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A Tribute To Gamaliel Onosode

By Alfred Okoigun
23 October 2015   |   11:04 pm
WHEN I was informed of the death of Mr. Gamaliel Onosode, what came to my mind immediately was that I have just lost a great teacher, a mentor and indeed, a role model of no mean order. The outpouring of tributes to his memory has been spontaneous. I am not surprised. I said to myself:…
Onosode

Onosode

WHEN I was informed of the death of Mr. Gamaliel Onosode, what came to my mind immediately was that I have just lost a great teacher, a mentor and indeed, a role model of no mean order. The outpouring of tributes to his memory has been spontaneous. I am not surprised. I said to myself: “There goes a man who took on a full load of work in the various capacities in which he was called to serve his fatherland and yet created the time for God and his family.”

I was privileged to meet Mr. Onosode as an Old Boy of Government College Ughelli (GCU). He had attended the college more than two decades ahead of me. Yet, we found ourselves robbing shoulders at the branch and national meetings of the GCU Old Boys Association (GCUOBA). But my first real encounter with him was when he was the President General Worldwide of the association. I served as the chairman of the organising committee of one of the annual dinners of the association and as the President General Worldwide, he was the chief host of the event. For that reason, I was obliged to go and show him the printed copy of the programme of the event. I told him I would like to bring the programme to his house in advance of the event.

Apparently, he had the whole day filled up with what he wanted to do. Nevertheless, he asked me to join him at Shoprite along Lekki/Epe Expressway to have lunch with members of his family.

There he was with his wife and some of his grandchildren. While we were all seated having lunch, he took time to browse through the programme. In the process, he spotted some errors and drew my attention to them. Although I appreciated his observations, I humbly told him that for an event coming up the following day, it would be virtually impossible to find a printer that could reproduce the programme after effecting the corrections.

Onosode looked at me in the face and frankly replied: “Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. If you can’t find someone to print the programme the way it should be, don’t bother to bring it to the event.” With such plain words I leave it to your imagination if the food I just ate went down well inside me because I had just been given another kind of food, a food for thought.

I quickly called one of the committee members, Cliff Akora, to assist in finding a way out of the challenge: get a printer to work late on Saturday and get a new set of programmes. The best we could achieve was to print a few copies for the high table while a word processor effected the corrections and produced copies for our guests. We had to do that to stave off an anticipated retribution from the President General Worldwide. Without further comments on the situation, we felt he must have been pleased that we found a decent way round the problem. That was a lesson I learnt about being thorough and going the extra mile to get it right.

I once met the Chief Executive of Zain (now Airtel) at an international conference in Madrid Spain several years ago. He asked me: “How is Mr. Onosode?” Before I could provide an answer, he went on: “Give him my regard. He is a man of intellect and transparency.” You could imagine how I felt in the midst of people around me, who heard his spur-of-the-moment comment about Onosode.

When I served on the committee that planned his 80th Birthday celebration, I came across many heads of the institutions where he had held such advisory positions as Chairman of Council including the University of Ibadan, the University of Lagos, Bowen University, Iwo and the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ogbomosho. They attested to the fact that they enjoyed his tenures with them because he not only donated his allowances to students-oriented projects but also added his own money to ensure that he made positive and lasting contributions to the development of these institutions.

He crowned it all by establishing the Gamaliel and Susan Onosode (GamSu) Foundation to carry on his work in the field of education. He has left the Foundation in the hands of Mr. Moyo Ajekigbe, Ms. Evelyn Oputu, two of his children—Ese and Spencer Onosode, Pastor Paul Adefarasin, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood and my humble self. The best tribute we can pay to Mr. Onosode’s memory is to ensure that his dream Foundation makes the desired impact in the development of education in Nigeria.

Mr. Gamaliel Onosode, good-bye! Rest in perfect peace!! Okoigun is GMD, Arco Group Plc.

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