Ojukwu’s Will: I Turned Down My Father’s Offer –Debe Ojukwu

Following his exclusion from of the Will of the late Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu- Ojukwu, his presumed eldest son, Chief Sylvester Debe Odumegwu-Ojukwu, has revealed to Saturday Mirror that he turned down his father’s offer while writing his Will. Speaking to Saturday Mirror in an exclusive interview in Lagos, Debe also denied having a running battle with his father’s widow, Bianca, and other members of the family over inheritance.

His words: “I don’t have any running battle with my father’s widow, Bianca.

The problem is that there are some misunderstandings which need to be put in proper light.

She is my father’s widow and there is nothing like a running battle between us. My relationship with her is still cordial. The only thing is that during my father’s burial, they were misguided by certain branches of the family. “What I am fighting for is my right and not inheritance. In a situation when I am still alive and somebody is claiming to be the first son, he needs to be corrected for future purpose and that is part of what I am trying to correct.

My duty as a first born is to put things right even if it is painful. “If any of the children was close to my father during his lifetime, I am the one because it is to me that he revealed many things.

There is no way a child will know about a Will unless it is written. With the level of my father’s education, I expect that he should have a Will. In fact, once, when my father was writing a Will, he asked me to come and sit beside him.

But I refused. He asked me why and I said, ‘I don’t know whether you are going to give me anything. Because if you are giving me anything and it now turns out when the Will goes into probate that I sat with you, it could be assumed that I influenced you to do certain things in my favour.

So, I left him and his lawyer in the parlour to continue writing the Will.”

On the ongoing crisis in All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), founded by his father, Debe Ojukwu called on Nigerians, especially the Igbos, to join hands together to put an end to the crisis.

“When a building is built, one thing that everybody knows about the building is that it gives shelter. But the builder will tell you how skilled the builder is. He can never give a guarantee that that house will never leak.

APGA is a house he built and certainly, there must be cracks and leakages. It is our duty to mend and block those cracks and leakages. So it is not a forgone issue. It is our duty to join hands together and try to still maintain that house (APGA) he built because it is a good vehicle for the unity of Nigeria.”

Source: National Mirror