THE MERGER

A legal fiction.

 

             THE MERGER

 

I  heard  the crowing of a c**k from a distance beyond dream's bay. It was first, a surrealistic whisper, as it got louder it became a cacophony of croaky chronometrical crows, and it beat upon my eardrums with an irritatingly loud polyphonic impatience.

I woke up with a start.

The cockcrow filled the room.

It came from my newly acquired Nokia phone.

The ‘c**k crow’ tone had been blue-toothed to my phone by Shade, a junior colleague, after a court session the week before. She had also blue-toothed me the 'crazy frog' tone.

I shivered briefly, better to be woken up by a crowing c**k than a crazy frog!

 

As I showered, I cursed the CBN governor for the umpteenth time. Thanks to him, my work hours had near doubled.

Twenty billion naira! Did he think money dropped from the sky? He makes a rather daring policy that experts older than himself have faulted, and then sits in the comfort zone of Abuja and smiles sadistically at the desperate attempts of banks to meet the short deadline!

Four months to go and Pivot Bank was farther from 25 billion naira than Savannah Bank directors were far from their bank's once very busy vaults.

Of course, we opted for Plan B, hence, the cause of my anti-consolidation.

 

Mergers in Law School lecture halls and corporate boardrooms had less in common than a horse and a sea-horse.

No sooner had we finished dealing with the valuation method utilized by our Financial Advisers which they could neither defend before SEC nor the shareholders, of which our application to CBN for its Approval-In- Principle was further delayed by another two months, than the issue of whether we had a quorum at the court-ordered meeting, where a majority representing not less than 75% in value of the shares of members approved the Scheme, arose.

And the whole s**t lands on the company secretary's table.

My table!

 

 

As I drove into the parking lot, my phone began to ring, actually ‘croaked’, because it was the on-your-nerve 'crazy frog' tone!

 Just a little crazier than the caller, I thought, since I deliberately but aptly, saved the tone for the caller.

"Deinde." Alero’s voice sounded as impatient as ever. 

"Yes."

"Do you remember its Lola’s birthday today?"

"Oh yes, I do."

"You liar! I know you always forget!"

"Look Alero, I don’t know what you want, I call her, you tell me not to, and you even instructed her to not only stop calling me but to stop answering my calls! I comply with that ugly state of things and then you call me this morning and….."

She had hung up. Typical!

Crazy frog!

Alero Williams was the kind of woman ‘The Bearded One’ would divorce Bianca for, now, that's a lot to give up, but two days in same house with her would have him seeking amnesty again, just to be as far away from her as possible.

To punish Alero for being so beautiful, nature mangled her character. She was rude, a tattler, a nag, vain, high maintenance, admired young blokes openly and threatened to seek one out every time you upset her, which was every time.

 Well, she sought one out one day.

That I married this character and lasted five years with her was the stuff that great church testimonies were made of! Parting the Red Sea was a minor miracle in my chronicles.

It was not her deficiency in good behavior that propelled me to the Old Baileys to seek divorce; it was, rather, the protection of my sanity. I believed that if I stayed with her one more day I would be institutionalized!

She fought me to a standstill on Lola's custody, she cooked up lies and papers to show I was not mentally balanced or have the financial capacity or sense of responsibility to take care of my daughter. She got Lola and a large divorce package, I got disillusioned and a ticket for the next available BA flight to Nigeria.

 

My desk was littered with correspondence; I was one of those old buffs who found it hard to shred any paper, even if it was just a simple memo from my MD asking for the phone number of the tailor who made my linen clothes. My secretary dared not tamper with my papyri heap. It was my pet peeve.

I went through the court judgement ratifying the regularity of the court-ordered meeting, which was in full accordance with the provisions of the Companies and Allied Matters Act , where the formation of a quorum was concerned.

I was going to call Chief Tayo Afolabi (SAN), the bank's external solicitor, to illuminate some points I didn’t quite understand because they were lost in typical Nigerian verbose legalese, when the phone rang.

It was from the corporate affairs office of IDC bank, the bank with which we were merging.

"….. Dr. Alex. Ekpeyong had a fatal motor accident and died on the spot…."

