Former Super Eagles player, Mikel Obi has expressed his dissatisfaction about the entitlement mentality many family members in Africa h once a member of the family makes money.
During a chat with former footballer Rio Ferdinand, Obi revealed that family members become so greedy that they sometimes threaten to go to the press to tarnish your image if you don’t continue to offer financial assistance.
Using his own experience as an example, he said, “You get threatened by your own blood. Your own brothers and sisters.”
He continued: “When you come from Africa, when you make money, it’s not your money. You have all these relatives, cousins, whatever you call it.
“And your sisters, they go off and they get married to some guy who just wants to get married into John Obi Mikel’s family because then ‘my life is sorted’. And then you start looking after this guy. Before you know it… they keep having so many kids and so many kids. And you look at it, OK, ‘You’re having this much kids, who’s going to look after them?’ It’s you. For them you owe them that.
“So sometimes you have to be strong and say, you know what guys, ‘enough is enough. I don’t care’.
“They give you this thing whereby, ‘if you don’t do it, were going to go to the press’.”
His listeners were shocked and asked, “What? Did you have that conversation?”
Mikel replied, “Yeah, yeah.”
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