Chief Bode Mustapha
In this interview, he shares his life experience as he turns 70.
Excerpts:
Q: We want you to trace the journey of your life
A: According to my mother’s account, I was born prematurely on the 12th of March 1950.
After my father had about seven children with another woman and non of them survived, he met my mother and she got pregnant.
When I was born prematurely, they thought that I too will not survive because there was a gap of another seven years before I was born.
It was strange for those period because in those years, people had children within the age range of 21 to 23 and my mother had me at 21; she is now 91 years of age.
I grew up in Ibadan and attended Methodist Primary School, Ibadan and later Ibadan Grammar School. Even though I am a Muslim, my life was shaped having been under the tutelage of Late Hon. Emmanuel Alayande of blessed memory.
And as I always say to people, if I am to come back to this world again, I would still want to be a student under him, because Ibadan Grammar School didn’t teach you just academics in those days, it also taught you to be strict and smart.
I worked briefly in Veepee in Lagos State as a clerk before I later went to Germany.
While in Germany, I went through life the hard way; I slept in the railway station for fourteen weeks in the winter because I had no home.
I earned a living by playing semi professional table tennis from where they gave me accommodation.
By accident I became a Disk Jockey (DJ), and fortune smiled on me.
But after a while, I knew that I couldn’t work like that forever and I wanted more out of life.
Thereafter, I gave up on the luxury life as a disc jockey. Life was very good to me and I went back to school. I became the first black man to be trained as Department Store Manager in Germany and I finished with a first class.
One day, I sat in the comfort of my home in Hamburg and saw an advertisement in German newspaper, looking for German to be employed as Manager of UTC in Nigeria. I applied and the rest today is history.
I was hired to go to the headquarters in Switzerland; I had my interview in German language. I was hired as an expatriate and seconded to Nigeria. That was the start of my journey back to Nigeria and the rest is history.
Q: What were those significant challenges that you faced while growing up that later shaped your life?
A: First of all, I wasn’t born rich at all, but I made up my mind that I wanted to be somebody in life; and to be somebody in life you have to be resilient, persevere, focused, work towards it and beg God to bless whatever you are doing.
I wasn’t the most hardworking or best person; if other people have the same opportunuity I had, may be they would have done better, but that blessing of God was given to me.
I’ve had challenges in life but I didn’t dwell on them. I have a philosophy that once I have challenge, I put a wall between me and that challenge and think ahead.
Q: When you look back at your youthful days and compare it to what is happening nowadays, are there remarkable differences?
A: O yeah! There are remarkable differences. To start with, I never went to a nursey school, I never went to fee paying school.
The English I speak today was what I learnt starting from my primary school days, because then, teachers were dedicated and that’s why people like us always celebrate the principals and teachers who are alive.
Today’s teachers, what do they do? They sell all sort of things in classes to students; they don’t concentrate and can’t speak good English. And when you can’t speak good English, how can you impart knowledge on pupils.
I was on a radio programme recently and a teacher called me and I said you are complaining, but are you giving enough to the children? Very sad. So once that gap is there, it is not easy to fill.
During our time, teachers were dedicated, we were more studious and the classrooms were not these large.
You can pump in as much money as you wish on free education, but if you don’t have dedicated teachers and PTAs, it’s a wasted exercise.
Today, young people don’t want to crawl, they want to run, they want to make it overnight, they want to live large, they want to drive big cars, which is why cyber crime is rampant everywhere.
In their 20s, no visible means of livelihood and they are driving big cars while some of their mothers are encouraging them.
I even heard that there is a particular place in this Ogun State where they have Association of Yahoo Boys’ Mothers and they are getting away with it.
In Nigeria today, people celebrate your wealth with you without knowing its source, and the same thing happens when a lot of them venture into politics, they are celebrated.
Q: Where do you think we got it wrong and what can be done to correct the situation?
A: Like I said earlier on, people did not care about the source of somebody’s wealth. For example, a man is defrauding people all over the place and people still celebrate him.
You have every type of person flaunting wealth and people don’t care about the source of that wealth; it can’t work.
And to make it worse, everybody rushed into politics because they see it as a veritable means of becoming rich overnight, and that’s why I always advocated that we either have part time legislature in this country or we go back to parliamentary system of government that is less expensive.
The House of Representatives just ordered for about four hundred cars; each car will probably cost N30m to N40m and there are people who are suffering, while states are still negotiating to pay N30,000.00 minimum wage, it cant work!
Q: A lot of people see politics as a quicker means of making money. In your own case, what motivated you into joining politics?
A: I got into politics by accident. When I was the Manager of UTC, Ibadan, I sat in my office one day and my late friend, Safi Awofeso, who was my class mate in school, and whose mother was Chief Awolowo’s sister visited me.
Apparently, Baba Awolowo, who was living at Oke Bola, learnt that a Yoruba boy had just been made the Manager of UTC, and he sent Safi to go and check who the boy was.
Surprisingly, Safi Awofeso came into my office and said, Ah! Akeem, its you, and I said yes. He said Baba Awolowo would like to see me. And I got bold over after baba spoke to me.
When UPN was being formed, as Manager of UTC, I put in something small to thank Baba Awolowo as a recipient of qualitative free education.
I used to support people who I found intellectually very buoyant that are in politics; people like Chief Lekan Balogun, Sanni Zorro, the former President of NUJ, who was a youth corp member then in Ibadan and one of our boys, now in the House of Representatives.
Anytime he sees me or sees people around me, he tells them that these are people who groomed him in those days in Ibadan, and I was like a resource person until we had misunderstanding and I shifted my support to Late Chief S.M Afolabi whom I followed and supported when he moved to PDM and NPN.