Alex Ekpeyong was IDC bank's company secretary. He and I had struck up a bonding friendship since the merger procedures began. We found we had so much in common than our banks did. We both schooled in Nottingham for our masters, we were both Arsenal fans, we were both addicted to Star lager beer, we were both members of Ikoyi Club, and most shockingly, we were both divorcees. The only difference were that he was older than I was, though very young at heart, and he changed girls like Imelda Marcus changed shoes. I was too wounded to attempt such boldness in spite of all Alex's most desperate attempts, that I left London with my mind still sound was orgasm enough for me. Thanks.

I wasn’t thinking all that now, in fact I wasn’t thinking the loss of a friend, I was, to my wicked shame, thinking how to start working with IDC's new company secretary on the merger. Would he be as sharp-minded as Alex was? Would we get along as well? The marriage between two banks starts with the compatibility of its corporate officers, not its assets or equities.

I arrested my insensitivity and contained the news to the loss of a friend.

The tears meandered down my cheeks freely.

 

The funeral ceremony was brief and un-Nigerian; Nigerians took burials more seriously than birthdays. I saw his ex-wife, she cried more than everyone else. I wondered briefly what Alero would do at my funeral. Answer: We may never know because she wouldn’t even be there. But then again who knows? If God could touch the heart of Jeffery Damer, He can touch anybody's.

Some friends and I paid for an obituary page in The Guardian; I looked down at the smiling photograph of Alex and realized how fragile we were as human beings. I said a little prayer for him.

 

I was poring over a Business Africa rating of Nigeria’s quoted companies when my phone rang.

It was the MD so I answered in a sycophantic tone.

"Hello sir. Your boy at your service sir."

Sometimes we got that familiar.

He ignored that. It was always hard to tell when he would respond to a little lightness, sometimes he would be so lighthearted that he would attempt to tell you jokes he had heard told at the Nite of a Thousand Laughs. He seemed to have the rare talent of disvirgining the jokes of their humour then serve you the hymen-less substance, cold. We laughed anyway, harder than we did when we heard the funny originals! We had stakes here you see.      

"IDC just appointed a new Company Secretary, please get in touch and prepare all relevant documents going to SEC and CBN, let's get on with this thing!"

Mr Gabriel Oyetunji was both a debonair gentleman and a slave-driver, all in one two- piece suit at any one time. He was on location Number Two now; his plantation.

"Will do, sir."

"Please get on with it right away; I want us to do the Exchange of Due Diligence latest 15th of next month!" He bellowed. “Latest!”

"Ok, sir."

I placed a call to IDC bank and asked to speak with the new company secretary, a brief wait.

"Sorry sir, she's not in at the moment"

She?

“Please, tell her to get in touch with Pivot bank's secretary when she gets back."

"Ok."

A she?

 I swear I was no chauvinist. I actually believe that women have a greater ability to multi-task than men. My only problem with working with or for women was that those of them who rise through the corporate ladder to high executive positions tend to try too hard to prove their capabilities at the expense of irritating the nerve out of you. I'd had my fair share of irritations in life and wouldn't, couldn’t stand another helping of it at this crucial point of the merger!

I was doing just fine with Alex.

The phone startled me out of my wandering thoughts.

"Hello Sir." My secretary said." A call for you from IDC."

"Yep. Put em on."

A click, a voice….. a sweet female voice.

"Mr Deinde Martins?" My name had never sounded sweeter.

"Speaking."

''My name's Funmi Akerejola," I noticed a slight American accent. “I’m the new IDC company secretary."

"Oh!" I swam out of the honey of her voice."Congratulations on your appointment!”

''Oh! Thanks. It’s nothing. Sorry about Alex but we need to continue from where he stopped, when can we schedule a meeting for?"

A lets-get-down-to business type! I hoped it was in the right measure though. 

"Anytime's fine with me. I'm in all day if you will drop by."

"I'll be there at, say, four, that ok?"

"Perfect."

 

At precisely four o clock, she walked into my office.

Now, Alero might have eroded my attraction to beautiful women, but certainly not my acknowledgement of beauty.

