OJUKWU’S WILL: I Turned Down My Father’s Offer While Writing His Will – Sylvester Debe Odumegwu-Ojukwu

SPLIT IMAGE?: 56-Year-Old  Sylvester Debe 

Odumegwu-Ojukwu Is  A Lagos-Based Lawyer

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 National Mirror that he turned down his father’s offer while writing his Will.

His words: Speaking to National Mirror in an exclusive interview in Lagos…

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.