Albert Okumagba: The iroko who didn’t fall

It first started like a small noise. An irritating message from Jasper. Jasper was with us in BGL but now a major tech entrepreneur based in Abuja. Have you heard, he said. I said what, the news about Albert. I said what about him. He has just passed. Ibrahim told me.

I felt my spirit leave me. I had just spent a blissful weekend with Mudi who was relaunching his new outlet in Abuja and Francis his brother and a host of his very close Associates including Dan Akpovwa Publisher of Abuja based National Inquirer were all in attendance. Albert as usual was the butt of the banter and every body excitedly talked about him not knowing that in just four days he would be gone.

Albert was not normal. He was a free-spirited icon that was not meant to last. I have refused to cry or even feel sad because I have come to the realization that people like this never live long. At 56, he even overstayed his welcome. His contemporaries like Martin Luther King and Murtala Muhammed left in their 30s.

The world never understands them. We never understood Albert because he saw things we didn’t see. He was a moving bundle of energy and I would really not like to use the word visioner on him. That word has been bastardised in our clime; it is now used to even describe people who package pure water. Albert was pristine, he was a force and he hit the, markets like a tsunami. Very charismatic and good looking, he was the Mohammed Ali of the Capital market.

He saw a huge market space. He saw the retail space long before now and made moves to harness it with the major role he played in the berthing of the mega financial behemoths – like UBA and Access bank that all but dot the landscape. He moved BGL away from the wholesale paternity it bore to a retail colossus with over 20 branches and the largest numbers of stockbrokers in the market including humble me. It was mad and the market didn’t understand it. They looked on stupefied with the audacity of his vision, he didn’t care, he just kept on moving surrounding himself with soldiers who could carry his vision to fruition.

Today Asset management firms are scrambling to leverage on technology to push scale and customer base. Albert saw this some 10 years ago when he launched the four Funds on the back of his BGL Asset Management Limited.

Albert was god. Yes he was god to me because I saw what he saw and even when I got scared and hid behind him holding his legs and asking in my tiny voice, ‘are you sure sir’ he would laugh and say. ‘Oga do you think we are joking here, let’s move’. Move he did. Building not only structures but people, institutionalising dreams, giving then breath and watching them grow into life creating wealth, creating jobs and giving fillip to hope.

How did we repay him? Scorn. Yes, as it is wont to be, at the slightest misadventure they came for him. The enemies who would rather we remain in our squalid positions of poverty mobbed in. regulators who were designed to provide guiding anchor out of the woods suddenly became caretakers, the media who didn’t understand what he stood for or what he was trying g to do became vultures who swooped in on his body aiming to tear away at what was left of his legacy, the authorities messed him up with glee, arraigning him for one charge after the other but still not being able to stick a conviction till date and then his own constituency the red jacket wearing ‘cult’ turned their backs on him even trying to pin some funny charges on him a few days to his passing.

Did he fall. NO. he never fell. This iroko did not fall, he only trans morphed into a realm where he will better guide his soldiers as they strive to safely berth his dreams.