Nigeria. These individuals never bid on any oil field, have never been to any oil field but own oil fields hundreds of kilometers away from their ancestral homes or their current abode. To the Western media, these Nigerians are “self-made billionaires.”
Anybody who makes money using resources that were not created by him/her such as the Internet, roads, people, computers, phones, other people’s inventions, contracts, natural resources, or any form of patronage or preferential considerations is not a self-made rich person. It is impossible to become rich by using only your endowments and labor. The nearest things to self-made millionaires/billionaires are preachers but they do not do it alone. They understudy other preachers before going solo. They use Holy Books written by other people as well as having acolytes, sycophants, and brainwashed foot soldiers who prepare their audiences for their mesmerizing sermons.
The term self-made rich person was invented by Wall Street to justify wasteful and obscene spending by rich people such as Alhaji Indimi who cannot justify their avarice and misanthropism in the face of a world filled with poverty and painful human suffering. Since they are spending their “self-made” money, the public has no right to question their wasteful behavior because they used no “public resources” in creating their wealth. I guess they self-made the crude oil and the equipment used in exploiting the oil! Even if that was true, the money that they are spending was printed with public funds. Any self-respecting “self-made” person should not condescend to spending “public-made” money. Real self-made billionaires print their own money or instruments of settlement.
The real self-made millionaires and billionaires are a one man or one woman operations without any employees who made their riches without flying in planes built by someone else; use electricity, phone or Internet invented by other people; are not loaned money deposited in the bank by other people; and walk by “footroens” (aka Citroens) along foot paths that they created in the bushes/forests to their various businesses. When you show me an individual with real self-made riches, I would show you an individual who self-delivered him/herself.