By Rotimi Sulyman

Once upon a time, in the early 1990s when legend extra stout came into Nigerian stout market, the markers had an exhibition stands at a trade fair held then in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital where they offered that booze in question free to visitors into alcohol drinking.

Then, i was in my early twenties and an undergraduate in University of Ilorin.

My late dad then living, published a newspaper for the trade fair.

Daddy was a man full of business ideas.

Before a Shariah Court in Ilorin awarded my custody to him, he came down to see me and my younger sibling in Lagos, I think while I was under the age of ten.

At that time, my brother and i were in the care of my maternal grandmother at Ijora area where we lived with the old woman.

Noticing that there was a huge population of people from Kwara in Ijora, and having the belief that pap(eko) was an average Kwaran’s staple diet, daddy told me that the business of selling eko would thrive in the area.

Unfortunately he didn’t make it in business. Out of his failed ventures one I reaped directly from alongside my elder sibling was that of his cinema house at Sango area in Ilorin where we were both selling tickets to movie watchers and helping ourselves to some of the monies from ticket sales to keep bodies and souls together.

Going back to the trade fair, I attended it to distribute his newspapers to visitors on his command. Whether i was devoted to the task, has escaped my mind. But what remains fresh in my memory is that I got high on multiple bottles of promo legend, wobbled and fumbled home and was kidding around.

I remember a nickname: Legendary Rotimi, which I gave myself at that time came out of that event.

Days back, I was torn between paying a visit to two legends’ monuments at Nottingham in the UK: that of robbery legend, Robert Hod, better known as Robin Hood, and poetry and novel legend, DH Lawrence.

At the end, i settled for the former.

In the company of my son who told me that in Hull where he lives he stopped going to a place called Prospect Centre to buy stuffs after he was told that it used to be where slaves were kept in slave trade time, i visited Robin Hood’s monument.

On arrival I met fellow tourists taking pictures with the legend’s statue and i later took my turn.

A heroic armed robber, mainstream history has it that he was in the business of robbing the rich and sharing the loots to the poor.

His character has been represented in many movies and literature while beliefs are rife that his action amounted to wealth redistribution and economic inequality reduction.

The positive light he is being viewed amazes me.

To me, he was nothing but a common criminal and bore some resemblance to our own Lawrence Anini, aka The Law.

Going by past media reports, Anini who was captured and executed in 1987, was involved in bank robberies in the old Bendel State, comprising of present Edo and Delta States.

His reported operational mode of throwing stolen cash away and expecting the poor to pick them while getting away from crime scenes in vehicle was akin to the so-called Robin Hood’s wealth redistribution.

Despite their similarity, understandably, Anini has an immutable place in hall of shame here while his UK counterpart, Robin Hood, seems to be in hall of fame. What a world of conflict!

Rotimi Sulyman is a media entrepreneur and travel writer