Only last week, Charlyboy’s inspirational story hit the social media, as his stupendous wealth got revealed exclusively through major news blogs. The story that went viral saw different bloggers picking it up for traffic drive. Readers of those sites have expressed variant opinions on the startling revelation. While some believed that Charlyboy’s wealth and fame are the rewards of his hard work, others in a contrary opinion see such wealth as a creation of the devil, the “blood money”
In a follow up on the story, our correspondent caught up with the Areafada during one of his morning walks. The Areafada who appeared comfortable with what anybody may want to think of him referred to the people who have such negative notion about him as ‘rubbish people’.
Charlyboy had asserted that individual’s notion of others depends on what they believe in, and as such, the belief that his wealth must be questioned is dependent on the trend in the society where majority of Nigerians now believe in the application of shutouts in attaining success. According to him, tenacity, doggedness, and consistency have all been thrown to the wind in this generation; hence, anybody who tries to break out of the jinx of poverty through personal effort is often considered an “Ogboni” person, or what has been termed illuminati. He said, “Like I will always say, what you see depends on where you stand. If you are a fetish and juju kind of person, everything that you do will be from that mindset. Due to the disgraceful poverty in our midst, either people put their fate in quick fixes or something miraculous because they need an escape from their present predicament and in a way, the existing trend in religion has increased the fear of the people. If you are not doing well in life, someone or some gods in the village are responsible for your own ineptitude. Your enemy somewhere is always holding down your opportunity of securing a job, If you do not get married as expected, you have been ‘jazzed’ and if your marriage is breaking up, it’s that neighbor of yours.
Speaking on how Nigerians now see religion as being solely responsible for their success or failure, Charlyboy said, “Religion is now seen as the opium of the masses or the poor. Because the government has failed them, they need to hang on to something at all time, and that thing is religion. As far as the people are concerned, some of them going through turbulent times are not responsible for their own wahala but something else, hence they must shift blames.
Reacting further on why some people tend to believe that his success was from some questionable sources, Charlyboy said it was because of the general societal notion. “If you are doing well, it will never be because you are working hard. It will never be because you have planned your life well. This is because you have people with great plans, yet results are not forthcoming, so I’m not surprised that they are thinking about me in this light.
Referencing political office holders, the Areafada said, “The distrust between the people and the government is another problem, as the people no longer believe that anybody in government can become successful without some level of corruption. It is something that has gotten into their heads, hence, in this era, they will continue to question people’s wealth even when the money was actually made through the person’s struggle and sweat. This is because most of our leaders have stolen public money, and have been left unquestioned. Because they are not in jail, respectable people are most of the time not associated with wealth, and wealth creation. What it means in this case is that negativity has taken over the land. Corruption has become the norm. Everything ‘bad’ is now the way. I don’t think we should blame them because nothing appears to be normal any more. To most of our people, something must be responsible for not doing well and most of the time, the devil is accused in that regards. This is what I call poverty mentality, frustration mentality and badbelle mentality”
Speaking on how the good life started and how tough it was in the beginning, Charlyboy said it was never easy when he began the journey. According to him, he was face to face with poverty even when he had no business with poverty. Divulging that he started from nothing like everyone else because of his personal vision and conviction, he said “I have been around for 37 years, God knows it wasn’t like this when I started. Ask my cousins and friends who know what I went through in the beginning. I suffered when I had no business with poverty. I was poor out of choice because I wanted to create my own thing. I didn’t want to live under anybody’s shadow”
Appreciating God on all he has done for him over the years; and appreciating God for consistency, tremendous focus and doggedness, he said “I thank God every day for making me a very determined person, for giving me beautiful children and grandchildren. I thank God for my health and my parents who at their age are not being carried from one hospital to the other. I thank God for the creativity. I have been able to use this richly endowed gift of creativity to confuse ignorant Nigerians who can never have enough of my antics. I thank God. I thank God for the discipline even when my mates are doing drugs, following women, drinking Alchohol and not planning their lives, I was busy pretending madness which made me smile to the bank while people chose to see whatever they wanted to see about me. I thank God that my life has become an inspiration to many young people whop are different and no longer bothered about what people think or feel about them. I’m humbled with how God is using me. Anything them like make them talk. If e vex them, make them go find juju wey go work for them. Russish people”
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