Akande's Last Revenge

Akande knew he never wanted children. He knew the price of school fees and knew it was the same as renting a flat in Lagos. At 28, he was more interested in working to save up enough money to put into a good fixed deposit account that would give him high returns than he was in finding a wife or having children. Then he met Baridosia.

Baridosia worked as a financial guru giving seminars all around the country. She talked about how to grow a business and how to save money. When Akande first met her, he didn't think that in three years, they would be married with their first child on the way. But so is this mystery called life. Akande and Baridosia went on to have four children: Sola, Wunmi, Tekena, and Praise. Baridosia died the day she gave birth to Praise.

Akande struggled to raise the children after Baridosia's passing. At the time she died, Sola was already 10, Wunmi was 8, Tekena was 5, and Praise was a baby. They had gone from a two-income household where Baridosia had been the main breadwinner to a single-person household where Akande barely got by with his job in ministry.

Still, he persevered. He raised them diligently and dutifully. The culture of saving and investing Baridosia had taught him was one he tried to pass on to his children. But his children were more interested in outshining their friends and getting the latest trendy gadgets than they were in saving. Akande thought it was a phase the children would eventually grow out of but as the years rolled by, it seemed that their greed and lust after material things only increased. By the time Sola was 18, he resented his father for not having more. For making him school here in Nigeria instead of abroad where his friends from secondary school had gone to university. His harsh words and hatred against his father sipped into the younger ones. By the time Akande could fully accept that his children did not like him, all four of them had already began to concoct a plan to kill their own father.

Akande had told his children since they were little that he had money set aside for them which they would inherit after he died. He told them how his mother and himself had poured fifty percent of their income into this fixed deposit account in their name making it very buoyant.

When Akande retired at 60, Sola was 29, Wunmi was 27, Tekena was 24, and Praise was 19. Each had a lot of things they wanted to do with money. None of them had enough money to do the things they wanted. So they went to Akande with Sola as their spokesperson and asked him to give them their inheritance.

Akande refused saying that the longer the money stayed in the fixed deposit account, the more interest it accumulated for them. Akande's children were not interested in any future interests. They wanted the money and they wanted it in that moment. Akande stood his ground. The children came up with a plan.

Akande's years from when he was 60-63 were the worst of his life. He was starved of food, televisions were switched off in the middle of programs he was watching, loud music blared from bedrooms when he was trying to sleep. The response from his children was the same every time he would complain about the hell they were putting him through: give us our money and we would let you be in peace.

When Akande was 64, he called his children to the living room. He told them that the information they would need to access the location and password to their account was written on a piece of paper which he put inside a silver box and buried under the house they lived in. Akande told his children that he no longer remembered the information on the paper and that the only way to get the information would be to dig.

"But digging would take too much time," his children said. "We would rather bulldoze this house and use machinery to dig a hole until the box is found."

Akande told them that they could instead exercise patience and get to digging with the house still in tact, but the children wanted to hear no part of that. Akande said he would not sit by and watch the house he and his wife built be destroyed. He said it would only happen over his dead body. His children decided they no longer had a choice. It was going to have to happen over his dead body.

Akande died on his 65th birthday. A day later he was buried in a quiet ceremony. By the next week, a bulldozer was in the Akande compound.

The destruction was swift. Akande's house came down a lot faster than it had taken to build. Still, it was not fast enough for his children. Eventually, after seven days, the house had been completely demolished and the children could finally start digging for the silver box.

It didn't take long to find it. The box was buried very close to the surface of the land by the place where the edge of the house used to be. Sola was the one who carried the box and opened it on the boot of his father's car which he now drove. Inside, there was a letter signed by Akande.

If you have dug to find this, you have surprised me and I am proud of you. Come to me with this letter. I will tell you the whereabouts of your inheritance.

If not, then I am sure you have razed the house down and that I am no longer alive. My own father told me a story of a man who buried supposed treasures under his house. His children demolished it destroying the only inheritance they had in search of fool's gold.

I truly hope you have dug to find this letter. Otherwise my children, you have found only one thing here: Fool's Gold.

Now, you will have to build with your own hands a place to lay your head. I hope the journey to success is easier for you than it was for me. I hope you finally learn the virtue of hard work and patience. I hope you find a spouse that would love and support you. I hope you have children who will be kinder to you than you ever were to me.

I love you my children. I hope the lessons life would teach you on your road ahead do not cause you to give up. I hope you can remember the lessons I tried to teach you whenever I got the chance to. I hope you listened.

I love you. Hopefully life will be kinder to you than it was to me.

Good luck!

Short story written and edited by me: Jide Okonjo.

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