Dee Bob: Epitome of God’s amazing grace
Iwant to thank the NIPR for organising this event in honour of Chief Beremako Ewuolonu Ogbuagu, OON, FNIPR, FNGE, PDG, D.Lit., or Dee Bob, the name by which he became known. I am especially indebted to the indefatigable President of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, Dr. Rotimi Oladele for his fidelity, friendship and sense of responsibility. For how could Dee Bob have gone home without a resounding farewell from Lagos, the city that was and remains the bastion of his very essence: public relations, journalism, humanitarian work, Methodism, Rotary and nationalist ferment?
In some sense, for many a great Nigerian, Lagos is a love affair that you don’t want a divorce from. It doesn’t matter whether you live in Lagos or not. What is important is that, at one point in your earthly odyssey, you either passed through Lagos or, the city that never sleeps, will find a way of passing through you.
And so was it with Dee Bob. At age 70, when people retired to their villages or were expected to do so, Dee Bob returned to Lagos. Incredible! More incredible was the fact that he assumed the headship of Champion Newspapers, for an interim period which lasted nearly five years! Even more credible was the fact that at 70, Dee Bob was as strong as fiddle, displaying the mental alertness of someone who was thirty-five. Workers marveled at his presence of mind and physical agility of the rare septuagenarian who had been drafted by the publisher of Champion Newspapers Limited, Chief Dr. Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu to fill a gap following the appointment of the acting managing director/editor-in-chief, Dr. Ihechukwu Madubuike as minister of health by late Head of State, General Sani Abacha.
That later day sojourn in Lagos epitomized Dee Bob’s life: tireless, restless, zestful and passionate. For in Lagos, it was as if his life was being renewed. That wouldn’t have been a surprise though: Dee Bob would have referred you to Psalm 103, verse 5; that God renews the youth of His people like the Eagle’s! Whether he was in the Methodist Church at Olowogbowo, or in the company of his PR compatriots at Ikeja, or his Rotary brethren at Ladoke Akintola Street GRA, Ikeja, or with his fellow compatriots on the Committee of Patriots: Akintola Williams, Ben Nwabueze, Lanihun Ajayi, Tanko Yakassai, etc he found new steam in his lifelong campaign to witness the emergence of a united Nigeria, anchored firmly on the principles of true federalism, equity and justice.
To those who wondered why he went back to work in 1995 at age 70, it will surprise you to learn that he was never motivated by any pecuniary considerations or the glamour of public life. Instead, he saw an opening to advance two consuming passions: first, loyalty to friendship and second, the unfinished business of architecting a Nigerian nation-state that would withstand the strains and stresses of unbridled sub-cultural nationalism. In that regard, Champion Newspapers Limited, an organisation that he provided the fulcrum on which it started in 1988, became the platform for reviving his life of journalistic activism. How many Nigerians remember that, as publisher of the Nigerian Advocate in Jos, he was jailed by the colonial administrators in 1955?
In retrospect, did he achieve his objectives for coming to Lagos? The answer is Yes and No. On the platform of friendship, he did: Chief Dr. Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu remains ever grateful for the stabilizing role Dee Bob played in the evolution of the newspaper. For us at Champion House, in those days, we had the unforgettable privilege of drinking from the cup of wisdom of one of the greatest Nigerians to have ever lived, a personage who, like the late Sir Jerome Udoji, that quintessential civil servant of blessed memory, had served under three masters: the colonial administration, the post independence civilian administration, and the military. I will never forget one of his greatest legacies: that a document should never pass through an office without ensuring a proper sequence of comments. In other words, not only should the officer minute on it, the person must number the minutes. In retrospect, all that is required to appreciate the value of that simple requirement is to follow the denials and counter-denials over certain issues that have gone dangerously awry in contemporary public life, in Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the country is still battling with those problems of nation-building that forced him and his colleagues on the Committee of Patriots, mostly elderly men who needed their rest, to spend hours on end, brainstorming on the way forward, for the country. Dee Bob couldn’t understand it: he grew up at a time that though tribe and tongue differed, in brotherhood they stood; he served in an era when, for many, work started with integrity and ended with integrity; he operated in an era when your rise on the career ladder was dictated more by hard work and competence than by who you knew. To him, those were minimum desiderata for the national renaissance that he thought, with his colleagues; he could etch unto the national psyche. Pity, we are still at the same crossroads, undecided whether to confront our monsters and ride the storm or be swept away by the currents of history.
