Richard Garuba · October 10, 2026

Hard work pays, but you have to be where the opportunity is

I taught chemistry, further maths and physics, and the job only kept me moving. Then I went into sales, and sales brought in a lot of cash. Same effort, different place. On when hard work pays in Nigeria, and when it doesn't.

A roadside stall with rows of shoes on wooden shelves under a corrugated iron roof, with a woman in a headwrap and a baby on her back standing beside it

After I graduated, I taught chemistry, further maths and physics.

That job only kept me moving.

Then I went into sales, selling tiles and building materials. Sales brought in a lot of cash.

I worked just as hard in the classroom as I did in sales. The effort didn’t change. The place did.

That is why I now put it this way: hard work pays, but you have to be where the opportunity is.

I was taught that hard work is the way to go

When I was growing up, I was taught that hard work is the way to go. I worked hard in school and graduated with a second class upper.

I grew up to realise that hard work is good, and I still believe that. But I say it with a condition now. In Nigeria, there are times when hard work pays. Not every time. At times.

That “at times” matters, because most Nigerians are not short of effort. Look around any market, bus stop or office and you’ll see people working. The numbers say the same thing. Under the National Bureau of Statistics’ current method, unemployment was 4.3% in mid-2024, but 93% of work was informal. In 2023, only about 12% of working Nigerians had wage jobs. NBS explains that, as in other developing countries, “work, even if only for a few hours and in low-productivity jobs, is essential to make ends meet”.

So “work harder” can’t be the whole answer. Nearly everyone is already working. The better question is this: when does hard work build something, and when does it only keep you moving?

Some hard work only keeps you moving

I worked hard as a teacher. Chemistry, further maths, physics: these aren’t light subjects, and I put in the work.

But the pay was barely enough for my bills. The job kept me moving. It didn’t take me anywhere.

That’s what I mean by survival work. It isn’t lazy work or bad work. It’s work that pays this month’s bills and leaves you in the same place next month. You can do it well for years and still be standing where you started.

In Nigeria, survival work is made harder by the fact that the ground keeps shifting under it. In 2015 the naira averaged about ₦192 to the dollar. In 2025 it averaged about ₦1,518. The minimum wage went up from ₦30,000 in 2019 to ₦70,000 in 2024. But at the average official exchange rate for each year, that’s roughly $98 a month in 2019 and about $47 a month in 2024. The raise more than doubled the naira amount and still left it worth less than half as much in dollars. Even the rules themselves move. In May 2024 the Central Bank told banks to charge a new cybersecurity levy on electronic transactions, and about a week later the government suspended it.

I’m not saying this to give an economics lecture. I’m saying it because when the rules move like that, a fixed income can lose ground even while you’re working harder. Effort that’s stuck in one place takes the full hit.

Hard work pays where the opportunity is

I left teaching for sales for a simple reason: to have enough cash to take care of myself.

I sold tiles and building materials. Sales brought in a lot of cash. From there I went into the bank, as a direct sales agent at Stanbic IBTC.

I didn’t become a different person when I left the classroom. I didn’t suddenly discover how to work hard. I was the same man, putting in the same effort. What changed was where that effort landed.

I saw something like this at school. There was a boy there who was very poor. He studied hard, and he did other extra things beyond that. He won a scholarship to study abroad, and his life changed. He’s a doctor now.

That’s hard work paying. But notice what his hard work did: it carried him to where the opportunity was. The scholarship was the door. His effort got him through it.

The economist Robert Frank wrote a whole book about this tension, Success and Luck. His publisher sums up the argument well: people who amass great fortunes “are almost always talented and hardworking”, but “countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much”. Talent and effort are needed. They just aren’t the whole story.

Sometimes the door is a person

After Stanbic IBTC, I moved to First Bank. My job there, as a chief crew member in cash in transit, came through a referral. I was taken there, and with no interview I was given the job.

In Nigeria we call that long leg.

I felt good about it.

Someone opened a door. The job behind it still had to be done.

Long leg is not just my experience. In a 2018 survey of 5,219 recent Nigerian graduates, 42.19% said they got their job through personal contacts. Only 4.40% got it through their university. That survey was online and self-selected, so it isn’t the whole country, but the gap is hard to ignore.

The bigger picture is sharper still. A World Bank study of 75 economies placed Nigeria in the bottom third for income mobility, meaning where you start has a strong pull on where you end up.

None of this means effort is pointless. It means a door is often a person, and part of being “where the opportunity is” is being known by people who can open one.

What hard work can still build

If effort alone doesn’t guarantee anything, what does it reliably do?

First, it builds skill. A large review of research on practice found that it explained about 18% to 26% of the differences in performance in sport, music and games. In the professions it explained less than 1%. So practice matters, but skill on its own is not the same as income.

Second, effort compounds when it’s connected to the right structure. The clearest Nigerian example in the research is the Igbo apprenticeship system. A young person spends years learning a trade under an experienced business owner, unpaid, and at the end receives cash and support to start their own business. This is known as “settlement”. A study of 1,187 business people in the Onitsha and Nnewi clusters found that those who came through the system had higher business survival and growth rates, and better access to trade and informal credit, than comparable people who didn’t. That’s hard work plugged into opportunity.

Third, effort can be pointed at the right problems. In Port Harcourt, I met business owners who were working hard and still struggling with two things: replying to enquiries early, and telling hot leads from cold leads. They weren’t short of effort. Their effort just wasn’t reaching the customers who were ready to buy.

That’s close to the work I do now: I teach Nigerian service businesses how to use automation. Problems like replying early are where a simple system can do what extra hours can’t. An enquiry can get a quick reply even when everyone is busy.

Diligence, and time and chance

The Bible has words for both sides of this.

Proverbs 10:4 says: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich”.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 says: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all”.

These aren’t opposites. One tells us to be diligent. The other admits that outcomes are not fully in our hands. Both sit easily next to the idea that hard work pays, but you have to be where the opportunity is.

“So is it all connections and luck?”

Some people will read this and say: then why bother? If it’s all long leg and luck, why work hard at all?

Think of that boy from my school. He was very poor. He studied hard and won his way out.

Others will say the opposite: one success story proves that hard work is enough. It doesn’t. His story is real, but it’s rare. The mobility data says where you start still pulls hard on where you end up. Both things are true. That’s why I say hard work pays at times.

Keep working, and keep moving your effort

If I met a young Nigerian today, my advice would still be to work hard. In Nigeria there are times when hard work pays. When you work hard and do excellently, it can make a difference. It pays off.

But I’d add what my own move from the classroom to sales showed me. Don’t only ask, “Am I working hard?” Also ask, “Is this a place where my hard work can grow?” If it isn’t, keep working while you move your effort towards where it can: a better market, a stronger skill, or people who know what you can do.

Hard work pays, but you have to be where the opportunity is.

Think about the work you’re doing now. Is it keeping you moving, or is it building something?

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