Funmi Akerejola was slim at the waist, defined on the hips, ample on the bosoms, beautiful on the face and stylish in fashion, just the kind of lady that would have got my heart racing pre-Alero! But hey, been there, done that, got burnt!

So I was all company secretary when I got up to shake her hand.

She shook it lightly and sat down first.

"I see Alex had a full table." She got round to business after a rather short exchange of pleasantries.

The meeting was brisk. She displayed an uncommon ability at simplifying complex problems; she had a good knowledge of law and banking.

"I was on the team of lawyers who worked on the big one when I was in the States, the Chevron-Texaco merger!" She later declared rather unassumingly. "I was the youngest member of the team, but my principal who was busy working on the Kyoto Protocol for the U.S government at the time, said to his partners, ‘Trust me, she's the only one who would do it just as I would.’ ”      

 

Due diligence was concluded a little less than a month later, Funmi and I worked days and far into nights, running rain checks on each others’ banks, we combed papers, pushed internal and external lawyers, made temporary enemies of accountants and auditors, argued with consultants, I even traveled to Abuja for a meeting at the Corporate Affairs Commission to verify certain legal issues. We made the deadline by a thin edge.

At the Due Diligence Exchange press conference, I sat beside Funmi, beside our respective bosses, having basked in the euphoria of commendations from them for the thorough job we had done in such a short time.

At a brief reception that took place at the ballroom of Eko Le Meridien after the press briefing, Funmi and I were not to be parted.

Her MD called us “the physical symbolism of our corporate compatibility.'' We all laughed at the joke.  

"You know, it’s been work, work, work and we know nada bout each other's lives but everything bout each other's banks." I said to her as I knifed through my marinated chicken.

"Work, work, work is my life." She said through mouthfuls, "so you know about everything bout my life."

''You've read my autobiography."

"You, my friend," she said with a cute side-lip smile," are a plagiarist."

"I see both banks are getting along quite well here." We both looked up to see Clifford Akale, the Editor of BusinessDay newspaper standing over us and winking mischievously at me.

''Hey Cliff," I said, "Sit your a*s down and stop being mischievous!"

We pumped hands fondly. Clifford and I were Ikoyi Club members outside our line of work that afforded us the chance to meet at various financial-related forums.

He sat opposite me.

"Never quite met Miss.Akerejola," he said offering his hand to Funmi, ''read so much about you though, plus I was a fan of your father's, never met the SAN before he passed on. I regret."

She smiled sweetly, shaking his hand from across the table.

''Thanks, I read your stuff regularly, good work.''

''So far, so good, the merger.''

''Yeah,'' she agreed with him, ''so far so good.''

''Deinde," he faced me now,'' haven’t quite gotten over Alex, it came as a shock to all of us."

''Cliff, that’s life for you…"

We talked about everything financial and un-financial like life, death, food, drinks, CBN, IMF, NSE, SEC, Soludo, Obasanjo, and so on, until Cliff left the table to continue his financial news poaching.

I broke the silence.

“I didn’t realize I was basking in the eminent presence of the scion of the greatest legal luminary of our time, Chief Raymond Akerejola (SAN)!”

“That’s cos my label fell off.” She joked.

“Very funny.”

“Tired of people seeing you under Daddy’s spotlight, like you haven’t got any of yours,” she genuinely sounded irritated, “they make it impossible for you to be your own person.”

“It’s a biological fact that he’s got a piece of himself in you. The respect may be justifiable.” I pointed out between a sip of cold juice, “See the Fela and Femi example.”

“Friend of mine pointed out that none of Bola Ige’s kids took to law, I love that! Sometimes I wish I became the designer I so wanted to be, but daddy wouldn’t hear the family anathema! Now we have a boring company secretary who has retired from active litigation and now pores over the monotonous complexities of banking, my damn luck!”

“Beats catwalking! I don’t think….. ” Her phone interrupted me.

She answered the call and talked for about five minutes.

“That was my baby father.” She said exasperatedly.

“Baby? I didn’t realize you had one.” I couldn’t feign a lack of surprise.

