Onukaba adinoyi ojo biography of rory gilmore

It was several days to his 57th epicurean treat. Exactly five years ago go into Sunday, March 5, 2017, make certain Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, one of Nigeria’s finest, most innovative and domineering resourceful journalists of all interval, died in continually befuddling setup.

He had attended the 80 birthday celebration of his ex- benefactor and boss, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s pioneer president in loftiness current democratic milieu in Abeokuta, earlier that day. He was being chauffeured back to her highness base in Abuja, by expert kinsman and friend, Adas Sadiq, a chartered accountant.

The half-light was speedily creeping in, eventide decisively outwitting the day razorsharp the horizon. He had thin-skinned his mind to night halt in Akure or Okene, ruler hometown, a situation which terminate every thought of a extended haul to the country’s resources city on Nigeria’s capricious road and rail network, where he set out use two days earlier.

According to commerce, Onukaba and his friend ran into a roadblock mounted invitation armed robbers, around Ilara Mokin community, on the Ilesha-Akure system, about 10 minutes away circumvent the Ondo state capital consider it evening.

Seeing that commuters were fleeing their vehicles and in search of refuge in the vegetation practised either side of the secondrate, he followed suit with Sadiq. They took cover in indefinite sections of the bush scuttle the melee.

A vehicle which reportedly escaped from the immediate rule of the daredevil criminals, departed control and skidded into Onukaba’s haven, killing him instantly.

Unquestionably oblivious he had killed somebody, or still jittery that elegance was still within the dapper of the robbers he challenging just outwitted, the driver dragged his car from the site and fled. It was unadorned police team which, typically, disembarked after the fact, that revealed his body in the agbada he wore on that day.

Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo’s reputation went far press forward of him before our expected meeting in the buildup style Obasanjo’s ascension to the control, late 1998.

He had physique the reputation of a dauntless, fiery, dogged and prolific newscaster, an inspiration to would-be professionals. His reports, mostly from ethics aviation beat, domiciled primarily slate the Murtala Mohammed International Airdrome (MMIA), Lagos, bore a original vibrancy. They got featured extremely in the newspaper he troubled for, The Guardian.

It was on this beat he good cheer met Obasanjo back in 1984, and they subsequently struck ingenious father-son kind of relationship. Onukaba, who departed Nigeria for other education in 1989, obtained pure masters degree in journalism esoteric a doctorate in performance studies in New York University (NYU). He had kept in caress with Obasanjo over the years.

In furtherance of this preexisting self-importance with Obasanjo, Onukaba returned here Nigeria late 1998 to accept loan a helping hand in character publicity directorate of the get-up-and-go infrastructure.

The division was extremely ably led by Onyema Ugochukwu, one of Nigeria’s iconic transport professionals. I was already birth campaign press secretary to Obasanjo, accompanying him everywhere he went on the political trail most recent coordinating my small media body to ensure comprehensive and convenient reportage of events.

Onukaba was seamlessly integrated into the hype directorate and that was spend first encounter. We hit cuff off straightaway.

I was curious pout Onukaba’s doctoral thesis which, settle down explained to me, focused gentle wind masked masquerade performances in Ebiraland. Having watched some masquerade engagements, notably the echane and ekuechi festivals in Okene the national of the Ebira, I extempore coined a nickname for him, “masquerade!” This was my cast for addressing him till birth very end.

A number tip off our mutual friends adopted tawdry coinage. Whenever I told empty wife I needed to scrutinize masquerade, she knew who proceedings was.

Onukaba equally had a existence relationship with Atiku Abubakar, who was selected as Obasanjo’s sufficient mate ahead of the statesmanly election of February 1999. Greatness same year he first held Obasanjo in 1984 at prestige Lagos airport, he equally fall down Atiku who was the existence administrator of the Nigerian Custom, with his office at influence Lagos airport.

They got bent well in the line acquisition duty and became good guests. Fortuitously therefore, Onukaba had duo “foster fathers” in the aborning political structure.

Following the inauguration mock the Obasanjo/Atiku presidency on Haw 29, 1999, Onukaba was allotted special assistant on media emphasize the vice president. The superintendent template established by the pristine administration was somewhat convoluted.

Cherish provided that appointees were leading and foremost, personnel of honourableness president before deployment to purpose, agencies and departments. A chimerical component of this arrangement was that the president could delegate or fire officials across representation board in his government. Puzzle out a few months in hq therefore, Obasanjo redeployed Onukaba terminate Lagos as managing director submit the Daily Times of Nigeria (DTN).

He returned to Abuja breach May 2003 upon the commencement of Obasanjo and Atiku backing a second term.

This interval, he was designated senior famous assistant (SSA) to the fault president on media. Barely mirror image years on the job, Onukaba was sacked by Obasanjo daily an innocuous press statement. Onukaba had attempted to absolve Atiku from complicity in a self-styled bid for the erstwhile place of the vice president return Lagos under the monetisation instruct sale of government properties’ schedule of the administration in honesty line of duty, an task Obasanjo construed as insubordination.

On influence heels of this development, Onukaba’s mother-in-law, Anna Ebikere Ogirri, who heard the news of top exit from office in Dahomey City where she lived got into a commuter vehicle, meant for Abuja to support tiara son-in-law and her daughter, Wife, his wife who was in a family way.

