The parable of the only child

President Obasanjo from Nigeria meets with the Queen of England. He asks her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?" "Well," says the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people." President Obasanjo frowns. "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"The Queen takes a sip of tea. "Oh, that’s easy. You just ask them to answer an intelligence riddle." The Queen pushes a button on her intercom. "Please send Tony Blair in here, would you?" Tony Blair walks into the room. "Yes, my Queen?" The Queen smiles. "Answer me this, please, Tony. Your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?" Without pausing for a moment, Tony Blair answers, "That would be me." "Yes! Very good," says the Queen.

Back in Abuja , President Obasanjo asks to speak with his Vice president Atiku. "Answer this for me. Your mother and your Father have a child. It’s not your brother and it’s not your sister. Who is it?" "I’m not sure," says the vice president. "Let me get back to you on that one."

Atiku goes to his advisors and asks every one, but none could give him an answer. Finally, he bumps into King Sunny Ade. Atiku looks around to see if anyone can overhear then whispers, "Sunny! Can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it’s not your brother or our sister. Who is it?"

Sunny whispers back, "That’s easy. It’s me!"  Atiku smiles and says "Thanks!" Atiku rushes back to speak with Obasanjo "Say Sir, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It’s King Sunny Ade!" Obasanjo gets up, stomps over to Atiku, and angrily yells into his face "No,you idiot! It’s Tony Blair

Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adédèjì is the founder of Lendsqr, the loan infrastructure fintech powering lenders at scale. Before this, he led Trium Limited, the corporate VC of the Coronation Group, which invested in Woven Finance, Sparkle Bank, Clane, and L1ght, amongst others. He has almost two decades of banking experience, including stints as the Divisional Head of Electronic Banking at Fidelity Bank Plc. He drove the turnaround of the bank’s digital business. He was previously responsible for United Bank for Africa Group’s payment card business across 19 countries. Alongside other industry veterans, he founded Open Banking Nigeria, the nonprofit driving the development and adoption of a common API standard for the Nigerian financial industry. Beyond open APIs, Adédèjì works deeply within the fintech ecosystem; he’s the board chairman at Paystack. Adédèjì is a renowned fintech pundit and has been blogging on technology and payments at dejiolowe.com since 2001.

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