'Can I ever forgive my father for abandoning me?'

I am very bitter at the moment as my so-called family is doing everything possible to arm-twist me into forgiving my father, when I was an infant and did not care a hoot about me or whether I lived or not.

The man who calls himself my father left me and my mother when I was just a few months old and had never cared about us until now that God has blessed me. He wants to reap where he did not sow.

I remember how my mother suffered to raise me up all alone with no father figure. I realized he did not marry my mother legally, only getting her pregnant and abandoning us when we needed him most.

While growing up, I know what my mother went through to see that I survived. As I write this, tears still sting my eyes when I remembered how my mother starved herself, did odd jobs, even stole to feed me. She went through so much pain just to see me live.

Back then, I suffered all forms of humiliations as people called me all sorts of names and disgraced me every time. Even my mother's relations called me a bastard and I was denied even the slightest assistant.

I remember how my mother sold her clothes to pay my school fees. Or is it the way she was beaten up by her own brother just because I plucked oranges from my grandfather's compound?

I lived a life of pains and denial, hatred and bitterness. It was so much that I developed a strong anger against the man who called himself my father.

But God was with us all the way as he lifted me up through my stepfather after my mother got married when I was about 14. The man, God bless him, saw that I went to school and never discriminated against me and his own children.

With God by my side, I graduated with a First Class degree and after my youth service, I had six job offers, two with federal government parastatals and the other with top companies in Nigeria.

I had to choose one with an oil servicing company with very good pay and other mouth-watering perks.

Fast forward to six months ago: that was when the man who claimed to be my father decided to creep back into my life and has succeeded in stirring up the hatred I have harboured in my heart for him. He first sent two of his brothers, my supposed uncles, to start a peace mission.

They just appeared in my house and told me they were from my so-called father and said he was very sick and wanted me to help with money for his treatment. I practically threw them out of my house, telling them the only father I knew was my late step-dad.

Since then, they have been on my neck and the man himself has been calling me, telling me to forgive him and accept him back. Even my mother has been begging me. The first time she did, I showed her another side of me she never knew existed.

But she has not stopped and has even vowed never to come to my house again if I refused to forgive my father.

My wife too has taken up their fight, making life difficult for me. She has insisted that the family must go and visit her father-in-law. My children have been on my neck that they want to meet their real grandpa.

I am very confused at the moment as I find it difficult to forgive that man.

Kennedy."

Dear readers, on Morning Teaser today, we want you to put yourselves in Kennedy's shoes and tell him what he should do.