Living in Alhaji’s Shadow: A Lesson in Letting Go

Yesterday again, you read in the news that Alhaji’s company won another award for the new haircare product which has taken the market by storm.

You let out another curse beneath your breath which quickly evaporated in the air like steam out of a kettle of boiling water, voiding like the previous curses you have placed on Alhaji.

And the Internet, as though in a conspiracy with Alhaji to torment you, ceaselessly shows you ads about alhaji’s products everywhere you turn to. There is no conspiracy anywhere to torment you, Oga; the fact-checking you have done is the culprit.

As you have sneaked in on Alhaji’s website and social media pages repeatedly while stalking him, Google and social media bots have interpreted your activities as an interest in Alhaji’s products; and have continuously shown you the products “you are interested in”, just as they have been programmed to do.

Alhaji himself is unaware of his new status as MTN which you see everywhere you go; he has forgotten that you exist. The last time he texted you in a short dismissive sentence – “I am out of town” – he meant it.

He was so busy that the moment he hit the “send” button, he forgot about you completely. He is still busy fiercely chasing his dreams, burning the midnight oil for the success of his business.

He is too busy to remember that he missed several calls and meet-up schedules with you, including the last one where he stood you up for two hours and never showed up, only to text you that he was out of town after you had called his phone repeatedly.

As you headed home that day, you convinced yourself that Alhaji was intentionally avoiding you in order not to give you the financial assistance you requested.

He’s such an ingrate, you concluded. When his then girlfriend, now the mother of his doctor and lawyer sons, got pregnant and threatened to abort the pregnancy because he was a broke 17-year-old boyfriend 23 years ago, it took a lot of bankrolling from your own parents to sustain the girl and convince her to keep the pregnancy.

That day, you decided never to ask a favour of Alhaji again, and to stay totally out of touch with him. But you haven’t kept the promised you made to yourself.

When you left, you didn’t go in pursuit of your own life; rather, you went and lurched, waiting for Alhaji to stumble and fall and come home crying like a child.

That would give you a sense of win. And awash with satisfaction, you would declare, “He is reaping what he sowed; good things don’t last in the hands of a bad person”.

You have been waiting for his commercial empire to crumble; for him to come to ruins. He did evil to you, so he deserves evil too?

Oga, shake off your delusion.  It’s been half a decade since you have been waiting, but you haven’t heard a report of a mosquito bite on Alhaji or his business; rather, you have lurched in oblivion and watched him climb the ladder of success, each rung above the previous one.

Stop playing the hunter at the riverbank waiting for the crab to recline; you might wait forever. Life is not a Nollywood movie script where uncles have accidents and become paralyzed for not paying the university tuition of their late brothers’ children.

Each of Alhaji’s win you have watched has sunk you deeper in the quagmire of distress. Get up and chase your dreams too.

Life 101: People hurt us and go ahead to buy exotic cars, travel around the world, enjoy wealth with health and live the good life, perhaps because hurting the next person inadvertently or intentionally does not make anyone inherently bad, and sometimes undermining the principle of bad things happening to bad people, because, how is someone bad if they hurt 10 people and make 10 others happy?

Alhaji, for example, is not a bad person to the employees whose salaries he pays every month, to the “almajiris” whom he gives sakat every Friday at the entrance of Central Mosque, to his sons whom he saw through law school and medical school, to the millions of women using his hair products for luster and length across the country.

Next time someone hurts you, fight them, get angry with them, ignore them, but don’t stay down waiting for them to fall. Rise up and work on yourself. The thrills of your own win outweighs your pleasure in someone else’s fall.

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