With the death on Monday, March 7, of Dr Doyin Okupe, twice a presidential spokesman, Nigeria has been deprived of a pan-Nigerian politician. Okupe, who died of cancer at 72 in a Lagos hospital, was free of the primordial tendencies that have over the years made our country underachieve, despite stupendous resources.
Though he and Chief Moshood K.O. Abiola, the Social Democratic Party presidential candidate in the June 12 1993 vote, hailed from Ogun State, the National Republican Republican Convention candidate in the election, Bashir Tofa, had no difficulty assigning the most trusted role in the election to him: the NRC chief party agent. In this position, Okupe had to certify the overall election result. This was when ethnic, regional, religious, and other primordial forces had not seized Nigerian politics and, by extension, national affairs and even personal relationships.
Still, when the Ibrahim Babangida military regime announced the cancellation of the vote, Okupe, guided by a profound sense of justice, issued a statement declaring Abiola the winner and lacerating the military junta for the announcement that took Nigeria to the brink. Many Lagosians were impressed by his action and gathered in their numbers the next day at his 21 Sere Close in Ilupeju, Lagos, a stone’s throw from my own residence. The gathering became almost a daily ritual, with me almost on every occasion leading the prayer for the official release of the June 12 election result and the law of Karma for the annullers.
When the Sani Abacha malevolent dictatorship began to crack down on the Yoruba mostly for their relentless opposition to the election annulment and stiff opposition to his rule, Okupe genuinely felt that there was, indeed, an existential threat to his people. He and Fredrick Fashaun, another medical doctor, formed the OmoOduduwa People’s Congress (OPC). Okupe’s star role in the OPC emergence remains a secret for some reason. Ironically, the OPC under Gani Adams became the albatross of the Obasanjo government in the early years, making Okupe commission Tayo Adesina, then a senior history lecturer at the University of Ibadan, and myself to report on how to make the OPC become a non-violent organization.
With the Abdulsalami Abubakar regime returning Nigeria to democracy in 1999, Okupe joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) principally because of Olusegun Obasanjo, seeking the party’s presidential ticket. Though I was a committed supporter of Alex Ekwueme, Obasanjo’s main rival for the ticket, Okupe and I enjoyed the best relationship.
Many journalists were piqued that Obasanjo, on assuming office on May 19, 1999, named Okupe, a medical doctor, his special assistant on the media, a position traditionally reserved for consummate communication practitioners. I naturally came to his defence, citing Pope John the Second, who had a fantastic global media reputation managed by his press secretary, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, a Spanish medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry. I also cited the example of Cyprian Ekwensi, the pharmacist and novelist who did a masterful job as a Biafran propagandist during the Nigerian Civil War and later managed the government-owned Renaissance newspapers in Enugu in the 1970s. Ekwensi’s brilliance showed brilliantly in the implementation of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) campaign coordinated by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture in the 1980s under Group Captain Emeka Omeruah.
Okupe had always craved publicity roles, obviously to make up for his failure to study English or communication in the university. He was doing better in the art subjects than in the science ones at Igbobi College in Lagos and so wanted to be a writer. However, his elder sister, a medical doctor who had so much influence on him, wouldn’t hear of it. On one occasion, she drove him to a theatre where she showed him some haggard-looking people and told him pointedly, “These hungry people are artistes. Do you still want to be like one of them?” That’s how he found himself in medical school at the University of Ibadan and met people like Seyi Roberts, with whom he established a bond, not just a relationship.
Okupe was the leader of the Lagos Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) committee on HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980s because it entailed a lot of public communication. He was the national publicity secretary of the Liberal Convention, a political party in the late 1980s, and also the NRC national publicity secretary, which saw him write a weekly column in Sunday Times, sharing the same page with Ojo Maduekwe, the special assistant to the SDP national chairman, Babagana Kingibe. Okupe delighted in his several debates with Maduekwe, a celebrated articulate lawyer who was to become a Minister under Obasanjo. Despite belonging to opposing parties, Okupe and Maduekwe were very close and admired each other. On Okupe’s 40th birthday, Maduekwe spoke glowingly of the celebrant.
Okupe gave the presidential press secretary office dignity and tremendous influence. He was an excellent political strategist, making him a most valuable asset. A lot of people who wanted things done quickly from above approached him, with some gaining access to him through me; the list includes Dr Chris Ngige who was to become a very effective Anambra State governor, and Prince Yormie Johnson, the Liberian warlord who killed President Samuel Doe in 1990 and died last November at 72 while serving as a senator in his country.
A man of the people, Okupe’s residence in Abuja was always filled to the brim with visitors from all parts of Nigeria. No sooner was the Obasanjo administration inaugurated than Okupe and his lovely wife, Lola, insisted I stay with them during a visit from Lagos. As each room had at least two occupants, they decided that I share their bed with them. When one of the visitors failed to return that night, however, I had to share a room with a Customs officer married to the wife’s sister.
Okupe was pained to know that my village in Ihiala, Anambra State, had no electricity access because of the perfidious role of some influential individuals. The next day he wrote a letter to the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) Managing Director asking him to address the matter urgently. The letter was honoured promptly. In appreciation, my community conferred on the presidential spokesman the chieftaincy title of Nwanne Di N’Mba of Umuezeawala, Ihiala, on December 31, 2000, but he couldn’t attend the ceremony in person. He was over the moon when the regalia and the accouterment were presented to him in his residence in Lagos. His family was there, including his aged mother who came from Iperu, Ogun State. She addressed my people in Igbo, telling us of her memorable days in school in Onitsha as a young girl.
A fervent believer in Nigeria’s unity, Okupe was proud that his daughter has an Igbo husband. He always had Igbo persons in his office in both the private and public sectors. There was one popularly known as Alhaji from the Southwest who made an AI in Igbo in the school certificate examination as a student of St Patrick’s Secondary School, Emene, Enugu, and married a woman from Awo Omama in Imo State. Okupe always showed him off to his Igbo visitors. Okupe appreciated that I gave his son, Bolu, the popular Igbo name, Emeka, at birth.
I remember vividly how Okupe and I met for the first time. It was in December 1985 in the beautiful Samuel Shonibare Estate in Maryland, Lagos. I was visiting Lagos to explore a job opportunity since the newspaper where I was working in Enugu was, for all practical purposes, dead. When Okey Ndibe, working at The Guardian, visited Nnamdi Obasi and Chike Akabogu, who were Concord newspaper editorial board members, they suggested we visit Okupe to discuss politics and a health newspaper he was setting up. I didn’t say anything at the meeting, yet when we were going, Okupe gave me only a big envelope. I needed the money.
When I returned to Lagos and settled in Ilupeju after some months, who would move from Shonibare Estate to almost the next street to my house without knowing I was living there? Omooba Doyin Okupe! Thus began a deep friendship between him and myself. His siblings, especially Wemi, Lanre and Owo, became more or less my own brothers.
Nigeria has just lost a true patriot in Dr Okupe. He was a Nigerian Original. May God receive his soul in heaven.
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Image: AlJazeera Youtube screengrab
