“Big money isn't clean, and clean money is seldom big.”
Someone dropped this statement under my post with the confidence of someone who has supposedly made it big and understands exactly what it takes to become wealthy.
Let me address this properly, because this mentality is more than an ordinary opinion. It is a dangerous mindset that has discouraged countless Nigerian dreams and continues to discourage many more.
Let me tell you some stories.
In 2009, three young men, Opeyemi Awoyemi, Ayodeji Adewunmi and Olalekan Olude, were students at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. They had no wealthy godfathers, political connections or oil blocks. What they had were laptops, an idea and the determination to solve a problem.
They created an online recruitment platform connecting job seekers with employers and called it Jobberman.
The company grew into one of Africa's prominent recruitment platforms. In 2015, One Africa Media acquired 100% of Jobberman, with the founders receiving shares in the acquiring company. By then, the platform had established a significant presence in Nigeria's employment market.
Meanwhile, Opeyemi Awoyemi had another business venture. He founded WhoGoHost in 2007, initially providing hosting services to clients of his web design business. The company grew into one of Nigeria's leading web-hosting providers.
It subsequently acquired SendChamp in 2023, expanding its digital services. In January 2025, HOSTAFRICA completed its acquisition of GO54, formerly WhoGoHost, a company managing over 100,000 domains and commanding more than 20% of Nigeria's domain market.
Tell me, which shrine facilitated these transactions? Did a native doctor write their business plans? Did they steal government money?
Let's talk about Chinedu Echeruo.
A Nigerian entrepreneur who grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended King's College, Lagos, Echeruo experienced the frustration of navigating New York's complicated subway system. Rather than complain, he developed a solution.
He founded HopStop, a platform that provided public transportation directions across hundreds of cities.
In 2010, his other venture, Tripology, was acquired by Rand McNally. Three years later, Apple acquired HopStop in a deal whose financial terms were not publicly disclosed.
APPLE!
A global technology giant with lawyers, financial experts and extensive acquisition procedures. Do you honestly believe Apple acquired a company because somebody in a village shrine tied its executives' hands?
Let's consider Adeyemi Ajao, the Nigerian-Spanish entrepreneur who co-founded Tuenti, popularly described as Spain's Facebook. The social networking platform became hugely successful and was acquired by Telefónica in 2010. Contemporary reports valued the transaction at approximately €70 million.
What kind of spiritual explanation would you give for that?
Then there is Paystack.
Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi built a Nigerian financial technology company that transformed how businesses accept payments online. In October 2020, American payments giant Stripe announced its acquisition of Paystack. Although the financial terms were officially undisclosed, contemporary reports valued the transaction at more than $200 million.
These are not stories about people who discovered shortcuts through spiritual manipulation. They are stories about identifying problems, developing solutions and building businesses that attract investment.
Let me add another example.
Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka co-founded Terra Industries in 2024. The Nigerian defence technology company develops drones, autonomous ground vehicles and surveillance systems designed to protect critical infrastructure.
In August 2026, Terra announced that it had raised a total of $52 million in seed funding from international investors, including 8VC, the venture capital firm founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
Maduka previously served as a drone engineer with the Nigerian Navy and founded another drone company before Terra.
These young entrepreneurs are building technology to address real security challenges across Africa. Yet some people remain convinced that substantial wealth can only come from rituals, fraud or political connections.
Of course, Nigeria has dirty money. Politicians steal public funds. Fraudsters exist. There are criminal networks involved in ritual killings and other horrific activities. Nobody is denying these realities.
But the existence of dirty money does not mean clean money does not exist.
If every wealthy person you have encountered acquired their wealth through questionable means, perhaps that says more about your immediate environment than it does about the possibilities of wealth creation.
That statement is not really about rich people. It is about the person making it.
It is an excuse that allows someone to feel comfortable with their circumstances. If every successful person is a thief or ritualist, then poverty becomes an achievement of morality rather than a challenge to overcome.
You no longer need to learn, innovate, build or take calculated risks. You simply condemn everyone who succeeds and award yourself a medal for being supposedly righteous.
My brother, just do your best and leave the rest.
But are you genuinely doing your best?
A person who believes success is impossible without juju has already placed a ceiling over their potential. They will not learn to code because they believe connections matter more. They will not start a business because they assume every successful entrepreneur is doing something questionable.
Here is what that mentality fails to understand: technology does not respond to incantations. Software does not compile because someone sacrificed a ram. International investors do not fund businesses because a village oracle approved their proposals.
They invest because they see potential, innovation, market opportunities and solutions to real problems.
That is the real secret.
While one young Nigerian is somewhere in Ile-Ife building a business that eventually attracts international investors, another is under a social media post explaining why becoming successful is impossible without dirty money.
Years later, one may have built something valuable, while the other is still defending the same excuse.
Some people build wealth. Others build excuses for why wealth cannot be built.
Choose your side and stop annoying me.
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