My issue with women - Jolapamo | NigeriaMaritime360.com

Chief Isaac Jolapamo is the Chief Executive Officer of Morlap Group. An erudite ship owner and a founding father of Nigeria Ship Owners Association (NISA).

His experience in shipping starting from his days in the Navy spans over forty eventful years.

In this chat, he tells us the reason why he stopped putting on a white dress which he was known for; his kind of food and how he can skip meals for three to four days.

Enjoy the reading.

How do you relax?

I don’t do much anymore. I am just trying to put the shipping business together. I have a farm in my village that I look after. I do more of church activities than any other thing. I am more than 73 years old, what else do I want?

You are known for wearing white outfits all the time, why white always?

I think I started when I was forty years old. It is not because I belonged to any occultic group but I was a staunch member of Celestial Church. I was one of the members of the board of trustees before they broke into splinter groups. But when I joined the Pentecostal church, they began to see me as one that belonged to a fraternity group then I said no, because it was a decision I took on my own and I went back to normal dress.

What’s your favourite food?

My favourite food is amala, gbegiri and ewedu and if I eat it today, I can choose not to eat for another three days.

When I was overseas, I wasn’t exposed to all these English food. The only thing I could eat was bread. I was in school in Portsmouth and I would go to my uncle’s house in London and ate very well till Monday morning and when I got back to school, I would not eat until Wednesday night.

Where are you from?

I am from Oyo town in Oyo state.

I was brought to Lagos in 1963 to complete my secondary school at Baptist Academy. You know those days they chose three persons from each division which is today called state, to train to university level as teachers, I was one of them.

One thing led to the other and I became a mechanic apprentice and one day, one man’s car broke down along the road and I was able to help him fix it. He was surprised and asked what I was doing and I told him I was a mechanic and added that I had my GCE/C&G papers complete and while waiting, I went to bring from my uncle’s house. That was how I was taken into Nigerian Navy.

It is believed that military men have knack for women. How many wives did you eventually marry after all your years in the military?

That is my sour point in the sense that I didn’t realise it until I joined Mountain of Fire and I have always blamed myself for it. I have never had two women at a time but I have married on several occasions and it is part of f the issues I have to deal with today. I trained all my children abroad not because I have the money but because I don’t want a situation where anyone of them will complain of not being given equal opportunity.

It is not about womanizing but about forces trying to stop me at several intervals in life.

Do you intend to become a pastor anytime in life?

Not at all. I would have become a celestial pastor when late Bada does. He actually wanted me to become a pastor and I knew he had a next in line to him so I changed what he wrote changing the man’s name in place of my name.

In fact, in those days, I was wearing white garment all over the place but I didn’t know what eventually drove me out of the church. I said after three months if he didn’t appear to me, that will be all. Most of what happened to me had to do with religion.

So, I am not a pastor and I don’t intend to be one. Even the Redeemed people said I should be assistant pastor and I said no, that I only came to the church to worship.