“She’s a big girl now, had her during my masters up in Harvard, an angel, just like her mother.” She giggled with soft jingles that sounded like cherubic innocence, if there was ever an acoustic genre of the type.

“How about the father?”

“He used to be everything a woman wanted in a man, now he is everything a woman prayed against.” I saw immediately she was an alumnus of Heartbreak College, wasn’t sure, though, if she had higher grades than I did.

“I know, I know.” Something about my voice must have indicated that I wasn’t just sympathizing or empathizing, from the way she looked at me, I knew she knew.

 

 

A week later, when Mr. Gabriel Oyetunji called me up to his office, I knew all was not well, his tone said it all.

 First of all, it hadn’t been a particularly good morning for me.

Alero had called the night before to order me to pick her mum up from the airport. After working late till 3;30 am, I drove to the airport to wait for the BA flight due to land at 4:45am, it came one hour, fifteen minutes later, and to add to my irritation, when Alero’s mum appeared, there, beside her was my daughter, Lola.

Alero didn’t think it was my business to let me know that my only child was coming to Nigeria! It wasn’t meant to be a 'surprise! surprise!' It was a clear instance of ‘The-Girl-Is-Mine!’

Lola rushed into my arms with great joy. I was almost in tears but I held myself together and lifted her up excitedly.

Alero’s mum, who’s DNA cloned Alero, stood there coldly, and when I complained about not been informed that Lola was coming too, she replied me thus; “Oh! She didn’t think it was necessary to bother you.”  

And when I dropped them off at her posh apartment in Ikoyi Parkview and said I would come by that evening to spend sometime with Lola, she feigned a smile and said, “Oh! That won’t be too convenient cos Lola needs to rest well after such a long flight; we are leaving for Asaba first thing tomorrow morning by road.”

Like mother like daughter!

Presently, I walked into the MD’s office.

His head was buried in heaps of paper; his tie was askew, indicative of his present mood.

He was scowling over a document which he slowly handed to me without looking up.

I saw the CBN letterhead and read the content which ordered us to suspend the merger as IDC was under investigation for misrepresenting its assets, liabilities and undertakings including real properties.

My boss cleared his throat while my heart thumped.

“So how did you miss that during due diligence?”  

“I don’t understand” I said through a dry throat.

“I understand… my guess is you must have been carrying out due diligence on the company secretary, you must have missed the company.”

Now he was taking the piss but I was silent.

“There must be some explanation for this.”

“I’ll investigate.”

“Investigate all you want, but what happens to the deadline?”

As if I had an idea.

We stared blankly at each other for a while then he passed me the accompanying documents which contained CBN’s report. I took them from him and without another word, walked out of his office.

Back in my office, I hadn’t sat down before I started making calls.

I scheduled a meeting with Mr. Mike Dawodu, the Managing Partner of Viva Associates, the financial consulting firm we retained to do this shoddy job and Chief Tayo Afolabi (SAN), our external solicitor whose Law firm, Afolabi,Peterside,Hambali and Partners, lent legal support to this shoddiness.

I studied the CBN report carefully and wondered if it had its facts right. It was unimaginable to think that IDC would attempt to inflate so much, hide away judgement debts valued at astronomical amounts, claim assets that didn’t belong to them and other documentary misrepresentations.

Mr.Dawodu came in first; short, squat, verbal, full of professional arrogance and numbers.

 Shortly after, Ben Peterside, one of the partners of Chief Afolabi (SAN) walked in, smartly dressed in Saville Row suit. An old-fashioned esquire.

When they were both comfortably seated in the conference room, I unceremoniously passed them the CBN documents which they scrutinized silently.

Dawodu spoke first.

“How did these documents get to CBN?”

They must have popped out of Soludo’s eyes! I so badly wanted to say, but instead I said, “I don’t know.”

“When we find out how these documents got to CBN, we’ll know what is happening.” Ben Peterside agreed. “It’s some internal sabotage.” He said too quietly.

“All these documents are public documents and are verifiable, that’s my point.” I said breathlessly. “CBN knows that it must have performed a preliminary verification before ordering a suspension of process.”

