As the owner of DAAR Communications Plc, Raymond Dokpesi, celebrates his 70th birthday, reflections on his past have revealed many things unknown all along.
For one thing, the media businessman has some regrets.
He is also grateful on other counts for beating doctors’ prediction. They told him he had 35 years to live above the ground.
He told journalists all thee in Abuja Saturday in the lead-up to the celebration.
Dokpesi said one one of life’s mistakes he made was being a husbands of many wives.
“I am a Catholic and I definitely will tell you that one of the greatest errors of my life is polygamy,” he said.
According to him, it is not something that he desired. He just had no alternative.
“A lot of people looked at it as if it was wealth that distorted my behaviour but the truth of the matter is that there were internal family challenges that led to the polygamy,” he said.
His first wife was a Polish woman he planned to stick with come rain or shine. But she left Nigeria for reasons that she was the only child of her parents and so she had to stay with her parents.
“I shuttled down to Poland over 16 times requesting her to come back to Nigeria and stay but as the only child, she wanted to be by them.
Dokpesi said this got his mother worried. She urged hi to have his own children he would not need to fly out to see every now and then.
“That whole thing caused the instability that later affected my life,” he said.