This could happen to any person. You build a storied company and all of a sudden, you are out of the game. It happens many times across Africa because people do not follow even the laws we have in the land. You start a business at Ariaria, Aba – all your nest egg invested. All of a sudden, you are out of the game. What do you do? You want to kill and die!

That is very bad. In this case, you are to be blamed. Ask for the law and follow it. Incorporate the company at Corporate Affairs Commission – sure it may take 6 months – but have patience; they are not on strike. If you incorporate, the law will be there and no one will take your share. If they do, you have the law and that will work for you.

Always remember that man is the same – American, Nigerian, British; the only difference is that an American has a law that he ‘fears’. If not, from the latest book (Idea Man) of Paul Allen – the cofounder of Microsoft, he discussed how Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer wanted to scheme him out of his shares in Microsoft.  Of course it did not work out because there was the law. Mr. Gates might have done it if not that the system will not accommodate that.

No one is a saint – including the founders of Microsoft. Always doubt and be on the side of the law. Incorporate.

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who portrays the company’s current chief executive Steve Ballmer as scheming in his new book, says that Ballmer, in a conversation two weeks ago, confirmed Allen’s account of the events.

“Steve said, ‘Yeah, those things did happen,’ that I recount,” Allen said during an appearance at the Town Hall Seattle speakers series. Allen was interviewed on stage by GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, a longtime technology reporter in Seattle.

In his book, “Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft,” Allen writes that in 1982, he overheard Ballmer and Bill Gates discussing a plan to reduce Allen’s 36 percent stake in Microsoft shortly after Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Allen writes that he burst in and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” He calls the plot “mercenary opportunism, plain and simple.”