My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

My departure boarding pass issued on the 30^th of December 1990.

Taking the next step

Twenty-eight years ago today, I left Nigeria to return to the UK, I had only returned from the UK 4 weeks earlier, having been on a business trip for a firm in which I was part owner with a 30% stake, we called it NextStep Limited and it specialised in desktop publishing, offloading the burden of typesetting and printing from traditional methods to technologies provided by personal computers running Xerox Ventura Publisher.

NextStep Limited probably would have gone far if the majority partner was not too full of himself expecting subservience and obeisance, but two events in the 4 weeks of my return put paid to that relationship. The first was during a conversation when he dipped his hand in his pocket and threw money at me across the table. I picked up the wad and put it back in front of him saying, my parents have never thrown money at me, neither can you.

Maybe not a good step

The second event resulted in me saying to him, “You don’t give a 24-year old 30% of a company and think that is the end of his life, I will throw it away and start over again somewhere else.” It wasn’t that I was not full of gratitude, I just could not stand being treated with disrespect just because I was younger.

Whilst I was beginning to give more of my time to NextStep Limited, I had 4 other contractual engagements going. The most important was with Deji Sasegbon Limited, a legal publishing outfit that had just finished publishing the Nigerian Supreme Court Cases in 40 volumes and it was this that brought me into the purview of my patron and majority partner at NextStep Limited who was also a lawyer and a director at the United Bank of Africa.

On an earlier step

He was a Nigerian bigwig and I was an atypical young ‘Nigerian’, well, Deji Sasegbon who gave me my big break saw me differently, he had the wealth, influence and authority to employ me outright to work for him. Instead, he offered me a deal, he said, “Akin, I want you to consult for me, teach my staff to know the workings of desktop publishing, take on the complex stuff and for that, I will give you a monthly stipend and your flight ticket whenever you are ready to leave for the UK is paid for.”

Deji Sasegbon, unfortunately, passed away two years ago, to him I owe a great debt of gratitude, more importantly, he treated me with dignity and respect, it was always a pleasure to work for him. When I told him I was leaving for the UK, whilst he was saddened, he understood and bid me Godspeed.

Blog - Adieu D-Shash! (Deji Sasegbon)

Definite the worst step

At NextStep Limited, one of the jack-of-all-trades businesses my partner was involved in was selling Christmas cards. Some staff in that other business had stolen some of those cards and my partner corralled every employee including my own staff at NextStep Limited and had them banged up in a police cell without the courtesy of informing me. I spent a whole day negotiating bail conditions for my staff, or at least my staff did the negotiating because I did not speak with the language or accent the police understood. I got them out, but that was the very last straw for me.

Whilst, there was a kind of youthful exuberance in the way I decided to break that NextStep Limited relationship. In the circumstances, that was my only option. There was no other engagement where I had been treated as disdainfully as I was with that man. I divested myself of my other engagements and handed over to my able assistant and threw away NextStep Limited.

After my departure, my ex-business partner attempted to besmirch my name to my family and other contacts I made on my business visit to the UK, suggesting I had made off with material and some other stuff. The only thing I took from NextStep Limited was my participation. It was his desperate attempt to assuage his ego when he had been dealt the same hand of discourtesy he had dealt me.

My good friend later wrote to me saying, when you left NextStep, there were no other steps to take.

On an airline step

This was a man who got his sister a job for in the foreign exchange department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on arranging the foreign exchange for our business travel, she pilfered a full 20% of that transaction. He had more leeches and hangers-on around him filching, dissembling, needing and stealing, everyone was coming to him with business deals and scams, he probably invested in more scams than viable businesses.

He came to me with a proposition that I accepted because I thought it was a good idea, with hindsight, I should have taken some advice and I would have gotten the best legal advice money could buy for free from Deji Sasegbon or any of his partners and lawyers, all of whom I had a good relationship with.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

The journey to identity goes further than the many destinations you travel to

The journey to identity is personal

I have just watched the documentary Black Sheep that has been shortlisted for an Academy Award in the short film category, about the quest for identity of a young black man in England of mixed African parentage, the actions the parents took, and the journey travelled by one of the children who followed.

Guardian film Black Sheep shortlisted for Oscars

[]

The blog I have written is not a review of the film, rather it illustrates how journeys to destinations to live are different from journeys to a settled identity.

We as children embarked on many journeys with our parents to many places to live, to adapt, to school and by that been influenced by situations and circumstances in the home and our wider communities.

However, much as we have followed, it is unlikely that our parents have followed us in the journey of knowing who we really are. In my own case, my father has always had the presumption that we have the same identity and are would eventually be driven by the same passions, nothing could be further from the truth.

