Life And People
How I decided to study to become an #Accountant -By Omagbitse Barrow
After recovering from my near shock and thanking the big man, I hurriedly asked my father – “who is this man”, and he said “that’s Bashorun MKO Abiola”. I then asked – what does he do? My father explained that he was a businessman, philanthropist and an ACCOUNTANT like my aunt, Elizabeth O. Adegite who I was also very fond of.
The celebration of Nigeria’s #Democracy Day in honour of the failed presidential bid of M.K.O. Abiola will be incomplete without me telling my personal #MKO story.
It was late in 1991 after I had finished the JSCE exams and was about to transition to Senior Secondary School at Kings College in Lagos, my father was on an official trip to Abuja and he decided to take myself and my sister Tracy Barrow Enebeli along.
It was our first time visiting Nigeria’s modern and very new capital city which many years later became our home, but back to the story…
We were in the packed departure lounge at the local wing of the Lagos Airport sipping on our bottles of Fanta when this tall, impressive man in large flowing agbada (traditional Nigerian outfit) came in. Everyone started to stand up to greet him. He was clearly very important. He walked towards us and the greetings continued. He hailed my father “Doctor” and my father got up and greeted him as everyone else did.
My sister and I followed my fathers cue, got up and greeted this “big man”. He asked for our names, commented on our striking resemblance to our father, patted us on our heads and dug his hands into his pockets. Out came the crispiest currency notes we had ever seen and he handed us N50 each- it was the largest single cash gift I had ever received in my life. For context, my pocket money in boarding school at that time was about N20 per term, so this was a windfall by all standards.
After recovering from my near shock and thanking the big man, I hurriedly asked my father – “who is this man”, and he said “that’s Bashorun MKO Abiola”. I then asked – what does he do? My father explained that he was a businessman, philanthropist and an ACCOUNTANT like my aunt, Elizabeth O. Adegite who I was also very fond of.
I said to myself – “Hmmm, one day I will like to be an accountant too”, and I did 9 years later, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in 2000. Perhaps I was inspired by the “currency”???
MKO Abiola went on to become a politician, and won the presidential elections of 1993 that were annulled. I too shared in his political vision to transform our country, and was a candidate in the 2019 elections for the House of Representatives seat for Abuja, which I lost gallantly.
He was a great guy, not a perfect one, but a great one. Enjoy this short video clip of the amazing MKO, that should be an example to our political class today of the depth and quality that is expected of serious-minded political leaders.
Interestingly, my darling wife’s initials were also MKO – Mary Kemi Oni, now Kemi Barrow so I guess MKO inspired me in many ways than you can imagine.
