Senegalese Sadio Mane and Nigerian Victor Osimhen are two great African footballers currently on the world football stage. Both of them have been crowned African Footballer of the Year at different times. Sadio was twice kIng before Osimhen succeeded him and became the reigning African football monarch. Both have become rich because of playing football. Currently, both are trending on the social media over two different, personal, individual decisions each of them has taken concerning how, or on what, they should spend much of their football-derived riches. But these decisions reveal their two different personalities or nature as human beings.
In the past few months Sadio Mane has won the love of many reasonable men and women of the world with his unabashed declaration of disdain for spending his money on what he calls frivolities– trinkets, expensive phones and wrist watches, private jet and luxury cars and generally living a larger than life lifestyle.
Instead, Sadio says he has used much of his money to uplift the lives of some people in Senegal. He has built a stadium somewhere in the village which gave him birth, nurtured him and released him unto the whole wide world. Some very poor people, he also told the world, are uplifted by a monthly grant he faithfully sends to them back home. Even what is called a play station which is a great toy beloved by his age mates and colleagues, he has declared it a waste of precious time and money. He further disclosed that he spends some of his precious time and money on practicing and honing his football skills.
While telling the world how he has chosen to live his own life, he has revealed himself as a humble, prudent, frugal, humane and serious- minded man who believes in sowing and reaping an eternal benefit. Let us now leave Sadio at this juncture and reveal Osimhen’s own decision,
Recently, the social media has been celebrating Osimhen for purchasing for use a brand new private jet. I saw a picture of the young talented footballer sitting on a seat of the private jet with joy and rejoicing clearly written on his countenance. Instead of joining a chorus of congratulation of millions of his adoring fans, my heart sank in pity for him for a decision I consider a very wrong or ultimately, a ruining one.
I am not a high flyer yet. But from the little that I know about such things, a private jet for a guy who is not a big business executive running chains of blue chip companies, is a wasting asset. Once it is possessed, it will continue to lose its value. And it will continue to guzzle/devour your money even when it is not in use to give you the pleasure of your possession. When it is parked quietly in the airport hanger and you are resting in your home it is guzzling money in form of a daily parking fee.
Given the ultimately ruinous lifestyle Osimhen has chosen, it makes me want to ask: what role do African governments have, even if it is unofficial, in taking charge or coming in boldly into the lives of their young, talented citizens, especially sportsmen and women, and advising them on how to utilize their fortunes for the good of those particular citizens themselves and for the overall betterment of this blighted continent? When you raise this type of query there are some cynics and human rights champions who will ask you about how well the continent’s leaders are doing in their constitutionally mandated duty in the management of the public wealth of their countries that one is trying to commit them to the management of wealth created by the talents and skills of a few individuals?
Whatever may be the arguments for or against such a counsel for a rude and patently intrusive intervention, we must begin to make such calls nevertheless because the people we are talking about here are young, brash and often impulsive individuals who have a talent for making the money and not a similar measure of talent in the management of such mega sums. The story of many footballers and sportsmen and women who became so rich as soon as the hit their peak and who soon after became as flat as deflated balloons are too many for one not to bother. Who knows whether God who gave the talent to make the fortune desired that that their wealth should help to uplift all of us wretched souls of this seemingly woe-begotten continent? This is the kernel of my worry. As compatrios, Osimhen’s wealth should rub off on me such as my own should rub off on him in ways that both of us may not realize.
Is there not a department in our sports ministries that is in charge of bringing our athletes both rich and poor under a form of management and advice on how to invest unharmedly? If such a department exists and is headed by a prudent and frugal person, I am sure it would have advised Osimhen against a clearly ruinous purchase of a private jet at this stage of his life and advised him to instead put it into a gilt edged investment. If by tomorrow an Osimhen gets an injury and the sports ministry cannot help him recover, there will be media outcry that our continent’s governments are wicked and uncaring of their sports ambassadors.
Without seeming or appearing to sound uncharitable and mean, Osimhen’s decision, which he is perfectly entitle to, is a loud, rich statement that signifies nothing but a very poor mindset of most once poor men. Some of his admirers are saying he is celebrating his escape from his recent past as a poor water hawker on the streets of Lagos. Most ‘escaped’ poor men tend to do things that are guaranteed to take them back one day to the state they celebrate their escape from. It may not be a return to that very level but a fall that is no less humiliating and painful.
