THE DEMISE OF ‘MR. INTEGRITY’

The last time I saw him was about two years ago, at a function at the Afe Babalola Hall at the University of Lagos. It was very close to his 80th birthday. Dr. Afe Babalola, Senior Ad­vocate of Nigeria, SAN, and quiet phi­lanthropist, who donated the hall to the institution, was also at the event. I can’t tell precisely what occasion it was, but what I can recall without contradiction is that the hall was electrified with the presence of these two great Nigeri­ans. And I was so entangled with their magnetic presence and offerings at the event that I couldn’t shift my gaze from them most of the time.

I never knew that was the last time I would be seeing Dr. Gamaliel Offoritsenere Onosode, super technocrat, boardroom guru, pastor and politician who spewed no bile and in whom no guile was found. He succumbed to cancer of the bone on Tuesday, September 29, aged 82.

Although he had shrunken a bit, he never betrayed any visible sigh of the disease that was eating him. He was in his elements. His delivery was very engaging. It was very illu­minating. And throughout the three-hour or so programme, he never hoarded his toothpaste smile. Not once. Even as I write this, I still see that sunny laughter in my subconscious.

MEETING THE LEGEND

I have been at a few crossroads in my life, chaotic junctions that tested my faith and chal­lenged the man in me. But at every point, God, in His infinite mercy and grace, made my path to cross with men who helped me out of the bend. Dr. Onosode was one of them. Rev. Emmanuel Oladele Bolarinwa, the late Presi­dent of the Nigeria Baptist Convention and my Pastor at the New Estate Baptist Church, was another. Others are Architect Olusegun Kuti, now an Anglican Reverend, Engineer Ezumba, an international businessman-turned-Anglican Reverend, and Mr. Samuel Durotade Agboola, my Director General at the Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute, NSPRI, Lagos, and later Ilorin. Of course, this is not to forget Mr. Mike Awoyinfa and the late Pastor Dimgba Igwe who taught and mentored me in journal­ism.

I met Onosode for the first time in 1980, at the New Estate Baptist Church, Adisa Bashua Street, off Adelabu Street in Lagos, where he was a Deacon. It was at another crisis point in my life where I needed Jesus Christ in a hurry or I was heading for hell in a huff. But Rev. Bolarinwa, Rev. Ezumba, and Rev. Olusegun Kuti, the then Deacon Onosode rallied round me and Funsho, my beautiful fiancé at the time, who later became my wife, and helped me back on track. Since then, there has been no looking back.

From that point, till he left New Estate Bap­tist Church to found Adelabu Street Baptist Church in his living room, and I was posted to Ilorin in 1984 as the officer-in-charge of NS­PRI, Onosode never left me and Funsho. He kept counselling and praying for and with us. It was to the glory of God, and substantially to the credit of these giants of faith, including Dr. John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, the then Catholic Bishop of Ilorin Diocese (now John Olorun­femi Cardinal Onaiyekan), that my wife and I were able to found a music ministry called Calvary Promotion; in Ilorin. Let me quickly inform that Adelabu Street Baptist Church, which Onosode formed at the height of a lead­ership crisis in New Estate Baptist Church, later metamorphosed to a big church of about 2000 worshippers, Goodnews Baptist Church, also in Surulere.

On a sad note, let me also inform that Cal­vary Promotion has since gone on sabbatical leave, no thanks to journalism, a terribly jeal­ous job that does not allow you to do any other thing once it afflicts you with its virus. But God helping us, Calvary Promotion shall return with a bang one day, and God will forever be glori­fied through its programmes.

LEADERSHIP LESSONS ONOS­ODE TAUGHT WITH HIS LIFE

As a spiritual leader of unquestionable char­acter, and a business guru, Onosode captured the imagination of his compatriots, and the world at large, with his distinguished leader­ship style. A style anchored on character and integrity. An apostle of Servant Leadership, Onosode, a former presidential candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party, ANPP, placed utmost premium on serving with integrity. He did not just mouth integrity, he lived it. He be­lieved, and showed every inch of the way, that the most profitable service (in business or poli­tics) that any human could render is that which he delivers with the fear of God, and renders as if it were onto God.