My phone crowed. The c**k crow tone had never sounded more irritating.

It was Funmi Akerejola.

“Deinde,” she said breathlessly, “Have you seen the CBN Report and Suspension Order?”

“Yes. I was just trying to dissect it before I call you to ask what’s going on, but now that you called first, what’s going on?”

“An awful lot.” She sounded exhausted. “Chief Obinna Wari has been up to some shady arrangements but the s**t has hit the fan! All in one day!”

Chief Obinna Wari was IDC bank’s former MD and co- founder. He had made headlines when he was implicated by the EFCC in a money laundering case that involved an indicted governor. The board had dropped him, his shares and assets had been frozen indefinitely. However, people in the financial circles knew he still tried to pull strings from behind the scene to still control the bank he co-founded, but to no avail; the bank was moving on without him.     

“What are you talking about?”

“You have to come by here immediately.” 

I suspended the meeting, instructing them to study the documents and verify all the claims.

 My driver knew when to fly and when to drive, he could tell from my look that this was no time to drive, he used to drive one of the bank’s bullion vans, he probably thought he still drove one. We meandered through the traffic from Akin Adesola on Victoria Island to Awolowo Way, Ikoyi in half the normal time it took.

I was ushered into Funmi’s office without delay.

“There’s too much crap going on right now.” She didn’t even wait for me to be seated before she started talking. “The CBN people just left here now.”

“What’s going on?” I repeated impatiently.

“Chief Obinna Wari is trying to frustrate the merger. Because he is no longer running things here, he tried to influence votes during the EGM but it didn’t work; now he connives with one of our retained consultants and sends this fictitious report to CBN.”

I digested this piece of information.

“Why is he doing this? Is it not detrimental to his interests in the bank?”

“First, he made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want us to merge with your bank, he had his nominees, but his words don’t carry around here anymore.”

She picked her nose, the first unlady-like thing I’d seen her do so far, I wasn’t turned off; my mind was too busy at this point to care any less.

“He wrote, complaining about the Terms of the Scheme, he complained that we were being shortchanged by transferring all assets, liabilities and undertakings, including real and intellectual property rights to you in exchange for you guys issuing and allotting your ordinary shares to our shareholders on the basis of four of your shares to every of our six held.”

“But does he realize that sending such documents will not only jeopardize your bank’s possibility of ever merging with any bank right now, but will also escalate his troubles with the authorities?”

“It beats all our collective imagination what he was thinking when he did this!” she spurted out violently. “Jeopardizing all we’ve been working for! Damn!”

“Are all his facts in those documents fictitious?” I asked “Cause CBN should be able to see right away that such a report was coming from a drowning man carrying loads of sour grapes and, therefore, cant attach too much importance to it if they had not investigated and found that some of the claims were valid.”

“The court judgments are true, but the five companies involved had agreed in principle to a debt buy-back arrangement that was initiated by Chief Obinna Wari himself but has not been committed to writing, he went back and told them to reverse their agreement, imagine that! So it wasn’t listed on our liabilities.”

“No wonder my team of monkeys missed it! Like the records are no longer in open court for all to see! Is that the only valid claim?”

“Yes!”

“All the others are forged documents?”

She nodded furiously.

“He’s smooching with criminal prosecution!”

“A fallen man need fear no fall!” she said under her breath.

“And drowning one of the most reputable consulting firms in Nigeria with himself?”

“That’s the part we just can’t understand! MD thinks its either he has something on them that puts their balls in his hands or he used their letterheads illegally! I’m more inclined to believe the latter!” 

“The insane actions of desperate men always amaze the hell out of me!”

There was pin drop silence in the room.

“What now?” I broke it.

“We halt, we wait for the outcome of CBN’s investigations, and if they finish before the December 31^st deadline….well, who knows? Our Chairman’s in Abuja right now trying to see the bigman with the bigstick, The almighty Soludo!”

“And the letter categorically states that you can’t even proceed on any merger arrangement whatsoever until the conclusion of their investigations. The guy screwed you guys over, bigtime!”

“The beast!” she hissed, “He sure did!” 

