By Okoh Aihe
Today, Dr Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi will return to Agenebode with his friends. The big boys who have been with him most of his life, the crème de la crème of the society with the incandescent stars, the ordinary folks of the society for whom he had so much love, having struggled up from extreme poverty himself, his professional colleagues – the marine engineers and broadcasters, who cheered him on as he broke new grounds for their industries, and the Dokpesi family, which is quite large; they will gather in Agenebode for a grand exit party that will do their son good.
I don’t know whether Sunny Ade will be there, the grand musician with electric feet and even electric fingers as he commands the guitar into entertaining obedience. He loves Jimmy Cliff too and remains one of his early friends as well. Agenebode will receive big people from government, businesses and even the entertainment industry, such as had never been witnessed in the history of that beautiful town by the River Niger, in honour of a son that has planted their name firmly on the global map.
Dokpesi is a city boy
with a voluminous appetite for hard work, big parties and beautiful women.
Except that after this particular party, he will not be returning to the city
with his friends. Reason: he has been apotheosised and now lives in a different
realm of the cosmos.
The auguries made a mistake in failing to
announce the birth of a son that would change the world. Although Ibadan was
already growing into a big city when he was born on October 25, 1951, the
mother, Aishetu didn’t have the privilege of running to a hospital but at the
back of their small home where she had had most of her other children, all
female. It was a very lowly birth but which came with a lot of joy for the
family.
Perhaps that is the way they come, the
children that will change the world. Over two thousand years ago, when Jesus
came into the world through Bethlehem, Judea, there was no place for him in the
inn but had to be properly wrapped and placed in a manger, or a sheep hold, for
convenient explanation. Yet, his doctrine changed the world.
Dokpesi had the mind to change the world.
Growing up was painful. The small body was wracked by a mysterious ailment and
tomorrow was kept in forlorness. His mother Aishetu ate pain and sorrow as
daily meals. Watching her very closely and the pain his birth had imposed on
the family, Dokpesi chose hope very early in life, hope painted in
colours that elicit great pictures for a better tomorrow. He offered to be The
Handkerchief that will wipe the sweat of the sorrowing and eventually grew to
become the Araba that shelters all.
It was a great choice that has helped him
conquer fear and several heights in various fields of endeavour. That is why
his star friends are accompanying him home today because there is an
opportunity for one last party, for the galaxy to flaunt its stars.
Dokpesi’s background did not deter his
determination, instead it was his determination that came through very
forcefully as a testament to the sterner stuff ingrained in him. Good grades in
the secondary school in Nigeria, academic records from graduate to doctoral
level in Poland, funded through a government scholarship. And the world at his
feet. He was in a hurry to live life and achieve results.
Those who don’t know him say, he is lucky.
Others envy his success and try to persecute him, according to the people’s
lawyer, Prof Mike Ozekhome (SAN), in Dokpesi’s authorised biography, The
Handkerchief.
But Dokpesi fought for everything in his life
and gave the very picture of a man who perhaps may not feel pain even if you
use his head to break a coconut, as they say in my part of the world.
Everyday of his life, he behaved like a stunt man in a movie, except that his
actions were deliberate and very calculated to achieve expected outcomes.
Until his biography was
published over a year ago, when he was 70, so many people didn’t know how
old he was, because Dokpesi has been part of the nation’s narrative for a very
long time. He had built a perfect strategy matched with street sense in
relating with the authorities, including the big boys in the society, without
forgetting the ordinary folks.
Dokpesi had a mind for all, and the humility
to relate with people irrespective of class and age. The other day, my son placed
a call to me and I told him I was at a meeting with Chairman Emeritus. Who? Mr
Dokpesi? Let me talk to him. That is how they called him, all my children; for
them not the niceties or the anachronism of High Chief. No. Simply Mr. And he
enjoyed it all, speaking to a young man in his early twenties like his age mate
or business partner. And he gave very candid advise that the boy will live with
all the days of his life.
Please, forgive the digression. Dokpesi loved
the scent of history. After an historical participation in politics in the old
Gongola State in 1983, where he was Chief of Staff to Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the
first ever for a non native anywhere in the country, he put together a stellar
cast of characters in the persons of Late Major Gen. Musa Yar’Adua, MKO Abiola
and Bamanga Tukur, the only living of the daring quartet, to float the first
indigenous shipping company in Nigeria, the African Ocean Line, which was very
successful until the economy of the nation started to go burst.
However, what seems to be his payoff line now
is his frontline role in promoting private broadcasting enterprise in the
country. Never one to witness any relapse or dull moment in his life, when
broadcasting was deregulated in 1992 by the military government under General
Ibrahim Babangida, Dokpesi became one of the first licensees and by September
1, 1994, launched what many would recall as the most beautiful broadcast
signals in the country. Raypower 100.5, with Raypower eventually becoming his
moniker, was launched.
Twenty-Four-hour broadcasting was born.
History confirmed and cemented. Since then, it was one man competing against
himself, breaking all available records. Africa Independent Television, AIT,
followed, and then FAAJI FM. AIT International was launched in New York in the
first tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, where both Dokpesi and the
Nigerian President boasted at the venue, Grand Hyatt, that time had come for
the world to hear from Nigeria in a reordering of a new information order that will
radiate from the African continent.
Dokpesi was a bold and courageous man, moving
with the strength of a raging bull and crushing everything on his part. He
never held anything back from the people, but instead, spread his investments
across the nation, from east to west and from north to south. Whether in Gombe,
Katsina, Oshogbo, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Bayelsa, Edo, his native state,
Dokpesi maintained a point of presence, ingratiating himself to the people with
his audacious investments.
He built Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja to be
the hub of his operations and, my God, the power of broadcasting transformed
those immediate environments, with Alagbado in Lagos and Kpaduma Hills in Abuja
as clear evidence of property value.
There is a story we know. President Goodluck
Jonathan who handed over to President Buhari reaffirmed that story at the Day
of Tributes for Dokpesi in Abuja on Monday. He told the gathering that when
Nigeria, under President Musa Yar’Adua buckled from hosting the FIFA Age World Cup
in 2009 because of cost, Dokpesi came to him with an alternative proposal which
saved the nation from global opprobrium.
Daar Communications hosted the FIFA World Cup
for Nigeria, for which the previous administration would nearly demolish him
for collecting money from the government without procurement. The Buhari
government lost the case in court.
Dokpesi’s boldness brought him trouble. He was
always marked for demolition for his beliefs, his politics and audacity. His
stations were burnt many times. He dodged assassins’ bullets and, in one of
those attempts, his head driver, Danladi, was killed in a hail of bullets at
Alagbado, Lagos. Some say Dokpesi was a cat with nine lives, but almost every
day, he mocked death.
*Aihe is a commentator on public issues
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