Mary Njoku asks what 17 men around a rich man are called if not gold diggers
Nollywood actress Mary Remmy Njoku has asked what people would call 17 men who live off a successful man’s wealth and are described only as his “boys,” if a woman in the same position is called a gold digger.
She raised the question in a social media post about how women are judged when they benefit from a wealthy man’s generosity. “If benefiting from a wealthy person’s generosity makes a woman a gold digger, what exactly do we call the 17 men eating his food, wearing what he bought, enjoying his money and calling themselves his boys?” she asked.
She cited a man identified as Emeka who, after becoming successful, returned home with 17 grown men constantly around him. They eat his food, wear clothes he bought, have bills paid and enjoy his money, yet the arrangement is named brotherhood, networking and loyalty.
The same behaviour in a woman, she argued, is given a dirty label. “The double standard isn’t that people love money. It’s that when men benefit from proximity to wealth, we give the behaviour a respectable name. When women do the same thing, we give it a dirty one.”
She added that men, women, friends, relatives and employees can all be drawn to people whose money or position makes life easier.
The post is not a defence of opportunism. It is an argument about vocabulary. Nigerian social life is full of retinues—friends, relatives, hangers-on—who eat from one table and call it family. When the person at the table is a woman attached to a rich man, the language turns moral.
When the people at the table are men attached to a rich man, the language turns tribal and professional. Njoku’s point is that the money is the same; only the gender of the beneficiary changes the word. Until the names match the conduct, the insult will keep doing selective work.
