In the early days of Globacom, its chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jnr, hosted a team of editors from the Nigerian Tribune. One of them asked him why he was still working hard, making money, and working even harder despite the billions he already had. His answer was that “working hard has become a habit.”
As I heard that, I remembered that American clergyman and popular columnist, Frank Crane (1861-1928), once said that “habits are safer than rules; you don’t have to watch them. And you don’t have to keep them either. They keep you.”
A century and three years ago, Maude B. Muse told a class of student nurses in New York City that human character manifests itself by a system of habits. He identified those typologies as habits of mind and habits of behaviour. The sum total of these habits, he said, is what makes a ‘personality’.
So, what is ‘habit’ or what is the habitual? Early 20th century American psychologist, John Watson, found the concept useful in analysing human conduct. He explained ‘habit’ as simply a “system of (acquired) reflexes or responses…” A reflex is what happens automatically. Now, imagine the man to whom work and philanthropy are reflex actions. There is no man without a minus, a weakness. The one whose strengths and pluses trump the minuses is the good person.
The man will be 72 tomorrow surrounded by abundance of good and grace. Those who know him say the habit of diligent attention to details clings forever to the hard worker. They say he works online and offline almost 24 hours a day. They wonder when the Spirit of Africa sleeps – or if he sleeps at all.
‘The Habit of Success’ was the topic of a talk given at the Technical School, Cincinnati, United States in 1899 by E. R. Booth, author and historian. The speaker, in very few words, addressed the connection between habit and success. He said “success grows from what it feeds upon.” He explained that “few things render more satisfaction than the consciousness of reasonable success in whatever you undertake. Success today will make you more able to succeed tomorrow; and tomorrow’s success is but the forerunner of that of the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. Thus the habit is formed, and you learn to look forward to the duties ahead of you…”
In their songs, King Sunny Ade and Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey are generous in celebrating the man who will be 72 tomorrow. He is that Nigerian simply called ‘chairman’ in circles of gilded chairmen and everyone understands who that ‘chairman’ is.
Elephant is not an animal you point at with one finger. It is the big one “whom one sees and points at with all one’s fingers.” That is how the poet describes “the opulent creature” in the ‘Salute to the Elephant’, a Yoruba hunter’s chant – Ijálá, courtesy of Jack Mapanje and Landeg White. The poet says: “The hunter’s boast at home is not repeated when he really meets the elephant/ The hunter’s boast at home is not repeated before the elephant.” I adopt these lines word for word for The Spirit of Africa.
It is normal for people to write or sing about men and women of consequence in celebration of their milestones. Unworthy persons commission eulogies; real men of worth get them as gifts. When Adenuga turned 70 two years ago, I am well aware of close friends and colleagues who celebrated the man unasked, unprompted, and in writing. With The Bull, yearly tributes pouring in weeks before his day of celebration has become a habit for those who know the weight of his humanness. I have read tomes in the last two weeks, yet, his day is tomorrow.
The billionaire sits quietly behind what he habitually calls his parapet, in his office – or at home – checking what more work to do, what new horizons to conquer, who else to help. He picks and ticks beneficiaries, dispenses favours and still says no to attempts at telling him ‘thank you.’
No matter what good you do, or how good you are, some persons somewhere will sit in the dark throwing darts; some audacious ones will even stand on the mountaintop abusing you. But, that precisely is why the Yoruba ancestor asked his child to endeavour to have 800 friends.
“An Omoluabi is defined as someone who has 200 friends. So, why do I need 800?” The child asked.
“Because you need so many. If 400 speak ill of you, there will be 400 available to speak well of you.”
Adenuga has more than 800 friends; many of them he himself may not know. I am one of them. I have never met him in person but I have moved close enough to his shadow to feel his love for this space, my space; for my cursive discourses, for the gait in my output, and he says so. So, when I write as I do here, it is to say thank you to the one who has been very kind.
We all come to this world equipped for success. Maude Muse (quoted earlier) said “Each individual begins life with a certain modest capital, a loan from Mother Nature. It is a fund of innate tendencies common to the species with certain variations peculiar to the individual. It becomes a permanent possession only when invested in habits. It may be squandered to form bad habits or, if misused, will disappear like ‘fairy gold.'” Successful people are those who invest their loan from nature wisely. If you invest yours well and you use it well, you may become a hard worker like Adenuga. And, if fortune smiles on you, you become what he has become – blessed and a blessing; a success.
“What is success?” a certain Very Reverend Dean Inge asks in ‘The North American Review’ of September 1929. I define success as self-actualization. Psychologists say success is in reaching one’s full potential, they say self-actualization is becoming the best version of oneself. The fish is happy when it beats the records of its species and succeeds in reaching the deepest part of the ocean in peace and plenty. Dean Inge says he knew “several grammarians” who were “simply creatures of habit” and who “had no visions of unfading crowns” but who would be very “miserable if they were separated for a day from their desk and their books.” Some people’s miserable point is reached if they see what they call ‘work’ and they can’t do it. They are successful if they can.
For Globacom chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga, working hard, doing philanthropy and avoiding words of appreciation from his beneficiaries define success; his success is in his habits of mind and of behaviour. I congratulate him on his 72nd birthday. God willing, I will write again next year, and the next.
