Scooby: A rough gem turned Sapphire!

Scooby,

A rough gemturned Sapphire!

An interview with Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, SAN, CON, a bosom friend of Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, and the President of Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Prince Kayode was four times a cabinet Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

When did you meet him, how long have you known him?

We met in the University of Lagos, socially of course because we were never in the same faculty but socially he was popular on campus in his own way, he was involved in a lot of things, I think he had this club called FOADS, and I think he was also active in other clubs which are not that social and we just gravitated together, we always hang around a place called the black market. Sometimes we also met at parties in Surulere and he knew a many Grammarians that is students of CMS grammar school; actually, his younger brother was my junior in school, but I never knew until much later. So, we were moving within the same social circle at that time.

So, after school how has your path stuck together?

After school everybody went his way and he joined the Nigeria Customs Service immediately and then went back to the University of Lagos to read law; I think he was not too happy with his first degree which was business administration, he was not too happy with his grade because he knew he was not that serious on campus, you know he was one of those motor bike guys, and I think he was a member of the Pyrates Confraternity, so he was lucky to escape by the skin of his teeth, so he thought he needed to do more than that, so he went back to read law but I had moved to Abuja by that time, and moved on with my life. One day, I went to Calabar for an election petition in 1992 or something like that then I ran into him at the airport, he was wearing his usual dirty ripped jeans and t-shirt and he said that he was with the Customs that he was in charge of the riverine area, I wished him well and we moved on. All these while, we never knew we

Prof. Adesoji Adesugba with his bison friend, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, the President of ACCI

were from same local government in Ondo state, we never knew we were maybe distant cousins because in my local government especially in my village, virtually everybody there is related to somebody and secondly his mother is from Ogori and a lot of people from there are also married to Akunnu my mother’s village. Then I think he now left customs and came to Abuja and joined the NIPC and so we started linking up.

But what really brought us together was when I foolishly decide to go into politics, I discussed this with him, and I think he was in politics before me because he had done some work with Adefarati in Alliance for Democracy in 1999. So when I went into politics in

2003, it was easy for him to give me a lot of ideas and back me to act like my pillar, I was absolutely out of my depths, I just went in like I do in many things, having absolute confidence in myself but it doesn’t work that way; so he was able to support me to do a lot of things.

Some character traits must have kept you together; what are some of these character traits that you noticed in him, things about him that you probably admire of him?

It is difficult sometimes to talk about character traits, it is a form of titration, you have to mix this chemical that is going to react with this chemical that will give something. I think it was because

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