FAMILY FORTUNE, 50 50, NO CHEATING.
Nothing wey person no go hear and see inside banking hall o coupled with the recession we just “technically” got out of. It was a bright Tuesday morning and I had gone to a branch to train some users on a new banking application we just deployed in my organisation that I was responsible for.
As I settled down and trained the first batch, we agreed to go on a thirty minutes recess and handholding session which eventually turned into like two additional hours of watching what I would call a dress rehearsal for the following month when they were to return. Who were these kind of people causing serious commotion in the banking hall? I asked the branch staff and as they all smiled, they told me I would get to know them in a few minutes. I first noticed the military precision with which they sauntered in. They seemed all ready for a showdown that day.
Then the scenario unfolded right in front of me, they were all children of a VERY rich, polygamous, illiterate commodity trader father who had died intestate a year earlier and left them various properties to inherit; properties worth millions of naira in rental income and they had come to share the money that just dropped, the second one since the demise of their father. Dis kind pikin no be the ones wey go say abeg help me collect and bring my own o, everybody carry him eye come bank come see the money ni o. The sharing formula was already in the letter of administration as idi igi (according to their mothers) but some of them were just hell bent on causing trouble not minding there were other customers in the banking hall. The manager tried as much as she could to calm the noise down but she no fit. Then some of the children who the sharing formula did not favour started shouting that it should have been ori o ju ori ( shared equally irrespective of their mothers) and I wondered how that could be changed now that the agreed formula had already been put in the letter of administration. Nigerians sha, we always think we can change things to favour us regardless of the law of the land.
Some shouted 50 50 ni o no cheating because na family fortune o or we go kill awasef here today ni o while their father’s lawyer looked helpless and embarrassed that he just stared at the commotion confident that at least what he did was backed by law. Some even accused their different mothers of casting spells on their father before he died. At this point, the management of the branch decided to contact the security department to come and help out as charms and all sorts started surfacing out of nowhere and as soon as the security officers came, they were all ushered into a back office from the prying eyes of the other customers but trust me with my aproko instincts, I followed them to see where it was going to end. As these children were up in arms against one another and boasting about what they were going to do when they come back in two months to receive another largesse, I thought to myself, if they could act this way because of their father’s properties, what then would their late father who acquired these properties do?
The bible says “TRAIN UP A CHILD IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO AND WHEN HE GROWS UP, HE WILL NOT DEPART FROM IT”. There’s really nothing wrong in leaving an inheritance for your children but please let us all endeavor to give them the best of training and education to be able to put such inheritance to good use.
Let me return to my training jeje and make up for time lost watching the Inheritance movie.
