FATHER OF THE MULTITUDE (2)
Taiwo Obe pays tribute to Adinoyi Onukaba Ojo, a respected journalist and administrator
In registering a company, you are required to have at least two subscribers to the Memorandum and Articles of Association. Who else would I have chosen for a company that has to do with communication but the man called Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo? I called him in the US and informed him; I was not seeking his approval, really. It was just a “FYI Only” matter. These are his recollections of that fateful afternoon: ‘Yes I was in New York as a doctoral candidate at New York University when you called to invite me to co-found the company. I was naturally very happy that you, me and other friends were thinking of creating an enterprise in which we could work for ourselves rather than spend our entire lives slaving for others. I was happy that you had decided to lead the effort that would see us take control of our future. I was asked to purchase some PR and Advertising and Communication books and send home to the fledging company as part of my equity contribution. I got some of the books and that was it.’ (Onukaba had noted in one of his letters which he wrote in his usual scraggy-lettering-camouflaged-as-cursive, thus: ‘I pray never to return to the spectre of poverty that drove me away from home. I wish you all the best for the decade there has to be some action’). That was not it, Mr Adinoyi-Ojo: the company had to have a name.
I can imagine that some readers actually ignored the beginning parts of this book to get here quickly: to find out The Revelation. Oh well, let’s hope that this would enter The Encyclopaedia of Meanings of Company Names. In my days as a library assistant (if you have not read Chapter II: The Discoveries, you won’t grasp this), I had too much money for a lad. It was the era when commercial jazz was the music. It was the era when cartridges and chrome dioxide cassettes were the fad. You were not trendy if you didn’t log those cassettes, BASF, SONY, etc. I collected all the works of Barry White, and I mean all the works; the music of Grover Washington, Jr, Eric Gale, Johnny Guitar Watson, Stanley Turrentine, George Benson and that Japanese alto saxophonist, Sadao Watanabe. It was a good time to be a lad, earning money that I didn’t need.
That afternoon, when I sat to christen this company that I had told Onukaba about, the uppermost thing on my mind was to come up with a name that won’t be returned by the Corporate Affairs Commission: an uncommon name; without a double.
So I juggled the two names of the two promoters, as if I was in a chemistry lab, and while doing the mixing, Sadao Watanabe kept fleeting by. And so was born TaijoWonukabe & Associates Limited. It was incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Decree 1990, on the 3rd day of September ...1-9-9-1 with Registration Number 166724. The authorised share capital was N1,000,000 at 1.00 per share. We increased the authorised shareholding to N20,000,000 on October 17, 2003.
We have had immeasurable fun with this name. Perhaps, right now, you are even juggling the letters like tiles in a game of Scrabble; go ahead and have your fun.
Postscript:
This morning, the one we called CBN (real name: Chido Nwakanma) called me to find out if I had heard about Onukaba. When a message goes like that, be sure, it is some awful thing that has happened. What happened to Onukaba? He told me someone wrote that he’s dead…No. I called Onukaba’s number and it was a brother of his who picked it and confirmed that indeed, my friend and brother, had died. He was talking about what happened, but I barely heard the details. He was driving the car en route to Abuja. Bla, bla, bla.
I cried like I didn’t even when the death of my own older brother was broken to me.
I cried...I who have always counselled people to remember the good times they shared with their loved ones who passed away. What is there to cry for now? OnuK is gone. To meet His creator. I am sure his soul will find peace, because he was (was?) a genuinely good man. He would have been 57 on March 9, 2017.
So, in remembering the good times we shared together, I have excerpted from a book that I have been writing almost forever. I now must finish the book. For Onukaba.