Success is stingy

Success is not luck or magic

Success is stingy.

You need to dig deep and hard to find it because success is stingy, It won't share itself with you unless you take it by force and own it.

It doesn't want you to find it so you must work hard and outsmart it to beat it, else you will chase it with everything you have and it will elude you.

I didn't just discover this truth, I have always known deep down somewhere but I got the clarification I needed after I met and talked to Suleiman, the aboki that sells suya in front of my junction, only then did I realize how stingy success really is.

Suleiman sold suya in my junction after coming to Lagos from Kano few months ago, every night you will see him in front of his suya stand, at exactly 7pm he was out roasting his meat and then customers will start gathering round him like flies perching on a rotten item till whenever his meat finishes or he closes.

Every night Suleiman was at his usual spot, never disappointing his customers and never absent from his suya stand like a tree rotted to a spot until few months later when suddenly another aboki appeared out of no where and started selling suya too, as if that was not enough, two more abokis also opened their own suya stand just close to where Suleiman started and then Suleiman started losing customers because he now had competition, and trust Lagosians, they like new things so everybody now realised Suleiman's suya is old and too small for the amount he sold and suddenly wanted a change.

After about a month, Suleiman travelled for three days and when he returned, he came with a young boy of about 16 or 17 called Mustapha or Must I for short. That same night Suleiman surprised everyone by setting up a mini shed around his suya stand and wrote his name on the shed "Suleiman Rebranded."

He bought cabbages, carrots and green peas and added them to his menu, next he added chicken too and started selling roasted chicken not just suya, he didn't stop there, while he added the chicken and the other veges, he started selling bread and indomie or egg as preferred by customers, and Musti was in charge of that department and assisted in the sale of the bread and indomie with egg or sardine as the case may be.

It was a both a sell out and a knock out for him and his competition as he not only reclaimed his spot as the most popular suya man but also took over the scene as the other aboki's suya stands became a ghost town despite the fact that he now increased the price of his suya, the other abokis were still selling at the same rate yet nobody patronized them while everyone trooped to Suleiman's rebranded stand.

He didn't just beat his competition, he became the competition.

Funny enough it was the same suya he sold in the same quantity as before, yet he increased the price and added new items to his menu.

Soon enough the other abokis all left one by one and now Suleiman is the only one in the entire street.

Success isn't just stingy, success is greedy. It won't share unless you are willing to pay the price and take it by force. Nobody will help you succeed, they will only appear like they are but in actuality, their generosity and good will is a mirage, like a dew or a smoke it will blow away soon and leave you watery eyed.

Nobody wants you to rise above their pinnacle so it's up to you to climb and keep climbing despite the harsh conditions and terrains.

Anyways Suleiman is a figment of my imagination, I just needed a good story to illustrate my point above. But in reality, there is a Sulieman in everyone of us, we only need to go back to the village to bring him back rebranded and reinvigorated.

Kingdavid Chinaeke Ofunne 

Authorpreneur