Marked as different

He never embarked on my own personal journey of discovery, for the idea that Nigeria is my home bears no reality to my circumstances. Despite the accident of fortune that had me born in England and spending much of my childhood into adulthood in Nigeria, I was never accepted as a Nigerian.

It was not in the way I looked, for in that, I was no different from any other Nigerian, but the moment I began to speak, my accent betrayed a foreignness that cast me as another, from somewhere else and that changed the way people interacted with me.

To those who knew me, they knew I was born abroad, not steeped in the customs and essentials of our tribal and societal strictures, so, I was excused, forgiven and may be excluded because I was not one of them. I was caught in a flux of identity between where I was born and defined by it and where my parents were born and alien to it. In that, my mother tongue was English and that was different from my mother’s tongue which is Yoruba.

Environments and influences

Parents have great determination, in terms of the provisions and opportunities they, if they have the means, put in the way of their children. Mine was of privilege in my primary education and the ease that was put into my life, but it did not spare me from other issues that attempted to cripple the joys of childhood, our once nuclear family infused with characters and characteristics that created negative experiences that leave a black spot in the childhood story.

For secondary school, they determined, I needed to be toughened up, whilst experiencing some cultural affinity with our clan. I was sent away for months to live with relations and then to boarding school. My first term was horrific and a terrible experience for my mates who were woken every night by my recitation of Psalm 23 because I thought and believed I was seeing ghosts.

As a bedwetter too, that was seen as weakness rather than what we now know as having psychological underpinnings that we eventually work through either by grace or good fortune.

Blog - Childhood: Atòólé

I got resilience

Then, rather than recognise some of the turmoil I was going through, I was considered too slow by my father and my mother thought I gave away my things to curry favour. Everything or situation had a pearl of wisdom they are conceived in their minds was the cause to which they made what they thought was adequate provision.

Yet, somewhere in our lives, we had gathered tools and coping mechanisms that have given us resilience and strength to overcome crises after crises.

The question, “What is the matter with you?” was rarely asked in genuine concern for welfare or wellbeing, rather it was spat out in disdain, criticism and condemnation because one was not measuring up to an expected standard. It is possible that my memory fails me, but if I can recall outright praise, it had little impact.

How do you talk about clinical depression?

It all came crashing down after I left secondary school. The first two schools I attended after for a total of 4 years yielded nothing, I was asked to withdraw twice, and it was not because I was a dunce, I just did not know why I was in a class on certain days. With hindsight, these were times of clinical depression, the signs my mother in her religiosity would have thought required more prayer and ritual and the patriarch just saw as a weakling in his firstborn.

No, parents can never embark on that journey of personal discovery of their children, they can only facilitate, provide opportunities and paths. Most importantly, have an ear to listen to a cry, because children still cry, cry for help, cry to be heard, cry to be lifted, cry to be accepted. I fear parents lose that listening ear sometimes much too early for the benefit of the child.

I had no one to talk to about what I was going through, I needed professional help, but I was failing son fit to be taught a lesson of life so that I would sit up and begin to take responsibility. I smile today because I have been given the good fortune to make stories of the dark times of my life.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Don't lose the honour of the opportunity to help

I love who I am

I was never on a quest to get an identity, that journey was always one of discovery, realisation and acceptance. Too many influences have interacted with my personality towards understanding and loving who I am. I embody many characteristics of my parents’ personalities and some that are uniquely mine.

I love who I am now, I accept who I am and live who I am for who I am, and all this would be radically different from who or what my parents would have expected me to be. I am a product of influences, circumstances and environments of fate, fortune and force, none of which I choose to repudiate.

When asked, I am an Englishman of Nigerian parentage, that is a settled matter. There is a long story to tell, because, in one conversation with my father, he said, “You have always thought like a westerner.” I am still deconstructing that platitude, for it is deep.

I recognise that this might read like an unfinished blog, this is because as I was writing I realised there are many strands to the story, too long for a blog and better put in the context of a book, whenever I get to write it. I have also written on this in other blogs from other perspectives.

The look of 53

Counting blessings

When I think about the loveliness of birthdays, a day of reflection and gratitude as one gives thanks for another year added to the many that have come and gone, a story gets told.

This is my tenth birthday after a cancer diagnosis in September 2009 that offered a worst-case prognosis of 5 weeks to live, and here I am celebrating my 53^rd birthday.

This year has been amazing and eventful, it is one in which I have been blessed so abundantly in too many things to mention that I have had means and opportunity to do things and thrive in those things.

