By Innocent Ngare via FB
“Life fucks you anonymously. It doesn’t want to know your name, doesn’t give a shit about your station. The terrain never stops shifting. One minute you think you’ve got the world by the balls, the next minute you don’t know where the fuck the world’s balls are.” This is a quote by Karen Marie Moning, a New York Times bestselling author.
The story of Maurice Odumbe reminds me of Chief Goddy Anabor, a Nigerian who was once a billionaire and who now drives a taxi for a living in Lagos -the same city where he once lived like a king.
At the peak of his life, Chief Anabor was to Lagos what Donald Trump was to New York before he became president. He was a property tycoon who made his money building, renovating, and selling luxurious hotels. At one point, he hosted a party at the Sheraton Hotel in Lagos at the cost of 25 million shillings.
However, it would take a couple of bad investment decisions and a slump in the property markets a few years later and he lost everything he had. In an interview with a local Lagos newspaper late last year, Chief Anabor narrates how the people who used to borrow money from him when he was a big man no longer pick his calls. His wife left him as soon as the properties he had in prime locations in Lagos and the fleet of over 50 cars he owned were auctioned by banks to offset the numerous loans he had.
Today, Chief Anabor is a former reflection of himself who spends his evenings drinking beer in a small bar in the slums of Lagos. When I watched Maurice Odumbe’s interview, especially when he talked of how he used to live in a five-bedroomed home in Loresho, drive BMWs, and go to Jamaica for holidays, I knew that this was a man who life had fucked. But I also realized how incredibly dynamic life is. Today you’re at your peak, tomorrow you hit rock bottom.
Life is a bitch. And being at the top should never make you feel immune to its gymnastics.
