God i don't deserve this!

‘God, I don’t deserve this!’
Kunle AKINRINADE
Physically-challenged Emmanuel Oladipupo Bada is a lawyer. He is Principal State Counsel in the Lagos State Ministry of Justice. He bore tell-tale signs of the bereaved when he met the correspondent a few days ago.
Dressed in a black suit, he cut a pitiable sight as he glided its way to the front desk office in crutches. With bated breath, he made to narrate the ordeal that had suddenly turned him into a crooner of lamentation. But his tear ducks opened, giving way for uncontrollable tears.
You’ll not be wrong to think he’s been cheated by someone, but not on the account of physical disabilities. Instead, he is a lamenting the curious loss of N3.3million to armed robbers, blaming it on the negligence of a GTBank cashier.
Recently, Bada had been experiencing pains in his legs and based on medical advice, he was scheduled for a medical check overseas. The trip was estimated to cost him millions of naira but he lacked the resources to do so. When all efforts to gather money failed, he was forced to sell a property he inherited from his late parents and with the support of kind-hearted people, he was able to raise the stolen money which he deposited in his account at the GTBank, Alausa branch, Ikeja, Lagos State.
On September 8, 2010, Bada had gone to the bank to withdraw the money in company with his senior brother, Gbenga. But it was without an inkling that danger was lurking around for him. He alleged that when he presented the cheque to the cashier called Mojeed Ayibiowu, he had expected that given the volume of the amount involved, such payment should not be done in the open, adding that he actually protested against being paid in the open in the banking hall.
His plea, he recalled, fell on Ayibiowu’s deaf ears as he insisted on paying Bada in the open. In an emotion-laden voice, Bada further recalled the incident: “One Mojeed Ayibiowu, a cashier in the bank took an undue advantage of my disability by forcefully paying me N3.3million over the counter in the presence of the crowd in the banking hall on September 8, 2010 in spite of my protest against such conduct after keeping me on my crutches for 35 minutes. All my pleas that his actions were capable of exposing me to danger made no sense to him at all. On presenting the cheque to him, he said he was going to make certain confirmation on phone which was not clear to me because it’s my money I wanted to withdraw from my personal account with the bank.
“When he came back, to my chagrin, he asked me to come over to the counter to take the money. I begged him not to do so because he could expose me to danger, but he refused to listen to me. Instead, when he realised I was not going to shift ground, he came over to where I was standing and dumped the money wrapped in cellophane bags before me in the presence of everyone in the banking hall.”
Frustrated, Bada left the bank with the money kept in his car on his way to effecting payment for his planned foreign trip when sons from hell operating on a motorbike ambushed him a few distance away from the bank, thus dispossessing him violently of the money.
Hear him: “A few minutes after I left the bank, armed robbers operating on a motorcycle, apparently trailing me from the bank, attacked me at gunpoint. I remember seeing one of the robbers earlier in the banking hall. They had wanted to shoot at me but I managed to raise my crutches up and when they saw it, they came over to the car and asked me to wind down before taking away the money. But my brother who was driving in his car at the back wasn’t lucky. He had thought the robbers were reckless okada riders and he alighted from his car to ask what the matter was all about and the robbers angrily pumped hot bullets into his body. As I speak, he is hovering between life and death at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi Araba. I narrowly escaped death when a bullet fired at me narrowly missed my head but riddled the roof of my vehicle.”
Speaking further, he said: “The bank has since remained unperturbed and has shown no concern over the incident which was a direct consequence of gross professional incompetence and recklessness on the part of one of its members of staff who exposed me to security risk by deliberately and forcefully paying me a bulk sum in open glare. The Close Circuit Television (CCTV) mounted in the banking hall had captured the whole scenario where I made my protestation against the conduct of the cashier, but I am afraid it may have been doctored by now.”
“In the course of preliminary investigations, a team of policemen led by CSP Babatunde from the Anti-Vice section of the Lagos Police Command was at the bank to preview the said CCTV recording in the presence of myself, one Mrs. Mopelola, the bank’s counsel and other members of staff at the branch including the cashier on September 29. Everyone was speechless after seeing the footage of the transaction. The branch manager later made a commitment on principle at the Anti-Vice section of the Command on September 30, 2010 to make a refund, but till date, nothing has been done. I am therefore using this medium to call on well-meaning Nigerians to kindly come to my aid by prevailing on the management of GTBank to wear a human face because I am currently experiencing excruciating pains in my legs while my brother is still in a critical condition at the hospital. Please save my soul.”
Meanwhile, Head of Corporate Communications, GTBank, Mr. Femi Adeniran, said that neither the bank nor the said cashier was responsible for Bada’s woes. Hear him: “I greatly sympathise with Bada over the unfortunate incident because as a bank, we do not like to lose our customers let alone see them experience such terrible situations. But I beg to differ that our cashier had a hand in the unfortunate incident. For the avoidance of doubt, as a rule, once a cheque is presented over the counter, the owner would be paid over the counter and there is no such thing as effecting the payment at a secluded place other than the counter where the cheque was presented. In this case, any one could have masterminded the robbery since it did not take place in the banking hall.”
Since the accursed devil’s agents wreaked the havoc on Bada’s economic fortunes, by his confession, life had remained a nightmare for him and his entire family which, willy-nilly, has been made to bear the brunt of the unfortunate incident. “God, where do I go from here? Where?” This has been the daily refrain on Bada’s “beaten” lips.