Dokpesi: A broadcast exponent stages a final show

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 is 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 Gen. 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. Only a few years back when he was to undergo a major surgery in the United Kingdom for an ailment related to cancer, the surgery was halted because the Nigerian government under Buhari had seized the money he transferred to the UK hospital. The money was resting in Emefiele’s Central Bank while Dokpesi was primed for death.

But God always comes true for the poor and the harassed. An Angel came in the form of a Good Samaritan who made immediate alternative arrangements in Dubai. Dokpesi survived the conspiracy to kill him in the hospital and much later would also frustrate their conspiracy to jail him. Thanks to good lawyers and a bold judiciary.

I can say now with every information at my disposal that those who hate him are few, very few. Since his apotheosis, there has been an overwhelming flow of love from within Nigeria and across the nations of the world, even across party lines, if you were to measure the way that some Nigerians bury their lives in politics.

The National Burial Committee headed by Senator Ben Obi has demonstrated overwhelming love and commitment to a friend and brother. Nigerians who came to the International Conference Centre in Abuja for the Day of Tributes, have also poured out their love for a patriot whose transition to glory is only a promotion to a supervisory position in the spirit realm.

Dokpesi left us a stunning parting gift. I was fortunate to be the first guest in News 24 Studio on Monday during the tributes. Sitting at a corner of that massive studio, with the entire surrounding wall cybernised and smart, except for the entrance door, and his bold pictures bearing down on me all around from the video walls, I wondered at the vision of a man who lived ahead of his time, and I simply melted. News 24 Studio is a befitting and lasting testimony to the beauty of deregulated broadcasting.

Dokpesi dreamed too big. Whether in shipping, broadcasting, business, politics and social commitment to the people, he was generations ahead of us all. In our smallness and inability to understand him, we bore him a grudge and hated him to the extent of putting him on demolition line. May God forgive us and keep his voice and peace in perpetuity.

Aihe is a coauthor of the authorised biography of Chief Raymond Dokpesi, The Handkerchief.