I was posted to Surulere office, shortly after, to manage the office after my colleague, Dipo Onabanjo. Surulere office offered me immense independence, but did not offer me sufficient challenge to compensate for the remoteness of the location with mainstream business in Lagos. Lagos Island office provided me experience in the whole array of sub-sets of the profession. Surulere was heavy in management real estate. There was little challenge there. I was bored and said so. I earned a recall to Lagos for speaking forth.
I must recount what developed shortly afterwards. I was seriously upset with the management of Harriman Epega and Company early in 1974.
A young lady, who had worked hard for the company as a typist got married, became pregnant and had to seek maternity leave from the partners. The economic climate was good for the practice, but the partners were loose with expenditure. They waived any expense item that did not massage their fast bloating egos. The partners reached a decision that she should resign and re-apply for her position after delivery of her child. I thought that was callous and insensitive of them.
I was so upset by that decision that I wondered what virtue there was in being affluent. If affluence meant avoiding responsibility in order to deny simple folk the benefit of one’s labour, I was not interested in being affluent. I probably did not belong there at Harriman and Epega (the registered name of the firm had in the mean time changed from Harriman and Co as result of the ingress into the practice of Benjamin Epega).
An intuitive guidance was strong, that I had had enough. Mr. Epega was hard-nosed and thrifty. Mr. Harriman was not focused on the profession enough. To a large extent, the partnership was beneficial to the practice. But Mr. (now Dr.) Ben Epega was pinching pennies a bit too much for the health of the practice. He also laboured in quiet disapproval of the style of expenditure of Hope. Although disciplined financial attitude was engendered in the practice, allowances due to staff for speeding up work came slower and output was afflicted.
The partners gave ill-formed sub-professional staff no sense of discipline with the manner they treated resources. This resulted in attempts by sub-professional staff to make some money on the side while half-heartedly serving the firm. I did not condone that attitude among staff. Over time, staff saw that the partners themselves were not sufficiently disciplined. They started cutting into deals of the company and one was caught red-handed. The partners wanted the associates in the firm to adjudicate the issue and find the staff guilty, so he could be relieved of his post. I resisted being used for that, since the partners had, at an immediate earlier instance, promoted the culprit without consent and approval of the associates under whom they worked. This was the second unacceptable event that directly led to my withdrawing my services from the practice of Harriman and Epega.
I went thereafter into deep contemplation on what I was offering to the firm as against what I was getting from the practice. I discovered that the real task of the partners of grooming younger professionals and guiding them unto the disciplined path was not being done.
I hold firmly to the view that the main purpose of pupillage is to bring up professionals, in an established tradition of discipline, education and re-education, monitoring and inculcation of discipline, which would sustain the positive growth of the profession. I hold the view that the distraction, which the professions suffered in the poor management of the economy, which the military will remain to blame for, accentuated the ineffectiveness of the professions in checking the profligacy of the administration of the country’s resources. If the professionals had remained untainted, it would have been difficult for the military to enjoy the field day they had.