9 CHAPTER NINE SIR BORIPE IN THE WITNESS BOX

The raves of the last court session drew the whole city attention to the court today, every inch of the court ground was occupied with people, the press houses has to registered for their reporters to find spaces in the courtroom. Since that day the Mayor of the city nor is wife has been seen in the public, and rumour has that the Mayor's wife could not returned home to the Mayor, rather she went to her parent in the city next to this.

Apart from these, fights were heard in the Judge, SAN Terror and some other eminent people of the city's homes. So today there were gloomy faces sitting in the courtroom, Richie was no more pitied but looked upon as evil insect that must be crushed, more of the powerful men of the city had seen his memoir and only those that their wives were not beautiful were spared, but the rest are wishing that Richie will die air miserable death! Though all of them with the exception of The Mayor kept their misery to themselves, because they don't want to become the city laughing object like the Mayor and his wife.

All kinds of unconfirmed rumours floated around these eminent people and their homes from that day, and many of them just want to wait for this case to run its course before they will pounce on whatever will remain of Richie.

So as they all sat down in the court looking at the Kid wonder lawyer taking his stand before them, there was serious tension in the room. SAN Terror seemed tamed where he sat and he doesn't look like he still want to defend Richie's right.

The kid wonder lawyer turned to the judge and said, "My lord I will like to continue to defend my client by calling on sir Boripe if you so wish. Immediately he called sir Boripe noise erupt in the courtroom because people believed that Richie must have sampled his wife too, and they were saying it among themselves that no wonder the wealthy man is supporting Tolu against him. But the case did not at all go in that direction, rather it opened a story they had all forgotten afresh.

Once Sir Boripe swore to an oath, the kid lawyer said, Sir I know you are a very busy man, so this court highly appreciate you for voluntarily coming up to be a witness in this important case. Sir Boripe said its a pleasure. Then the kid wonder lawyer said sir I want to remind you of a date and I will like you to tell us everything you can remember about that very day, Sir Boripe asked, " What date?" The young lawyer said the date is April ninth of year 2011.

When SAN Terror heard this his ear got pricked and his countenance changed for worse, he changed his sitting posture and sat on the edge of his seat like a man that is ready to pounce on a victim.

Sir Boripe cleared his throat and with great emotion he said, "That day is an unforgettable day in my life, I remembered it like no other day because of what happened to me then. Prior to the day I discovered some of my staffs were using my cargo plane to smuggle into the country conflict diamonds and that can ruing my reputation as an international diamond merchant." Before he could proceed, the kid wonder lawyer cut into his story with two questions, "Sorry that I interrupt your story sir, for the sakes of many of us that are novice about diamonds can you please tell this court what conflict diamond is and how it can soil your reputation?"

Sir Boripe explained, "Well, conflict diamonds are diamonds shipped out from war torn West African countries by either the government of those countries or the guerrilla armies fighting against the government to raise money to buy weapons to prosecute their wars. The reason these diamonds can tarnished any merchant's image at that time was that it has been banned in the international market so that those warring nations could be starved of funds to finance the wars.

And the whole world then were monitoring the market to catch any one with that diamond and named him the sponsored of the unending blood shed in West Africa. So, to discover such diamond within my consignment means a lot. On the day that you mentioned, I laid hand on the first set of that conflict diamonds and I phone the Police Inspector general that I would bring it to their office so that they can help me to trace its source. But on my way to the capital my armoured car suddenly stopped working in the middle of nowhere, a place I knew was dangerous to my existence, so I did not waste time waiting for the driver to do something with the car. I waved the next available car coming back to town down and a lady carried me and dropped me at the train station.

It was at the train station that I realised that the car that broke down did not happened by accident but it was a planned thing. The kid wonder lawyer asked him how he came to such conclusion?

He replied and said, "As I stepped down and was thanking the lady who brought me out of the jungle to the train station, a guy walked towards me and gave me an unexpected blinding slap, and immediately he snatched the diamond case from me and began to run.....SAN Terror jumped up at this point and shouted, my Lord this is a waste of this court time, these people are just flailing about on non relative issues, I did not see how this story relate with a bride dishing her groom on the wedding day, please tell them to stick to the matters at hand" As he was ranting and panting, Sir Boripe looked at the Judge with a kind of warning glance, if not, the judge would have forced him to abandon the story, but instead he meekly told SAN Terror to sit down and he told the kid wonder lawyer to be quick with what he is unto.

Immediately, sir Boripe continued and said, "I got up and began to shout thief - thief - as I pursued the guy. At this point in his story everybody in the court remembered the story and they were anxious to hear it from him because when it happened they only read diverse diluted versions of it on the tabloids, so there was some kind of rumbling in the court.

Sir Boripe continued, " The guy could have gotten away because he was younger, trimmed and athletic, but some guys around the train station and two policemen joined me in the chase and we pursue the guy until he was caught.

SAN Terror jumped up again and asked, "have i not said it that these people are here to waste our time, now he has finished with his story, how relative was the story to what we are dealing with?

The kid wonder lawyer answered him, " With few more minutes you will see how it connect to this issue." The judge at that moment decided to let the court go on recess so as to give SAN Terror time to adjust to the direction the case is going.

However, the moment they resumed from the recess SAN Terror did not allowed the kid wonder lawyer to continue, he asked for adjournment on the ground that he needed time to intimate himself with the story shared by Sir Boripe. On hearing this, the people in the court began to murmur but their murmuring did not stop the judge from granting his request. He told all the people that SAN Terror definitely need time to prepare himself to question Boripe, so he adjourned the case for two full months.