Examples of these incidents.
You remember I was sent out of school after the first term for non-payment of school fees, and the wife of the school principal who had earlier spent several years in the United Kingdom, cried openly and said: “If this boy were to be in England, he would be a government scholar, I don’t think God is fair.” She said it openly and from there, I got my psychological opinion of God towards my life, that He was not fair to me.

That is why we ought to be careful what we say to children. I walked back home and stayed with my mother. In those days, she had to combine her teaching work with her other love -sewing. My mother was a sewing mistress. She would end her teaching assignment at 3.30 p.m. and then joined her three assistants working till 12.00 midnight. When the school went on holidays, she retired to the farm for her labour work.

With these efforts, she managed to get me back to school. Luck also smiled on me because I won a government bursary and this was paying a portion of my fees and by the time I got to class three, based on my result, I had government scholarship.

This was a rare achievement in this part at that time. And out of nine subjects in my school certificate result, I had eight distinctions, but I hadn't the money or wherewithal to go to the university. So I traveled to the north to spend my holiday with an uncle. The man liked me and offered me a job in a company called Joe Allen where I sold Volkswagen cars in a division of John Holt. He in turn maintained an account in a bank and he used to send me to the bank, where the expatriate branch manager took a liking for me.

So one day, he called my uncle and said Joe, I will like this your boy come and work in the bank. He replied that the man was not serious, “I didn't want to lose him to you,” he said. But, of course, the banks paid three times more, so I went behind this manager and told the oyinbo (whiteman) manager, “please give me the job.” So he gave me the job. I also like the way this man dressed, I was waiting to read medicine at the university with the little savings I was making, I ended up in the Department of Accountancy at Ahmadu Bello university, Zaria.

I was exempted from the youth service in the university for doing very well. I was asked to stay behind as graduate assistant lecturer. A bank poached me much later, so I moved to International Bank for West Africa, now Afribank (IBWA) and I did excel there from where I moved to the Bank of Boston which was making an in-road to Nigeria.

So I became one of the pioneers that were recruited for their local affiliate, the Nigeria American Merchant Bank (NAMB). I did very well rising rapidly and internationally and it was easy to shine in Nigeria. At that time, the economy was buoyant and the exchange rate was not unfriendly.

Back in the bank’s headquarter at Boston, I was able to rise quickly and became the vice-president of the bank, the equivalent of general manager, the first major significant break as it were, traveling to many of the locations worldwide. I rose to the position of deputy managing director of the Nigeria office and I was acting managing director when I left in 1993 for the then Owena Bank.

Point of convergence or divergence between money and God
Money is the product of business and God owns business and all. Psalm 24 Vs I says the earth and the fullness thereof is the Lord’s, whatever is on earth, underneath it and on top of it. The lawyer would say all that is beneath and over land is part of the land.

And so if the Lord owns the land and the fullness thereof, then He certainly owns all your business, whether you acknowledge Him or not and the problem comes when we become successful and we become so self contained and independent and we begin to say there is no God. But there is no vacuum in life and if you don’t have God, satan will occupy that space.

One American say when God was taken out of school, guns went in there, suggesting that if a little American puts his hands in his pockets, he will not bring out toffee or sweet; he brings out a gun and shoots his colleagues.

And so indeed, businesses belong to God and the product of business is money. There is nothing bad in money but it has to be acquired wisely and used wisely. And money must not be an end, it must be a means to bring happiness to people and uplift those who are poor, and it should help bring the mind to God.

Experience that consummated my return to God.
That was between 1979 and 1980; my boss at the bank of Boston lived in London. We had structured and I was placed in the Middle East and African division of the bank as the Business Manager or the General Manager of the Nigerian office. He came visiting and I had seen him off to the airport. I was coming back from the airport. At Maryland, I asked my driver who lived in Ilasamaja to go home since it was nearer. I now decided to drive myself in my official Mercedes Benz 200 car.

At Fadeyi, a car came close to me and scratched me. I thought it was the usual Lagos bad driving. There was nothing like assassins in those days and I abused them. When I looked across, I noticed there were five hefty men in the car and they were pointing a gun at me and asking me to park and I heard an overwhelming spirit said to me ‘don’t park, if it is the last thing you will do to survive, don’t park’.

They were driving a Peugeot 505 car. So I stepped on the gas and the car surged forward and when they came after me, I pressed and they would surge forward and I drove to another lane and sped off. The same voice that said ‘don’t stop’ said whatever you do don’t go to your house’ I lived in a place called Fobin Road in Ikoyi off MacDonald and I was heading for this place when the voice said ‘don’t go’, so I detoured towards Mc Cathy Street where my office was.

But at Onikan roundabout, I met a 504 with four gentlemen inside and they came after me immediately I passed. The first was a 505 and this one was a 504. So I got to my office, parked the car and left the key in the car leaving the impression that that this could be a stolen car. This whole thing started about 630pm.

I jumped the wall of my office and the security guy saw me jumping the fence, running into a compound across Boyle Street with the soles of my feet broken. I ran out of the compound and the Maiguard who was sleeping woke up and noticed someone running but could not identify the person and where he had run to. I broke into one of the boys quarters attached to the flat.

The resident, a steward who had gone to the bathroom at the back, came back and saw me and thought I was a thief. It was clear the assassin knew my way home and my office, they must have had it in their game plan that if one group did not get me the other would.

So one group got to where I parked my car and fired some gunshots. They saw my car and asked the security guys where I was. They said I ran away to the other street. They broke the windscreen of my car, saw the keys and didn’t take the bunch. Instead they shattered the windscreen of the car out of annoyance and drove through the other side. Now the same Maiguard who could not identify my movement was being interrogated and with annoyance and impatience, he told them off and was shot dead. A pregnant woman, who the Maiguard worked for, heard the gun shot and came out. She was shot but luckily for her, the balustrades of her home took the bullets.

She ran back, had a forced labour with still delivery. They held the street to ransom until 4.00am. They ransacked the vicinity and woke everyone up. They wouldn’t come to where I was hiding which was right at their nose. If they had come, I couldn’t have moved further because that was a dead end.

At that tine, I had a box of juju. I was a medicine man. I used to make a lot of juju but it didn’t help me. You remember the spirit that had overwhelmed me said don’t stop for them. That spirit kept assuring me that God is alive and such Biblical verses as ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’ continued to flood my consciousness.

I was never familiar with those things even though I went to church and they were read. But I found the spirit was reading these to me and was assuring me ‘even though I walked through the valleys of the shadows of death….’ I couldn’t memorise them but they played in my head.

The drama had to do with the steward. He ran back when he saw me and went shouting Abasi Abasi (God God) that I was a thief. He tried to push me out but I showed him my identity card and explained hat I was the general manager of the bank across the street. Having seen my face in the newspapers, he looked at me a couple of times to re-assure himself but he was simply terrified.

Can you imagine yourself going to have your bath only to come back to behold a stranger in you room. I told him those people outside were looking for me and if they found us, they were likely to kill us. Somehow the spirit of God ministered to him and he kept quiet especially when I told him they could kill both of us.

That night was the night of my molecularisation because God broke me into parts and the useless things we carried didn’t work. So at 4.00 am, we heard a siren blowing from Kam Salem House end. Many of the people who heard the noise of the siren ran away having been tormented earlier by this killer squad.

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