On my way from the funeral in Ilesha I stopped by in Ibadan at the invitation of a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria who had a reputation as a progressive amongst many . He was from Ilesha and he and my father were from the same neighbourhood as well. I was aware of their close relationship as on different occasions my father would host the justice and his friends when he received a national honour and also when he retired from active judicial duty.
On getting to Ibadan I drove to his residence and we got talking.
The justice went straight to the point. He wanted to know what our plans as a family were for our shareholding in a bank which my father had promoted with his friends. He warned me that Nigerians were sharks and he thought the best way to go forward was for me to tell my mother that we should nominate him (the Justice) as our family representative on the board where he would be able to make noise on our behalf and use his connections to help us.
I was speechless. I had thought that probably the justice had called me to offer some help to the family knowing that my father died without having all the perks other chief executives enjoyed. We never had a house abroad and we never lived outside of Ikeja where his only house outside Ilesha was. My father had died as he lived, a simple man , and many of the Nigerian elite came to his funeral to praise him and say he was the most honest man they knew. So I thought wrongly that the help to be offered would be maybe some cash or some practical advice that would be of benefit to me my siblings or my mother who was now a widow.
To ask me to tell my mother to nominate him to the board of a bank her husband set up when her late husband himself had never discussed such with us was a shock. I immediately told the justice that we had no such plans and he had given express instructions to us to leave the bank alone. If they offered us a seat on the board we should take it but we should also know that we were in no position to be strong financial partners given that we didn't have deep pockets. I finally said also that the family had met and had decided that if there was an invitation to us from the bank regarding a board seat I as first son would take it up.
So what the justice thought we needed and what we thought we needed were two different things. Obviously.
Our conversation ended not long after that and I left. That was the last time the good judge was in contact with us. Like most of the people who came to my fathers funeral he forgot about us and went on doing his thing getting more acclaim and talking about Nigeria's problems like the incorruptible judge and man of integrity he was. He did not ask me about my children or those of my siblings and we have never had the benefit of his influence unfortunately. His ideas and ours were obviously different. If I was uncharitable I would suppose he was trying to take advantage of a situation. At best I would surmise that he was trying to do the thinking for a group of five or more people without asking for our opinion. The same way our political leadership always try to think for us like we are children without knowledge aspirations and hopes.
What you see is not what you get. Chikena!
