A Must Read: An Open Letter To Omotola By Okechukwu Ofili

The accidental entrepreneur is an article I wanted to write several weeks ago but never got around to writing, mainly because I was watching Lupita Nyong’o videos on youtube. The article was going to be about entrepreneurs who stumbled upon success accidentally. Entrepreneurs who started something like blogging, singing, speaking and became suddenly successful at it. When they started out their original plan was not to start a business or make money out of what they did…but somehow they stumbled upon success. I call these people accidental entrepreneurs. Beware of taking advice from such individuals…because they will tell you do what your passionate about and boom you will be successful. (Ha please ignore him on this; it is not true, lol). But before you start singing “Ofili you don come again.” Make una hear me out…

Because weirdly enough this article will not be about entrepreneurship…but rather relationships, particularly Omotola’s article on gender equality or inequality depending on your stance. In her own words, no editing, she says:

“I don’t believe in gender equality. I do not believe that God made man and woman to be equal in any way. I believe that in every organised institution, there is always a head and an assistant. It doesn’t mean that one should take the other for granted, or disrespect the other. I believe the husband is the head of the home and the wife is an assistant. My husband is a pilot, I have flown with him several times and I understood that here is a captain and a co-pilot. They are both responsible for the passengers’ lives. But when there is a final decision to make, it is up to the captain to make it. He is more experienced and the one with the responsibility.”

“When there is a quarrel, I usually apologise first. He doesn’t say sorry. Overtime, I have come to realise that it is an ego problem. Even when he knows he is wrong, he will rather do every other thing or buy things for me than say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Fortunately, the ‘sorrys’ are not too many. He is very responsible and more hardworking than me. By God’s grace, we have been able to understand our routine.”

Similar to the accidental entrepreneur, I term this situation the accidental relationship…that is that girl or guy that stumbles upon the perfect first girlfriend or boyfriend. They eventually get married and have a successful marriage and instantly start dishing advice and people start eating up the advice… please don’t.

Because the advice they give you is one dimensional. It is based on this belief that whatever they did worked. So you hear silly advice like “as a woman just cry and your husband will hug you” or “be submissive to your husband and he will cherish you” or “just tithe every Sunday and your relationship will be fine” or “my Husband never apologizes…that is a good thing!” like wtf!

The thing is that tantamount to the accidental entrepreneur they (especially Omotola) stumbled upon their relationship. In Omotola’s case as her husband states in the same interview, there was no courtship, they never dated, she was just 18 and had never been in a relationship and yet it worked out….but accidentally. Accidental because her situation is an exception and not the rule as marriages with young couples and no courtship have a higher chance of breeding domestic violence. And this violence is powered by the misconceived notion that somehow men are more equal than women especially in Nigeria!

Yet the advice pours out and people eat it up, not realizing that the person dishing out the advice may never have met that abusive husband that hugged choked his wife when she was crying or that woman that tithed every Sunday but yet her Husband raped her every Monday or that submissive wife that was so submissive even when her Husband left her for another woman she still hung around.

So when they (the accidentals) give advice they tend to give it from a disney world perspective where every man is a Prince and every woman is a Princess. They just have one view…the fairy-tale view…it worked for me so it should work for everyone. So when this people talk I barely listen.

But do you know who gives the best relationship advice? People that have been divorced…then got remarried and eventually found the right one. They talk from a multi-dimensional standpoint. They know what causes marriages to fail and the real reason why it succeeds. And do you know the people who give the really good entrepreneurial advice? The same type…the entrepreneurs who have failed…started again and then succeeded. Those are the people that you should listen to for business advice because they won’t give you BS advice like, bepassionate and you will succeed!

Now I am not saying that you cannot ever receive good advice from the accidental’s or that anything a failure-now-turned-success tells you is going to work for you. Rather what I am pushing you to understand is that there is not a one size fit all advice for business or relationships…you will need to get advice from multiple sources to help you make an ultimate decision that fits your unique situation.

So before you young girls and boy go jumping on Omotola’s advice and start thinking that a man is more equal than a woman, I urge you to listen to Hilary Clinton, Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Adichie and many other strong women out there, listen to their stories, their struggles and their triumphs and use their collective experiences to help make a wise decision.

That’s my article for today and although it is ironically accidental in nature, I hope the message in it will help someone somewhere. Be awesome and be kind to someone today.