Steve Jobs and the Nigerian Job

Written by Lasisi Olagunju
Published on Tribune--Monday Lines
Monday, 10 October 2011

I am starting out without seeking to ring a bell announcing this entry because this is actually a second coming. The first coming was deliberately interrupted eight years ago with a promise to come back and bellow: "...as I was saying."
So, this is not just a knock on the door, it is the resumption of a journey through a time trodden landscape...

In a 1985 Playboy interview, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple said people should stop deceiving the world with numbers. "The products speak for themselves," he said with robust self-conviction. And true to his words, Steve spoke for himself as a global brand etched in diamond when he passed on last week. A comedian friend said even those whose only contact with Apple was probably Apple hair cream (or the fruit called apple) came out to pose one- on- one on Facebook with him at his death. That is the hallmark of greatness.

Steve Jobs started out clearly, forcefully. “I want to put a ding in the universe,” he said on one occasion while in another he challenged man to “be a yardstick of quality" noting that "Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” He had money and fame yet dismissed all as inconsequential. “I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”Hmmmm. He died at 56!

Now, Nigerians celebrated him at death as if he was the CEO next door. He was, actually (or could be.) Through the sheer power of his ingenuity, peoples' voices resonated across continents. It probably ends there. You think deep and wonder if Steve would not have been one of the brilliant handset repairers under your overhead bridge if nature had made him a Nigerian. You look at the simplicity of his appearance and wonder how he could be worth so many billions and yet put on such air of ordinariness. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” – Steve told the Wall Street Journal in Summer 1993. He was not the Nigerian big man whose life stands inverted to his words.

The Nigerian in you secretly wished you were this man whose surname, Jobs, is a rare necessity here. If you were Steve, you would have used your brain to design better money spinners that would not require producing any apple. You as Steve Jobs would have made all the money there is to make in private business then bulldoze your way into public sphere. And if you were the type with a phobia for public office, you would have opted to play the Godfather putting your money where your purse is. You would use the enormous power of your brain and the depth of your pocket to install your man at all costs. Then start real business.

In your own business, you would prove to the American Steve Jobs that he was wrong to have said he was not interested in numbers. You would be interested in numbers because therein lies the Nigerian power. You would do business without racking your brain like the American and you would make more money. You would help the state collect tax like Zaccheus in the Bible and also help the people keep it. You would not need to buy power like Jobs to produce money here. You would make so much money and with your uncommon brain, you would then diversify to other juicy ventures. You would look at your city traffic, for instance, and see cool money there. You would instruct the boy in government to set up a task force to collect fines from offenders. You would then open a bank account to assist government to keep the money for a fee. You would look at vehicles causing untold hardship with their innumerable presence. How were they registered in the first instance? You would wonder who had been doing the registration so poorly that you could barely read the documents? You would realise you could do better to assist the people by taking the process to the digital realm. You would prove that it is not only the American Jobs that could do digital business. A company here would do that for the government for a fee.

There are other areas you would be of assistance to the state, like taking money from government to build and equip state of the art wards in Government Hospitals and then post your staff there to collect fees into your account. Who would contest that there is no greater patriotism than that especially in this age of capital flight when even malaria is taken to Steve Jobs's America for treatment.

If you were Steve Jobs and you knew you had cancer and would soon die, I know you would not surrender so cheaply to that ailment like a flu-afflicted fowl. You would give it a fight. You had the money and the fame. Steve Jobs did too but you would make a difference in your approach to the fight. You know the disease must be curable and should be cured whatever it would cost.

Let busy bodies continue to claim the world rose to celebrate the exit of the man because he was simple and given to excellence. You would refuse to buy that argument because it is true too that the Nigerian world would not rise to wave bye bye to any brilliant pauper in a wooden casket. That is why you would make real money without selling apples that would extract sweat from your brows.