Year after his death, O.B. Lulu-Briggs’ Will might provide resolution to desperation over his inheritance
Posted by Ayo Macauley | 22 December 2019 | 1,598 times
•Late High Chief Olu Benson Lulu-Benson
Almost a year since the
late renowned Ijaw philanthropist and businessman, High Chief Olu Benson
Lulu-Benson, died on December 27, 2018, in Accra, Ghana, he has not been
buried. Shockingly, the family he left behind has been fighting a very public
battle, pitching three of his sons, led by Dumo Lulu-Briggs, against the four
other children and the widow.
Although things appeared
to have moved with the very public intervention of the Rivers State governor,
Nyesom Wike, who announced his government’s readiness to bury the late Kalabari
chief.
The eldest sons and the
community’s chief who backed them have now announced a January 25 date for the
burial.
The last year had been
fate for the family and their supporters. The first sign that all might
not be well was a rather scathing article a national newspaper of January 15,
intimating Nigerians of a supposed discord in the Lulu-Briggs family over the
burial.
The publication also
contained some rather uncomplimentary comments about the widow of the deceased,
Dr (Mrs) Seinye Lulu-Briggs.
Since then, there have
been flurry of media propaganda mounted to discredit and dishonor the widow.
There had also been several lawsuits and an ongoing police investigation
instigated by three sons of the deceased against their stepmother.
In fact, as she said
while accepting the new burial date, Mrs Lulu-Briggs had been ‘abused, insulted
vilified, defamed, persecuted and – under false pretexts – detained,
investigated and harassed by law enforcement agencies.
“My family, friends and
colleagues have not been spared either, Indeed, under criminal law in Nigeria,
a person charged for murder, if found guilty, could be sentence to death for
hanging.”
Yet, as several reports
have shown, the family crisis is due to no other thing but contestation over
inheritance.
In April 2019, a few
days after his lawyers sent a petition to Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police
claiming his father had been killed by his stepmother, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs
also filed a law suit blocking the reading of High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs’ Last
Will and Testament which the Probate Registrar had scheduled to be read on
April 12, 2019 at the behest of their client (High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs).
It took over three
months but eventually, the courts overruled this. In a judgement
delivered on July 25th, 2019 sanctioning that the Will be read, Hon. Justice U.
Kingsley-Chuku, ruled that ‘any purported challenge, contest or dispute
of the Will, reading or publication of the Will in issue based on the alleged
Custom and Tradition of the Kalabari people of Rivers State amounts to no
reasonable cause of action and that any cause of action arising therefrom, if
any, has no likelihood of success and certainly bound to fail.’
The very next day, July
26, 2019, his Will was read in Port Harcourt. A reading of a certified true
copy of the document indicates that, in keeping with his antecedents for being
meticulous, the family patriarch was clear on what he wanted.
As if he knew that his
burial would cause havoc in his family, the first statement of his Will refers
to it,
“I wish to be buried and
for my wife Seinye Peterba Lulu-Briggs, if she survives me, to take an active
part in my funeral services. I direct that my funeral services be simple and
done in Kalabari tradition as allowed by my Christian beliefs in recognition of
the dignity of my position as head of Young Briggs House. I request that there
be no mourning or weeping. Any members of my family and a beneficiary under
this Will who refuses to participate in my funeral shall be completely excluded
from benefit under this Will as if such person had predeceased me.”
His second statement
refers to his three elder sons,
“For reasons specified
in a letter I have executed on the date of this WilI, I have not made any
provision in this Will for my sons DUMO, SENIBO or SOFIRI. If this Will is
contested by any of my sons, I request that such letter be introduced as
evidence of the reasons why I have not made any such provision.”
And High Chief O.B.
Lulu-Briggs closes his Will with a statement reiterating that he has not
provided for his three older children in the Will. One gets the uncanny feeling
that the Will, which was written in 2004 while High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs was
facing an embarrassing hostile attempt from his sons to take over his oil firm
- which saw him docked for criminal charges they brought against him in
Nigeria, the UK and the USA - was purposely structured to protect his assets
from his sons.
The media, at that time,
was full of stories about the legal battles the three sons subjected their
father to. High Chief O.B. won the court cases, but he
reached financial settlement of $8 million with the sons in 2003 and
2004 that saw them leave the company. Around that time, in 2002, the
High Chief wrote a heart wrenching and embarrassing SOS letter to the then
Rivers State Commissioner of Police about Dumo Lulu-Briggs.
The High Chief’s Will is
concise and unambiguous. It has six codicils; the first was added in July 5,
2007 and the last in October27, 2014. They reflect the several amendments and
additions he made to his Will over those years – including creation of a Trust
where most of his properties are held (with clear directions about how the Trust
should be governed and what its proceeds can cover- which are his children and
grandchildren for his seven children). It also captures the transfer he made of
his Moni Pulo Limited shares to his wife, one of his daughters and the O.B.
Lulu-Briggs Foundation in 2012.
High Chief O.B.
Lulu-Briggs’ Will includes an October 2, 2012 declaration stating that his
three sons are expressly excluded from inheriting from his estate. In addition,
he bars a female who was purportedly brought to him as his daughter by one of
his cousins from benefitting from his estate. And in the fifth and sixth
codicils, dated June 5, 2013 and October 27, 2014, respectively, he
confirms that he has not provided for this three elder sons in his Will,
(making clear that his sons were settled with $8 million which he considers
their inheritance in the fifth codicil).
It is very obvious that
the High Chief anticipated that his sons would attack his widow and his family
in an attempt to grab his wealth as soon as he passed. After all, Mrs Seinye
O.B. Lulu-Briggs has borne the brunt of their ugly abuses and intimidation
since he showed interest in her and eventually married her.
“By making it crystal
clear several times in his Will that his sons have been excluded from his and
by including a sealed letter about his three sons as part of his Will, High
Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs has made it difficult for the three sons to make a
direct attack on his Will,” a community leader in Abonnema, the family home of
the Lulu-Briggs, said. “This could, therefore be the reason why they doing
everything to malign, discredit and intimidate their stepmother and the rest of
their siblings and this does not constitute a challenge to their fathers’
Will.”
The Rivers State
governor, Nyesom Wike, on Wednesday offered to give the late businessman a
state burial and called on Kalabari leaders to help broker an agreement on how
this could be done. This appears to have led to a flurry of meetings, including
an announcement that the burial might take place in January next year.
A Ghana magistrate court
is also expected to deliver this week a ruling on a lawsuit instituted by Dumo
Lulu-Briggs, seeking a second autopsy on the body of the deceased after the
first autopsy showed the man did not die a violent death.
Family sources said the
body would then be released to an elder in the family – and not any of the
children – according to Kalabari tradition, who will then take custody until
the burial is done.
Source: News Express
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