Grateful in gratitude

Whilst there have been concerns about my health, they have just been concerns, all foreboding consigned to the record of nothing to worry about. I could do more exercise and get fitter if I do not want my age to get the better of me.

All my gratitude is to God and man, I have been sustained, supported, encouraged, praised and promoted. Goodness and mercy following me like the Psalmist said in Psalm 23.

Looking back, I have great cause to look ahead, inspired to do newer things, discovering things that once I did not see and knowing that each passing day brings forth a better story.

Sing better stories

To my friends, the few I have who stand steadfast at all times, good or bad, in leanness or plenty, thank you for being there, being close and being you.

May we all joyfully celebrate even more than we ever had the capacity to conceive or imagine. I raise a glass to 53 and may strength, peace, health, joy, love and kindness take us to places that make our best dreams strive to reach our new reality.

Nigeria: Close this marketplace of institutionalised paedophilia called child marriage

These were not sweethearts

The headline read, “Man, 70, marries 15-year-old sweetheart in Niger”, and this was accompanied by a photograph on Twitter, the news story has a few more photographs. [Daily Nigerian]

My first reaction to the story as opprobrium, abuse and obloquy was heaped on the man was the feeling why in these times we did not have a system to extricate girls from such inappropriate pairings and end this atrocity.

Everything is inappropriate with this match and to suggest they were sweethearts is contemptible in the extreme. A sweetheart is someone with whom one is in a romantic relationship. You would normally see sweetheart qualified with childhood, people of comparative ages in love. Where this is deployed elsewhere the expectation is both parties in that affair are both adults and have free agency.

Excused to afflict

Mr Yakubu Chanji apparently has a reputation of keeping a tally of four wives in his harem and has allegedly acquisition of close to 20 wives, the attrition rate being subjects of him being predeceased or his divorcing wives who have lost their novelty.

However, Mr Chanji, it appears can do no wrong as the report says, “He is a philanthropist in Kwangila area of Minna. He has contributed immensely to the community, especially the building of the community mosque.” For that, he appears to be excused to celebrate his proclivities and his propensities without sanction.

A girl of 15 has a life of her own, marriage is hardly one of the life decisions she should be involved in, she is a child, should still be in school, amongst her peers, daydreaming and imagining a life that is not limited to providing sexual satisfaction to a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Where is the girl’s identity?

Our world of humanity has been humanised and civilised over centuries, not to live beliefs in the times of their origins of a primordial world, but to have been adapted to the changes towards better respect and protection of rights and agency, and it makes this arrangement one of the worst expressions of our thriving humanity.

If the girl had any say in this matter, it would have been imposed upon her, all the pictures in which she appears with the man do not show a maiden with her lover on her happiest day, it appears she would rather be elsewhere. If indeed ‘family and friends were in attendance’, where are her friends? Where are her bridesmaids, her peers, the other girls she played with before she decided this is what she wanted for her life?

I see lots of old men and some women who are probably making up the numbers. There are no two words for celebrating a paedophile given the licence to violate a minor with the law seemingly incapacitated to act in the interest of the girl.

This picture is wrong, this practice is wrong and there is nothing to celebrate here than the shame and disgrace that this can be condoned, allowed, publicised and given the free rein to impunity it must never have in the 21^st Century.

Divorce is just too cheap

How is it that in reporting about sweethearts, the man has all his names and sobriquets on show, but the girl is nameless, voiceless and soon to be invisible when she ends up in the paedophile’s lair until he either predeceases her or she is found to have outlived her usefulness and divorced?

Divorce itself is too easy, the man can extricate himself with literally no responsibility or liability, the woman he took off their trajectory of life and achievement left destitute and depending on alms. If only we had better divorce laws, ones that required divorce payments and alimony with the possibility of bankrupting the man if he found a penchant for divorce.

A woman who through a marriage has been dependent on her husband through marriage keeping the family home should by rights when divorced have the husband legally liable and enforced by law to make the provision to give the woman a sense of independence in means and ability. What has been truncated by marriage in the possibility of a career and some semblance of a fulfilling life must by restitution become a responsibility of her ex-husband until she can find her own two feet or becomes contracted into another marriage.

We have a long way to go in terms of the abuse of child marriage in the name of any persuasion, we must strive to end this market of institutionalised paedophilia pretending to a holy matrimony, which it is absolutely not.

Observing the subtle racism at black success

Racism touches us all

Racism is a general story and a personal story, the tales I have to regale are many in my almost 30 years of continuous living in Europe. Whether it be in the UK where from when I was beginning to become reacquainted with the land of my birth or on mainland Europe where somewhere between being patronised and being belittled was a covert disrespectfulness you just ignored, you grew a thicker skin.