 

 

 

  

At the EGM that was quickly convened through my office, shareholders of Pivot Bank approved the Scheme of Merger between it and Unicorn Trust bank. Unicorn Trust had been our second option, they missed being first due to a shortfall in its national spread, before now, they had been talking with another powerful group that would have put them in a weak and disadvantageous position. It was with utmost excitement that they jumped at our proposal, pulled out of their fragile arrangement and quickly signed a Memorandum of Understanding with us, not without the loud buzz of the press.

It was unanimously resolved at the meeting that Pivot could not wait for IDC to resolve its internal issues before we proceed with the merger process for sundry reasons, including the fact that we didn’t know how long the suspension order would subsist.

I was of the opinion that we had gone too far with IDC to pirouette and start all over again, believing that since the claims of the insane Chief held as much water as a basket could, CBN would lift the order in no time. I was a minority in this argument. Time, they all said, wasn’t on our side.

The next platoon to deal with was the press.

Calls kept my c**k really busy and noisy. I repeated over and over again that our fallout with IDC was not unconnected with the CBN suspension and not because we could not agree on a scheme as some newspapers had reported, and that we had categorically stated this at the press conference announcing our pullout from this merger.

The IDC scandal dominated financial news and had led to the arrest of the Managing Partner of PDF Bluechip Consulting, the firm Chief Obinna Wari allegedly connived with to compile the claims sent to CBN, who had reportedly denied any knowledge of the claims and accused Chief Obinna Wari of forging his firm’s letterhead. A great mess in the press!

Maybe pulling out of this marriage was worthwhile after all. I thought.

 

Because Pivot bank had to start its merger process all over again, my personal life was on an indefinite suspension. I worked twenty hours a day.

Every once in a while I called Funmi Akerejola to confirm some of the things I read about the IDC scandal in the papers. She sounded old and exhausted. The poor girl! Must be dealing with so much right now.

One evening, I had just finished a joint meeting of the boards of the merging banks and didn’t feel like jumping straight to work that might keep me up till late into the night, so I drove to Ikoyi Club for a few drinks. After a bottle of my favorite Star lager beer, I called Funmi.

“Was wondering if you could join me up for a drink, I’m over at Ikoyi Club.”

“Only if you promise me that we wont mention the words, ‘bank’, ‘merger’, ‘CBN’, ‘Report’, ‘Suspension’…..”

“Say no more! You got your man! Those are the last words on my mind tonight. For tonight, look upon me as a Disc Jockey, not a banker or lawyer.”

“Look upon me as an air hostess dreaming of being a model!”

She came two bottles of beer later.

As she entered the room, every eye turned towards her. She wore a tight-fitting black dress that stopped high enough to reveal her perfectly tapering legs, as my eyes took her in, I noticed she had cut her hair short; it shone with luster and sat well on her oval face. Apart for a few worry lines on her forehead and rings around her eyes, which she tried to bury in light make-up, nothing else would give her away as a stressed-out company secretary of a stressed-up bank. 

I kissed her lightly on the cheeks; I liked the subtle fragrance she had on.

“You sure look lovely tonight; I wish we were going on a more proper outing tonight.”

“I was just leaving a friend’s birthday party when you called, that explains the dressing.”

“Not complaining.”

The waiter appeared with a leather-bound cocktail menu, she settled for a glass of Long Island ice tea.

‘How’s your little girl?’

‘She’ll be coming down for Christmas. Can’t wait to behold the lil’ angel.’

Motivated by beer and the filial mood of similar-experience camaraderie, I found myself telling her about Alero, my daughter, her mum, the divorce, the whole shindig!

She was a real quiet listener, punctuating with a little ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I understand’ here and there; she didn’t interrupt the emotion that seemed to have found a tributary it can freely flow into. Her nods urged me on, her silence consoled me, I never felt lighter since I left London. It was as if I had just been relieved of a heavy burden. Surprisingly, my whole excretion of deep-seated emotions which misted my eyes sometime during the narration seemed so natural; I didn’t feel a tinge of embarrassment throughout.

She quietly quietly sipped on her drink before she broke the now awkward silence.

‘When Cupid flies away, vampires fly in.’