Yet, he never failed. Last Saturday, at the South East Economic Summit in Enugu, many speakers recalled with nostalgia the That later day sojourn in Lagos epitomized Dee Bob’s life: tireless, restless, zestful and passionate. For in Lagos, it was as if his life was being renewed. That wouldn’t have been a surprise though: Dee Bob would have referred you to Psalm 103, verse 5; that God renews the youth of His people like the Eagle’s! halcyon days of economic boom of the defunct eastern region under late Premier Michael Okpara; an economy that the Word Bank had adjudged as the fastest growing in the developing world. It is a testament of his legacy that Dee Bob was executive secretary to the Eastern Nigerian Development Commission, ENDC, the promoter and supervisor of all the companies and sundry entities that were used to drive that historical performance. Presidential Hotels in Enugu and Port Harcourt, the Trans-Amadi Industrial Layout in Port Harcourt, Obudu Cattle Ranch stand as undying evidence of that great era. Not to be left out were Modern Ceramics Industry and Golden Guinea Breweries in Umuahia and lastly, the farm settlements all over the region. Dee Bob, the man with the institutional memory of that golden era, passed on at 92. It is one of those ironies of our time that we could not tap into his reservoir of knowledge and personal attributes, to deliver on benchmark democracy dividends in an era of unprecedented revenues and advanced technology.
His breed is fast depleting. And, in the fast-paced age in which we live, an age in which we celebrate ourselves and not our mentors and icons, let us hope that patriots like Dee Bob and the ideals they lived for, will not be forgotten to the eternal damnation of our country. In spite of human imperfections, I will strive to remember because he touched my life in a very profound personal manner. He was a father, a mentor, a confidant. He trusted and stood by me all the way from that first meeting in March 1984 at his Union Trust Limited office at School Road in Owerri, Imo State. That leads to another remarkable aspect of his life: For all his nationalistic passion, for all the love of the klieg light in Lagos and other great cities, Dee Bob firmly believed that God had a reason for making the East his place of origin. So, Owerri was his business base, all through life. That also meant that, no matter how busy he was, every week, he would have to return to Owerri to be with Cee; that was how he called his wife Lady Cecilia, the Amazon and matriarch of the Ogbuagu family.
She, with her children Uche, Ada, Iheomadinihu, Ekelaka, Iheukwumere and his brother, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Justice Ikechi Ogbuagu, JSC, will lead the funeral band that includes many known and unknown beneficiaries of Dee Bob’s life of quiet philanthropy, mentoring and service to humanity.
As He goes home, he will be remembered as the visionary Nigerian who blurred the distinction between generations, repudiated the cleavages that perennially held Nigeria hostage, remained loyal to friends and friendship, looked to the future with unquenchable optimism and served his maker with abiding faith. Above all, he will be remembered as the loving and caring husband of Cee, the biological father of Uche and his siblings and the sociological and professional father of many known and unknown people among whom are to be counted Rotimi Oladele and yours sincerely, Emma Agu.
His remains will be committed to mother earth at his hometown, Umuonukele in Umukabia Ohuhu of Umuahia North LGA, Abia State on Friday, November 18, 2017. Our prayer is that the gentle soul of Dee Bob (Chief Dr. Beremako Ewulonu Ogbuagu, OON, May 25, 1925 to August 21, 2017) rest in the bossom of the Lord.