The Million Naira "No": How We Dug Our Way Out of the Abacha Regime

In 1988, a car pulled up to our gate in Nigeria. My father was a government auditor at a Ministry I won’t name. He was a man of precise habits... ironed shirts, and polished shoes. He had recently caught some discrepancies in the books… numbers that didn't add up, funds that had developed legs and walked away.

The men in the car had come to make the problem "go away." They offered him One Million Naira.

You have to understand the gravity of this number. In 1988, One Million Naira was not just money… it was an empire. It was the kind of generational wealth that changes your surname and erases your struggles. It could have bought streets, influence, and a lifetime of ease.

My father with these people in the sitting room sat down, looked at the money, and then looked at his conscience. He chose the latter. He declined.

When he eventually resigned from government work, he didn't leave with a heavy pocket, but he left with a light heart. He used to tell us, his four children, that story often. He never looked back in regret. He never calculated the compound interest of what "could have been." He knew that peace of mind was a currency stronger than cash.

But then, the Abacha regime hit.

The Long Walk to the Farm

The 1990s in Nigeria were a furnace that melted many soft men. The economy collapsed, the middle class evaporated LITERALLY, and the comfort of the government work and money was gone. We were a family of six… two boys and two girls. Watching our parents navigate a country that seemed to be actively fighting against its own citizens.

My father took his gratuity… a fraction of what he could have stolen… and bought a piece of bush. It wasn't a mechanized farm with tractors and irrigation systems. It was raw land, 7 kilometers away from our house.

We didn't have a Toyota Hilux to drive us there. We did have a car, but it was always faulty. But… we had our legs.

Every morning, my mother, a Filipina woman who could have easily packed her bags and fled back to the Philippines when the suffering started, tied her wrapper tight. She didn't complain. She didn't look at my father with the resentment of a woman who married a "foolish" honest man. She marched.

I remember those walks vividly. The sun in Nigeria does not negotiate… it punishes. We walked those 7 kilometers my brother, my sisters, and I. Marching to the farm not to supervise, but to labor. We held shovels and pickaxes. We dug fish ponds with our bare hands until our palms blistered and calloused. We went from being "Oga's children" to labourers in the span of a few years. Even when he got consultancies, myself and my brother worked as labourers for him and he paid us. Imagine, I was 17 years old and was digging ponds. He allocated 10 feet by 10 feet by 2 feet deep for us to dig and we had to do it in a day to earn 250 Naira.

We were digging for our lives.

Smart Work vs. Hard Work

But my father taught us that grit is useless without strategy. Hard work can dig a hole, but only smart work can fill it with gold. He didn't just want to farm… he wanted to innovate.

Using the knowledge he had gained while studying in the Philippines years prior, he became a pioneer. He was the first person to introduce Aquarium fishes to Nigeria in the early 80s. Our backyard was a maze of concrete ponds breeding beautiful, colorful ornamental fish. It was a lucrative monopoly.

Then, the infrastructure collapsed. NEPA (National Electric Power Authority) became epileptic. Aquarium fish are fragile… they need constant oxygen and electric pumps. Without light, the fish died, and the business began to suffocate.

Most men would have folded. They would have blamed the government, blamed the military, and sat in the dark. My father pivoted.

He cracked the code for breeding Catfish fingerlings and also rearing to table fish size. He realized a fundamental economic truth: in a recession, people might stop buying fish to look at, but they will never stop buying fish to eat.

He switched the business model from "Luxury" to "Survival." He adapted the breeding techniques he learned abroad to local species. That decision saved us. The ponds we dug by hand began to teem with life.

The "Hey" Incident: A Test of Dignity

While the farm was growing, I had my own battles to fight. I was 19 years old, desperate to contribute, and hungry for independence. I got a job as a dog cleaner for a wealthy Korean expatriate.

I took the job seriously. I scrubbed those dogs until they sparkled. I fed the dogs with precision. I showed up early. But for six months, this man never called me by my name.

He would just shout, "Hey!"

"Hey, come here." "Hey, clean this." "Hey, move that."

I was young, and I was broke. But I was my father's son. I had watched a man turn down a million naira to keep his self-respect, and I realized I couldn't sell mine for a minimum wage. Money without dignity is just poverty in disguise.

So, I quit. I walked away from the money because I couldn't stomach the erasure of my identity.

A few days later, the dynamic changed. The man realized that the "boys" he hired to replace me didn't care. The kennels were dirty; the dogs were restless. He realized that nobody cleaned the dogs like "Hey."

The excellence of my work had made me indispensable. He called me back. But this time, the terms were different. He didn't just hire me back… he respected me. He learned my value because I was willing to walk away.

When he finally left Nigeria in 1999, he handed me an envelope with 15,000 Naira. He told me he didn't want anyone else to have it. That 15,000 Naira was the seed capital that paid for my ticket to the Philippines. It was the bridge to my future.

The Harvest of Integrity

Today, people look at my family and think we got lucky. They see us living abroad, comfortable and established. They don't see the 7km walks in the sun. They don't see the Filipina woman digging in the mud. Carrying maggots from poultry farms to feed catfishes every afternoon. They don't see the rejected bribe that could have made life "easy."

That farm is still in Nigeria. It is not gathering dust… it is gathering revenue. My mother manages it remotely from Canada, proving that systems built on integrity last longer than hustles built on shortcuts. She even built a school from the proceeds of that struggle, planting seeds of knowledge in the same soil we once dug with desperation.

All four of us the two boys and the two girls are abroad now. He worked so hard to make sure we studied in the Philippines. Where he got his university education.We are standing on the foundation laid by a man who refused to sell his soul for quick cash.

We do have our own families now and are doing very well without the proceeds of the farm and the school. But anyone can go back home and continue.

There are people on this app who know this story. They hide in the shadows. 😊

The Lesson for This Generation

I tell this story to remind you of one thing… You do not have to sell your soul to be someone in life.

We live in a time where "Smartness" is equated with fraud, and "Grace" is often a euphemism for theft. We are told that the honest man is the "Mumu" (the fool) who finishes last.

But I am living proof that the tortoise eventually beats the hare. The path of integrity is longer. It is harder. It involves walking 7 kilometers when others are driving stolen cars. It involves quitting a job when your dignity is threatened. But the destination is guaranteed.

We worked hard, but we also worked smart. We stuck together when the world was falling apart. And most importantly, we learned that a good name is an inheritance that never devalues.

My father didn't leave us millions in a bank account in 1988. He passed away in 2017 but he left us something better. He left us the strength to build our own. And that is a wealth that no inflation can destroy.

Every year on January 17, I remember him. Even now, as I type these words, I can't stop the tears. I miss him deeply.

He was a disciplinarian, yes. He made us walk the hard road. But looking back, I realize that even with the strictness, he had a good head on his shoulders. He possessed a clarity of character that is rare in this world. HIS CHARACTER WAS STRONG!!! Mine is not has strong as his, but jeez, his was strong.

You can buy a house, you can buy a car, and you can even buy a title. But you can never buy the kind of wisdom that says "No" to a million naira just to sleep with a clean conscience.

That is what he gave us. And that is why, even though he is gone, he is still the richest man I have ever known.