I was later made the Publicity Coordinator of Shagari’s Presidential campaign in the South West zone under Late Chief K.O Mbadiwe and the first Northern SAN whose son is now the governor of Kwara, Baba Abdul Rasaq who was the Secretary.
I was playing my politics in Oyo State until one fateful day when Chief Niyi Adegbenro, who was my senior in secondary school and I went to Chief Bade Ojora’s house in London and met Chief Osoba. I knew Chief Osoba in Cocoa house because when he was the General Manager of Sketch, I was the Manager of UTC, all inside Cocoa house complex.
When Chief Adegbenro introduced me to him, he said that, “I know Bode now, I don’t know what he is doing in Oyo politics”. Chief Adegbenro now said, do you want him to come, and Chief Osoba responded that, yes, let him come to Ogun.
That’s why whatever I become today in Ogun politics, I owe it to Chief Adegbenro because he packaged me and created path for me to come into Ogun politics.
Q: You were once a member of the House of Representatives, what do you think people will remember you for during your tenure?
A: First of all, at the risk of being immodest, everybody said, our set was the best of House of Representatives members that this country ever had, because, to us it wasn’t about money, it was about service, compared to the amount of money people make today.
We weren’t making money, it was all about service, and we enjoyed it. I singlehandedly sponsored Police Security Trust Fund, which was shut down because then, I was not a member of the ruling party, PDP.
But if it had come into place then, insecurity today would have been a thing of the past.
And what was it based on, you cannot expect a policeman with nine or ten pieces of bullets to face an armed robber who has a chain of bullets around his body; you cannot call a policeman to go and risk his life to save your life or protect your life if he is not sure that if anything happens to him, his family would be looked after.
If he loses his life, the wife will not even have transport fare to go to Abuja to claim his pension, and how many of them ever got their pension. That’s why people steal pension funds.
And I believe that the security of lives and properties is the primary responsibility of any government. If it has been there and the funds are made available, the police would have been streghthened.
I sent the bill 20 years ago, and now we are having Amotekun, that’s why I support Amotekun.
We were there to serve. Some of them then, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Commissioner of Police and some others wrote me letters thanking me, but one of them, very instructively said to me; I doubt if the powers that be will let that bill sail through because it will mean that you are trying to block ‘foods’ for some people at the top, and he was right.
Q: Were your constituents happy about your representation?
A: That’s for my constituents to answer. But on several occasions when I was on radio programmes, some of them would call in to remind me and thank me for the Cooperative System which I set up in those days because I was the first person to represent three local governments as a Federal constituency in this Egba land. Abeokuta North, Obafemi-Owode and Odeda Federal Constituency was created in 1999 and I was the first representative.
First of all, my salary for four years; we had people who were getting that salary in my constituency office here in Adedotun; I mean my salary, not my allowances.
Secondly, I came home every weekend except when I travelled abroad. In four years, I spent two weekends only in Abuja, and I came always to Abeokuta to all the places I used to visit before the elections where they saw me and they could talk to me.
And I would go to my constituency office and found the pile up of letters of people who were in need of help and attended to them.
As at that time, each local government cooperative was set up with half a million naira, so that people would borrow and pay back.
But when I left the House of Representatives, I didn’t know whatever became of the money. That was left for the people who handled the money and were in charge.
Q: On a lighter mood, please tell us how you met your wife
A: How I met my wife, Fadeke, was very interesting. I did not meet my wife at a party, I met her at the Airport. In fact, my wife made me to come back and accept the offer of UTC, because already, I was a Department Manager in Germany.
I met my wife after my interview with UTC, and I was on my way back to Nigeria when I saw her at the Airport. Then, she had cousins who were travelling on the same flight with me and I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
When I got back to Germany, I decided to look for her and I fished her out.
We got married when she was in the University, and she had her first two children when she was a law student at Ife.
I thought at that time that if I didn’t marry her, I probably would not have married anybody because I was much older and doing well. May be I would just have been playing around with baby mamas.
Q: What role has your wife played in your life?
A: Wow! She has been my tower of strenght and one person who will look at me straight in the face and tell me the truth.
When she says to me that you are getting very arrogant and you want to fall, if you fall, I will be there by your side but you will carry the burden alone.
And on two occasions she told me and I fell. Ever since then, I never wished away whatever she said.
My wife tolerates me, and she has never looked into my phone or eavesdrop with my call; neither have I ever looked into her phone or eavesdrop into her calls.
The day I can’t trust her anymore, then she’s no longer my wife. I thank God that she’s not just my tower of strength alone, she is also to our children.
She is a lucky woman who has got three Lawyers as children; she has got Chartered Accountant; International Financial Management Consultant and Actuarist as children, and she is also a successful Solicitor in the United Kingdom.
Q: At 70, are you fulfilled?
A: Yes and no. Fulfilled in the sense that I thank God for where I am today. No, because I believe I can still do a lot more for humanity.
After 70, I’m planning to set up the Bode Mustapha foundation. I want to begin to give scholarships, though I have started, but at low level.
Only God knows how many children that will be moving from SS2 to SS3 every year, who are brilliant and indigent, for me to sponsor to not just any University, but Universities like OAU, UI, FUNAAB, OOU, UNILAG, ABU, NSUKKA, for them to also go and face the rigours of life and still be somebody, because someone also gave me a break in life.
At 18, I played table tennis for Nigeria National team and I won a tournament in Ibadan. When I made an acceptance speech, the Scott man who sponsored the tournament was highly impressed with my spoken English. He called me and said, “I would not let you waste in Nigeria, I’ll send you abroad; but I’m going to leave you to be on your own, but not to English speaking country”.
I was sent to Germany and was on my own. I had to go through life the hard way to be who I am today, and I believe that I owe it to give back to humanity, part of what God has done for me and in that way, I will leave a legacy.
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