‘Why does he fly away?’ I poetically ventured into her vivid metaphors, ‘Isn’t there a chance the vampire’s always been there unnoticed?’

‘Sometimes…in my own case though, Lanre was an angel-turned-demon, I met him before the spiritual metamorphosis.’

‘Wow! How heartbreaking…’

‘No, not anymore, checked out of Heartbreak hotel since wayback!’ she winked mischievously, ‘Now, I’m single and searching!’

We both burst out laughing as if on cue.

‘Were you ever married?’

‘Nope.’

We laughed some more, more from the alcohol-induced sense of humour than anything said that deserved such high frequency release-it-all laughter.

We left the club still laughing.

Her driver was waiting with the car engine already running. She gave me a soft kiss as she settled in the backseat.

‘Thanks for keeping your promise not to talk bank business tonight.’ She said, then almost in a whisper she added, ‘I look forward to another night like this, this time we must not talk about past relationships and heartbreaks, enough of those.’ 

‘We’ll make that date really soon!’

It was an extremely elated me that drove home that night, with my music playing at high volume.

I had never felt lighter since I left London.

 

A week later, I read in the papers that CBN had lifted its suspension order on IDC bank, EFCC had arrested Chief Obinna Wari for various financial crimes in connection with the false documents he sent to CBN, and the paper also said that EFCC had indicted the managing partner of PDF Bluechip Consulting for aiding and abetting Chief Wari.

I called Funmi.

‘Congratulations! I see you guys have finally been let off the hook!’ I joked.

‘But your bank’s lack of boy’s scouts’ honor to stick to a comrade in trouble has cost you the loss of an opportunity to revolutionize your bank and bring it to par with twenty first century best banking practices.’

We both laughed.

‘I see you’ve still got your wits about you’.

‘I don’t plan to lose it anytime soon, in spite of the fact that the next few weeks will be the busiest time of my life, we are merging with Precision Bank, and you know the whole hectic process.’

I know, I know… it doesn’t look like our date is going to materialize any time soon.’

‘On the contrary, all work and no play… Sunday is open.’

‘I’m closing in on it then.’

‘You’re in.’

‘Nice’

‘What time?’

‘Five o clock.’

‘See you then.’

 

Five o clock, Sunday, came ten decades later.

I was at the  front of her door at four-fifty five; she had sent me her address via text during the week.

When Funmi opened the door, she looked even more beautiful than I thought.

She was wearing a long blue dress which covered a great part of her body yet she was able to ooze of so much sexuality, it’s amazing how clothes become invisible in the imaginative eyes of a lustful man!

Today, she wore almost no make-up except a touch of lipstick.

She touched my hand lightly as I kissed her lightly on both cheeks.

‘I’ve just been touched by an angel!’ I said, enraptured.

‘Wake up then, you must be dreaming or dead.’

We both laughed.

She wheeled around on one foot, spiraling like a ballet dancer.

‘How do I look?’

‘Absolutely stunning!’

‘If you were not the bush Nigerian man that you are, is this not the part where you hand me the roses?’

‘Borrowed culture.’

‘Bushman! Hottentot!’

We laughed some more. She then led me to her living room. I noticed the photograph of a little girl on an oval glass table; I reached forth and picked it up.

‘She is so you’. I said, I felt her standing behind me, she said nothing. ‘She’s so beautiful, like you.’

‘Thanks.’

There was an awkward silence between us. I faced her and we stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, my heart was thumping hard against my ribs. I felt a stirring in my loins, I was sure I could feel her libido rising too. As soon as I summoned up the courage to reach for her, she moved away.

‘We better hit the road! So where’s Denzel taking me?’

I gathered myself together.

‘Why Denzel?’ I recovered fast, ‘Why not one of our own bloke Naija celebs? Hollywood got you all!’

We went to Saipan on Bishop Aboyade Cole, Victoria Island for some oriental food and mood.

We entered the crowded room and waited by the bar for the maitre d’. A waiter eventually guided us to a small table upstairs, in a solitary dark corner of the room.

