Ah, the allure of wealth! The dream of living a life filled with luxury, extravagance, and unlimited possibilities. Being rich is often portrayed as the pinnacle of success, a state where money flows effortlessly, and every desire is within reach but it also comes with some side effects such as attracting unnecessary attention to oneself.
Hence the need to keep things low-key but unfortunately in a country like Nigeria, "low-keyness" isn't exactly the forte of a lot of rich people. These set of "rich" folks enjoy showing off their wealth; everybody must know they have money. And you know what's even funny? Some of them aren't exactly what you will define as being rich, they don't even have up to a million in their account but they know how to package the little they have just to appear rich.
A typical example is fraudsters (yahoo boys). Some of them just collect (steal) $100 and the next thing you will see them wearing are big round-neck shirts, shorts, and fake Rolex watches. They collect 1 million naira, and they use 900k to buy a second-hand Camry. I don't see them as being rich, they are just criminals. Anyway, there's a difference between being rich and wealthy. One is short-term while the other is long-term. People like Bill Gates and Elon Musk are wealthy.
I have just a few rich friends and that's mostly because I had to cut ties with a lot of them; they are fraudsters. I still have one of them as a friend and I always assumed he isn't rich because he doesn't behave like typical fraudsters who always go partying and driving all around town with their friendly budget Lexus or Benz. He doesn't even use an iPhone and always dresses normally, unlike the typical yahoo boys.
Anyway, there was a time we lost touch for a couple of months and suddenly, he showed up at my house one day. We spoke for a while and he said I should follow him to his new apartment. I told him I wanted to grab some cash to use as transport fare and he said "Don't bother, I came with my car". Car? I went outside and truly there was a Toyota Camry parked outside. We drove to his place and from what I saw, I knew that this guy has some serious money.
But that's not what I want to really talk about. As I said, I don't exactly see fraudsters as being rich. Another rich friend I have is someone I have known for over 12 years now. We went to the same high school, attend the same church, and even stay in the same house. He graduated from a polytechnic a few years ago and since then, he has been managing one of his dad's spare parts store.
It's from the store that he gets some money to take care of his daily needs but I don't think much of that because the store isn't exactly his and he can't make a lot of money from it. I guess he knew that too and that was why he started his own business: selling in-game coins for games like PUBG, CODM, mobile legends, and others. I didn't think he made much profit from the business (he didn't initially).
He was always complaining about how people scammed him and also how the money he was making wasn't worth the stress, but he didn't give up. We didn't speak for a while because I was very busy in school and only see each other when I go home during school breaks. A few weeks ago, he suddenly messaged me on WhatsApp that he has bought a new phone. I want surprised because this guy is a very big phone freak.
He changes phones every few months and sometimes when I go back home after the end of a semester (usually 3 months), I will find out he has changed his phone up to 4 times since the last time. But this time, it was different because he said he has bought an iPhone 14 pro max. "Ah! iPhone 14 pro max?", I asked and he said yes. I was thinking maybe he bought it from someone who was desperate for some money and so I asked him how much he got it and he said 1.1 million naira 🤯.
He bought a brand new iPhone 14 pro max for 1.1 million (approximately $1500). That was when he explained that he recently got into a partnership with a Chinese vendor just like him who buys a lot of PUBG UC (the in-game coin for PUBG). The thing is that the coins are a lot cheaper in Nigeria than it is in China, so this Chinese client sends him a lot of orders (over 100) and he makes a profit of roughly 4000 naira each. So yeah, he makes over 400k every day!
In less than a week, he messaged me again that he has bought an Apple MacBook M2 pro 2023 and this laptop cost him 1.6 million naira ($2200). At this point, I knew this guy was on a whole different level. He was no longer the struggling vendor that was always complaining about getting scammed or how stressful the work is, he has finally hit the jackpot. I was very happy for him and started assisting him in his business which also benefitted me in a lot of ways.
My relationship with him is still as before, he hasn't changed much from the way I knew him over the years, the only difference is that he is now very rich but the good thing is that it didn't let that affect him. He is still humble and stays lowkey. You might be wondering how a person who owns an iPhone 14 pro max is low-key, right? Well, he hardly leaves the house with that iPhone, he has 2 other phones; red magic 7 and a OnePlus 9 Pro (if you know smartphones well enough, you will know these two devices aren't your regular kind of smartphones).
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