Racism became a topical issue from the weekend and in football, when the England international and Manchester City footballer, Raheem Sterling, was racially abused at Chelsea Football Club.

Raheem Sterling took to Instagram to give context to how and why racism appears to thrive against young black footballers through the way they are depicted in the mainstream media.

The @BBCNews and @BBCWorld are contributing to the race-baiting that @sterling7 highlighted. He said his teammates "bought houses for their mothers", but Auntie left off the "for their mothers" bit. https://t.co/v9XnMol03U Once again, the black players are painted in poor light.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ #FBPE (@forakin) December 10, 2018

Commissions of omissions

He gave the example of how the reportage on two young black football playing colleagues had bought new houses for their mothers, “mothers who have put in a lot of time and love into helping them get where they are,” he said. The press had found a slant to paint these grateful boys in a bad light.

Not long after I had read that post, the BBC was reporting on Raheem Sterling’s Instagram post, quoting the post but incompletely and out of context. The BBC reported the boys had bought houses and left out the positive and mollifying message which was the boys had bought the new houses for their mothers.

That subtle omission of context painted the boys as excessively profligate rather than as endearingly grateful. That was enough to give a platform to forming negative opinions about people who had done some good, but in the reportage were made to look bad.

Jealousy needs no inspiration

It then no surprise that a black footballer as reported by BBC Sport who cannot exculpate themselves from being part of the problem, pulled out of appearing on TalkSport after their coverage of the Raheem Sterling story, for apparently, “former Reading striker Dave Kitson told the station that Sterling had incited ‘jealousy’ by exhibiting a luxury lifestyle on his social media.” [BBC]

Like seriously, a successful young man who happens to be black is exhibiting a luxury lifestyle on his social media? Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with Raheem Sterling.

In my own life, people would be jealous regardless of whether you’re frugal or profligate, the simple fact that you’re successful is enough to accentuate negative feelings, they need no inspiration to be rotten to you, given the opportunity of proximity in the hope to rile you.

We thrive, nonetheless

We have found accommodations or a state of mind, we have no reason to take offence, we ignore them, it is their problem and their headache. At other times, there is a gift of a quick wit, a riposte that sends them back into the crevasses from whence they emerge to glow in our light. Sometimes, it is others who observe the reprehensible and take action at no one’s behest apart from their good-natured disposition and humanity.

We are grateful for good fortune and success in our various fields and long may we have great stories to tell.

However, I leave the last word to one Jonathan Northcroft, the football correspondent for the Sunday Times, “Raheem Sterling represents the type of young black footballer that middle-aged white men of a certain type can’t deal with.”

“Raheem Sterling represents the type of young black footballer that middle aged white men of a certain type can’t deal with” - 🗣Jonathan Northcroft (football correspondent for Sunday Times) @sterling7 pic.twitter.com/ZdqxLgiIvr

— LDNRBS (@LDNRBS) December 11, 2018

Opinion: How much longer can we endure Theresa May and her #Brexit ineptitude?

She never could do it

News that Theresa May the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had decided to delay the meaningful vote on her much-vaunted deal from Europe for #Brexit was hardly a surprise.

It is depressing and a depressing state of affairs that a nation that in the last century was one of the leading lights of world leadership, diplomacy and political nous is in a state of ineffectiveness, utterly inept, incapacitated by infirmity, deformed in prospect.

I have never had the confidence that Theresa May could pull off #Brexit with any credibility or ability, she mastered and spearheaded a negotiating tactic that projected hubris and bluster, sending bombastic blowhards to Europe with delusions of grandeur convinced in the exceptionalism of the UK. Her powers of persuasion were deployed as dogged obstinacy, tinned eared in her hope that brinkmanship would yield a result.

A living insanity

For 29 months since she assumed office, she has followed the same course, mouthed the same mantras, repeated the same talking points and achieved nothing. Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, "The definition of this #Brexit insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

It is insanity that bedevils this #BrexitShambles, she can win no support within her party and she has found no way to unite the country behind anything she has to offer apart from uniting us in disgust and revulsion of her deal.

Theresa May had ample opportunity and scope, she could have on becoming premier gone for a grand coalition to work on this #Brexit issue. Rather, she triggered Article 50 completely clueless of what she could achieve, then gambled away her majority on an ill-judged election before losing two Brexit Secretaries of State, a Foreign Minister and scores more from her cabinet.