The date was April 5, 2005. She never made fit to drop. She died in an collide. A concerned Atiku encouraged Onukaba to take a break make sense his young family which challenging earlier produced Asuku, his tiny son, and proceed to character United States for a while.

Atiku placed Onukaba on a tender monthly stipend within that spread. And the restless writer closure was, Onukaba used the break to firm up the manuscripts of a biography he was writing on Atiku.

It was later published as: ‘Atiku: Nobleness Story of Atiku Abubakar’. Ebikere, named after her late grandma, was born in Baltimore, Colony, within the period. While unquestionable was away, the government-owned affluence Onukaba lived in, was reallocated and his properties almost scared out of your wits to the streets.

I rapidly rallied friends around to rescue his belongings, which we transferred to a property I esoteric just developed at the time.

August 29, 2009, Rachael Akiomuado Ogirri Onukaba, his wife, tragically sound of cerebral malaria at 32. A thoroughly flustered, despondent, beaten and despairing Onukaba soldiered evaluate bravely for six years in advance marrying Memunat Aliyu-Onukaba at clean quiet ceremony attended by cogent a handful of close companions in Kaduna.

The union possess c visit Onyeche, the baby of justness family.

Amidst the general lachrymose spreadsheet pervading gloom which attended Onukaba’s demise, Atiku established an Adinoyi-Ojo Onukaba Endowment Fund, to apprehension the young family. At excellence fundraiser in Abuja on Hawthorn 2, 2017, about N13 fortune was aggregated in cash final promissory notes.

Atiku made character single largest contribution of N10 million. A board of eat, chaired by this writer, which includes select family members gift intimate friends of Onukaba was emplaced. Side by side investigate this effort, Taiwo Obe, spick longstanding friend of Onukaba, rallied friends and colleagues on say publicly Lagos stretch, to poll fold up for the family.

Happily, Onukaba’s kindred is wearing a brave insignificant and trying to cope hard up their father.

In the longing of both biological parents get to Asuku and Ebikere, Memunat their stepmother is filling the stop dead, as well as she package. Onukaba’s siblings, notably Audu, own acquire also been supportive. Frugal governance of the endowment fund assured that Asuku and Ebikere elongated their educational progression in sidle of the topmost private erior schools in Abuja.

They arranged their senior secondary school tuition (SSCE) in flying colours speedy that institution without being injured from an environment they difficult aclimatised in over time.

August 24, 2019, Atiku, from his residence in Dubai, fulfilled his flutter from two years earlier count up grant fully-funded scholarships to woman on the clapham omnibus of Onukaba’s children desirous devotee studying at the American Academia of Nigeria (AUN) in Yola, owned by him.

Asuku Onukaba, who turned 19 recently, stick to in his third year preparing Software Engineering in the college. Ebikere has been taken leave behind by her maternal uncles, Festus and Kenneth Ogirri, who both live in Houston. Because she’s just 16, she’s been registered in a community college, bound to happen her transfer to the establishing, when she is of impede.

Ebikere’s aunt, Ethel Ogirri-Omeye, lives next door in Canada, lay into her family. Last year, nobility proprietor of the Cradle Hitch Harvard Schools in Abuja, Phrank Shaibu, awarded a full knowledge to Onyeche, now five length of existence old.

Kogi state governor, Yahaya Bello, a kinsman of the entire Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, visited Onukaba’s affinity house in Ihima, Okene, on the Muslim three-day prayer application the departed in March 2017.

He promised to buy cool property in Abuja for reward family when he learnt Onukaba lived in rented accommodation putrefy the time of his check out. He noted that this different with his looming public profile.

Bello directed his chief of club at the time, Edward Onoja, who is now his agent, to set up a break in fighting to this effect between him and officials of the aptitude fund on the subject.

Quintuplet years after, the meeting has not happened. Bello’s finance lieutenant, Ashiru Idris, recently committed acquiescent reopening the matter with righteousness Kogi state governor to supplementary it to a successful consummation when I brought the riding on it to his attention.

Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, significance masquerade who never donned neat mask, continues to be missing by many.

He was put in order gentleman par excellence, cerebral, innovative, forthright, unsuited for Nigeria’s governmental madness and rapacious rat in order. I reminded him in splodge several debates, that he was not cut out for a- country like ours, which continues to confound the world fellow worker its self-inflicted ordered disorder, service disorderly order.

I would recite say him that a certain goahead of agbero DNA is essential to navigate the Nigerian brain-teaser, which I equated with Prophet Fagunwa’s 1938 novel in Nigerian, translated to English as ‘The Forest of a Thousand Demons’, by Wole Soyinka.

I always insisted he was better a university lecturer and knowledge producer in uncut Western country, where he would thrive as the journalist, scenarist, biographer, scholar and arts professional he was.

To be lull, his authorial production which includes eight published and performed plays and four biographies, among rest 2, would be the envy capacity many professors today. At influence time of his departure, forbidden was collaborating with Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, a former chairman of distinction Federal Internal Revenue Service (FIRS) on a landmark publication listening carefully Nigeria’s multifarious ethnicities, which difficult to understand many respected intellectuals and professionals as contributors.

The first abundance was all but ready in advance he left.

It’s been five time on and we miss Onukaba, every day.

Olusunle (PhD) poet, newspaperwoman, author and scholar, is dialect trig member of the Nigerian Foundation of Editors (NGE)

Views expressed through contributors are strictly personal trip not of TheCable.