By Ade Fashola
After spending almost 24 hours with Femi, I realized h ow resourceful he is. He was reaching out to everyone he knows at his cost for no obvious reason, at least none that I was aware of. I decided to work with him for business advantage – call it networking. In no time, he had connected me to not less than seven persons,some whose names I could not remember but who amazingly all remembered me and also remember the tale of Femi and the Witches . As we talked, Femi, to my surprise, suddenly started revealing the robbery attacks and auto crashes I suffered many years back.
I told Femi, “You must be very spiritual or something, how did you know about my multiple accident and robbery attacks?” He laughed and bragged, “I know everything”, he said .
“And why did you not tell me or at least reach out?”, I demanded
“Fash”, he replied ,”you were too proud then, you think everything was book”
I was shocked because that was opposite of what I thought I was. According to Femi, I was a victim of spiritual attack; the witches, to be precise. I replied that my own story then was that of stupidity, youthful exuberance and immaturity. I was lucky I was into insurance. On the first accident, my brother was driving recklessly and no one cautioned him. It was my new Mercedes Benz car and I was just 24. We were working on the speed limit. We wanted to get to Ibadan from Lagos within a very short time and return to Lagos. I had a ghastly accident .The Car was a total wreck. I only used the car for a total of 6 days. Perpetual assurance settled my claim within 2 weeks. Second accident, a friend came to visit from United Kingdom and needed to see someone at Ijebu Ode, it was late and raining, yet we were not careful, we ended up inside the bush with the vehicle upside down. Third accident, my wife called me that my daughter was sick, I ran to pick them. On my way back to Lagos I had an accident and ended up in the hospital with a fracture that took me out of circulation for 9 months. Both my wife and daughter however escaped unscathed . I can confidently tell you that all my accidents were self-inflicted. No one in my home town was responsible and no witches should be blamed. And Insurance has never failed to settle my claims.
On the two robbery attacks, one was as a result of showing unnecessary affluence at a bar, some miscreants from the bar secretly followed me home and came back later to steal my car believing I left some money in the car. The second armed robbery happened around the border, I believed I was just at the place at the wrong time. So Femi, tell me how did the people who did not know where I go or what I do responsible for my misfortune? The truth is I was able to survive these attacks because of insurance. Physical loss can only get physical solution. Leave spirituality to spiritual problem. Owning and losing physical possession is a physical misfortune and it can only be solved by insuring all your property . Femi, the reason you are using foot wagon presently is because you are not insurance literate. Tell me any physical property that you cannot insure including transactions so that when the unexpected occurs , you have a safety net. Femi, if you had insured your car when you had the fire incidence, insurance would have conveniently settled you. Femi was getting angry and yelled, “Fash don’t tell me about insurance, all the people I know that have insurance claims were not paid”.
“Did you say All?”I replied “And you think the government will allow that? If you can give me a name of anyone that have a legal claim and not settled, please send it to me. Your basis of getting insurance is to create stability in your life. You don’t need to be looking to buy for the same property twice because of loss as a result of accident, fire and theft.
We talked about all the 38 issues I mentioned in episode 1, and we discussed about how insurance policies would have helped all our friends. He was excited and was writing the policies for different covers. Suddenly he asked me why are people not getting paid? I said Ican only assume two things, transparency and lack of knowledge.
At this point, I can see that Femi was realizing his own mistake for not paying N60,000 for his car insurance. He told me about the other incidence and I told him how a simple insurance policy would have sorted them out. Right there he told me about two friends that just bought cars. I called them and we started setting up meetings. Femi took out a pen and started writing down all his properties. I asked him about Life and Salary insurance, he was beginning to be happy and came out asking for more information.
Ade Fashola is the CEO of Universal Risk.