Neither up nor down

Dysfunction and derision have become the hallmarks of this government hellbent of driven the country headlong into perdition on the force of ideology above reason. The Pound Sterling in the wake of foolhardiness not seen since the Grand Old Duke of York became a nursery rhyme of the utmost ridicule.

The problem is not in Europe, the EU-27 countries have already agreed the deal she wants to renegotiate with them, they all know it is the fact that she cannot persuade, convince, cajole, cudgel or bribe enough in the House of Commons to buy into her plan. She is an abject failure and if any Tory is ready to put the country above self-interest, it is time to pension off this apology wrecking the country and chart a new course in leadership and in Europe.

Stop this #Brexit nonsense now

The #BrexitShambles has sucked all productivity, progress and oxygen out of our national effectiveness and the ability for us to take our place in the comity of nations where we belong. There is no Kumbaya of rich pickings after #Brexit.

We belong in Europe, the best deal we could have we already have in Europe and we need to send better representatives than those of the ilk of Nigel Farage to Europe who would attend meetings, constructively engage our partners and win compromises, concessions and consensus that gives of the best of what Europe can offer.

It is time to end the leadership tragedy of Mrs Theresa May and consign her to the scrapheap of history. She has done enough damage already.

Thought Picnic: Don't lose the honour of the opportunity to help

Regaining opportunity

“Opportunity once lost, can be regained, albeit, after a temporary setback.” This was a saying shared with me by an uncle figure when I was in secondary school. It became one of the most important pillars that stood for times when everything else seemed to have crumbled around me.

My parents from what I know were high-flying successful people in their academic lives and into their careers that I am not aware for any failures in anything they were educated and trained to do, except when they appeared to dabble in areas where they had no expertise. What I learnt from them was more along the lines of the age-old saying, “Opportunity once lost, can never be regained.”

Confidence and nothing over

Invariably, apart from aspiration and confidence, I cannot say I learnt anything about facing failure, really failing and finding the resolve and wherewithal to rise from that scrapheap to find new achievement. My dad would have been top of his class in his accountancy examinations in 1969, whilst he won other prizes, I am told he fell short out of over-confidence.

That story was told me when I decided on a minimum of 6 subjects for my West African Examinations Council finals out of secondary school in 1981, my mother intervened citing that I was exercising the same over-confidence that plagued my dad and ensured I had 8 subjects to contend with.

On finding opportunity after failure, that honour and privilege goes to other uncles who faced failure head-on, understood what it meant to fail and fail again, yet never relented until they succeeded. It is to them that I owe that other story of my life’s achievements, successes, privileges and good fortune. To them, my gratitude must remain inexhaustible.

The honour of opportunity

Which brings me to another perspective of opportunity and the use of the situation for the benefit not of ourselves, but of others. In all walks of life, we are provided to opportunity to open our hands and open our hearts, someone needing advice or help, a recommendation or reference, sometimes we are given the magnitude of influence to affect the future of someone else in ways that would put them on the trajectory of success well beyond what we could for ourselves achieve.

At some point in the life of another person, we are the sentinel, the gatekeeper, the possible force for good, that opportunity that has come in its time, yet, I am privy to information and circumstances where the myopia of some has beclouded their ability to see that for them to be in that position, it is an honour and a privilege, for that time alone, everything depends on them, and what do they do, they close the door.

You are not omnipotent

They have the power, the influence, the authority and maybe even the audacity and for their small-mindedness, they refuse others the allowance to progress. To them, there will never be gratitude, no praise shall be sung of them by others because they have sown bitterness and the curmudgeonly in the hope that all opportunity is destroyed.

Opportunity once lost, because of what you have done or refused to do, can be regained without you eventually, albeit, after a temporary setback that you put in place, but power and influence in transient.

The opportunity you once had to help can be lost forever, that does not mean opportunities are closed to the person providence honoured you to do something about at a particular time. The help you give is just a bonus, it makes you part of a better story, people would succeed with or without you.

Prepare yourself for gratitude

Yet, I must come back to the need for thankfulness and gratitude, honour those who see the honour of helping you as a privilege they would never let go of until they have contributed their utmost to the very best to see you get along. We have good people in this world amongst the fair-weather friends who are hollowed-out dregs of humanity, who pretend to smile with you only to find ways to be your detractors.

You know yourselves, you have betrayed the sacred trust of friendships and relationships, when you had the means to make a difference for the better. Your time will pass into ignominy. I am saddened to have lost respect for those of whom much more was expected.

Gratitude is an amazing uplifting spirit like I had my contract extended without prompting last week, on getting the news, I wrote to my managers thanking them for their confidence in me and the contract extension. In response, my manager wrote, “You’re welcome Akin, you deserve it!”