We had red wine as we studied the menu, when the waiter returned to take our order, Funmi had no patience for a starter, she ordered steamed rice and prawns in oyster sauce, I ordered veal piccate minus garlic butter.

‘Not one of my favourites.’ She commented on my choice when our orders came.

‘Acquired taste.’ I said through a mouthful.

We had become so free with each other and I felt so natural in her presence. When, after another bottle of red wine, I looked at my wristwatch and found we had spent a little above four hours there, I knew lovers deserved a different chronometrical measurement from others!

When I dropped her off at home, she didn’t invite me in, but I saw she was struggling with the temptation. She settled for a light peck on the cheek.

From then on, we called each other at least six times everyday and saw each other almost every weekend.

It didn’t take long before we both realized we were in love with each other.

 

The day Pivot Bank got its Final Approval from CBN was the day I proposed marriage to Funmi Akerejola and the day she agreed to be my wife; it happened after a low-key champagne-popping celebration with the Merger Implementation Committee that was made up of some executives of both Pivot and Unicorn Trust banks. No romantic props, no Barry White music, just me, her and a diamond-studded ring I ordered from London.

 

What we planned to be a small wedding ceremony turned out to be bigger than we envisaged, family members, old and new colleagues, friends and well-wishers thronged the Federal Palace Hotel Gardens for the reception. 

On the high table was the MD of Pivot bank, Mr Gabriel Oyetunji, looking resplendent in a black tuxedo and a red bow tie; next to him was the MD of IDC bank, dressed in an expensive-looking white lace, white gold glittered from his neck and wrist. Every now and then the two MD‘s could be seen conversing intimately in low tones. I fleetingly wondered what Clifford Akale of BusinessDay would make of this, I didn’t have to wait long to hear that it was the small talk on everyone’s lips.

It was well captured by BusinessDay  the next day, in a lighter corner of Cliff Akale’s Bank Reviewer section, under a colorful wedding photograph of Funmi and I, with both Bank MD’s beside us, laughing jovially, it read:

 

 The wedding which took place yesterday between Mr. Deinde Martins, company secretary of Pivot Bank and former Miss Funmi Akerejola, now Mrs. Funmi Martins, company secretary of IDC Bank has punned the legal magic of incorporation by lifting the veil behind the organizations, stripping the two of all their corporate personalities, locating their most sensitive physical organs, which is their hearts and merging them together in holy matrimony. This was after the two organizations, which they are respective organs of, courted for a while, found each other incompatible for marriage and decided to break up the relationship.

You will recall that IDC Bank and Pivot Bank aborted their merger plans after CBN ordered IDC to suspend all merger procedures until investigation into allegations of Misrepresentation and sundry financial claims that were leveled against IDC by its former MD, Chief Obinna Wari, were concluded. Pivot Bank went on to merge with Unicorn Trust Bank while IDC Bank later merged with Precision Bank.

This very symbolic wedding suggests that although the assets, equities, liabilities, corporate objectives and priorities of these two banks may be incompatible and may have caused them not to conclude their merger, the marriage of their two key corporate officers has ensured a merger of their physical personalities which is far more profound than the merger of their mere corporate personalities.

 

To us at BusinessDay, this marriage is the 'MERGER OF THE YEAR'!

 

We wish the new couple conjugal bliss!

 

                              

 

              -THE END-

Reviews

[Aspiring Angel]

Thank you so much for the friend's request. I wanted you to know that I dropped in on you this Christmas Eve morning. I am sorry that I do not have the time right now to read this to its completion but I will be back. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday.

Blessings,
Lesa

[Alex Akaahs]

This story has captured in essence the balance that could be possibly attained in our emerging Nigerian corporate society. A real expose' aiding the eye to see the things in society that it could at least recognise.
Alas, Mr. Ayeni has told a love story with the 'Nigerian Factor' included.
This is an intelligently crafted story, and about every word is pregnant with meaning and intent.
We could only expect more thrills as this 'old wine' gets better with age.

[Ayo Ayeni]

'The Merger' is a love story weaved around a corporate skeleton. Its a metaphor of 'Salomon v. Salomon. About marriage, human or corporate. ' its a simple parable of love and law.