Like most thinkers, Onosode believed that the reason many African countries are still ret­rogressing when the continent should be rising is due largely to a political class that sees poli­tics as business enterprise; and who, like Dr. William Folorunsho Kumuyi wrote in his book, The case for Servant Leadership, “invest their money and time in it, and exact huge returns.” “Such transactional and self-serving capitalist leadership triggers despotism, kleptomaniac and official corruption.” Therefore, Onosode, practically, and consistently, admonished those in leadership positions or in the race for leader­ship, whether via the soap box or boardroom, to chart paths of honour.

In his lifetime, this legend, who was born and raised in Sapele, Delta State, sat atop many private and public sector businesses and initiatives. Her served as Chairman of Dunlop Nigeria Plc (1984–2007); Chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc (1977–93); Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Parastatals (1981); Chairman of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, Working Committee; and Chair­man, Nigeria LNG Limited (1985–90) and the Niger Delta Environmental Survey (since 1995. He was also Chairman of Zain Nigeria, a GSM telecommunications company, the old­est GSM operator in Nigeria and precursor of AIRTEL.

A Fellow of the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, the Nigerian In­stitute of Management, of which he was Presi­dent (1979–82), and Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Onosode was Special Adviser to President Shehu Shagari on Budget Affairs and Director of Budget (1983).

Additionally, Onosode was the immediate past and inaugural President of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers; immediate past Pro- Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the University of Uyo; and immedi­ate past and inaugural President and Chairman of Council of the Association of Pension Funds of Nigeria.

In all the positions he held before he went to the land of the spirits, Onosode showed that it was quite possible to do business with integrity; in manners that would make God so proud that he would declare one as ‘the apple of my eyes’. Just like he did to the Biblical David, while rec­ognizing his unparalleled leadership attributes of diligence, commitment, courage, honesty, and undiluted love for the business of Living God.

DOING BUSINESS AS THE EA­GLE

“Eagles don’t flock,” wrote Ross Perot. This is another tribute of Onosode who never suf­fered fools gladly and who detested the com­pany of naysayers to his marrow. Eagles, we all know, either fly alone or in the company of other eagles. They never, and will never fly with other birds. For instance, you will never find them flying or flocking with vultures, par­rots, crows, etc. Never!

Onosode, whether on the pulpit, or in busi­ness and governance, never deviated from that principle. He, like his Lord and Master, Jesus, taught and practiced strategic relationship as a veritable tool to achieve organizational goal. His trajectory in life was filled with carefully chosen relationships, designed to amplify cer­tain aspects of his life that ultimately brought immeasurable values to his mentees, workers, colleagues, protégés and superiors.

We cannot exhaust the attributes of Gamaliel Onosode, without talking about the unqualified passion and positive energy that he brought into whatever task he wanted to accomplish. This is not forgetting his commitment to building leaders that will soar like the eagle that he was; leaders who will fly on the wings of integrity.

INTERGRITY UNLIMITED

If he were to be born in this age of greed, an age when some men would murder their mums for money, when men in positions not only steal to feed their greed but to warehouse for four or five generations after them, an age when rapa­cious reapers squeeze their beats till the pips squeak, would Gamaliel Onosode have gone to his grave with his widely acclaimed sobriquet, ‘Mr. Integrity’?

For me, the answer to that is an unequivo­cal ‘YES’. For a man sired and raised by a father, who was not only disciplined but who also never compromised on the principles that Christ lived and died for, Onosode couldn’t have turned or done otherwise. Although, like he told me and my former colleague, Onyea­dika Odor, when we grilled him for three hours for an interview for ICONS, a column in The Spectator, some years back, he was not an angel, despite his acclaimed Spartan lifestyle and good deeds. Despite his phenomenal suc­cess as a disciplined and prudent civil servant and corporate administrator, he admitted, in that interview, that he had one or two personal failings that he regretted. Let’s save that for an­other day.

Despite that admission of few failings, there are those who, even if for academic purposes, would still not see what this icon epitomized as he’s being eulogised since he passed on Tues­day. To them, doing good is a form of vanity. To such people, doing good is no more beneficial than doing evil because, as they would argue, in a world that walks and sleeps with its head, upside down like the bat, people do things with their eyes on something else(Harry Millner in Pearls of Wisdom).

But Onosode, and his colleagues in this no­ble league, have shamed the naysayers. They have proven to the world, beyond all reason­able doubts, that you can do good, live clean and be a blessing to your generation even in a world as chaotic and confused as the one they once traversed.

In his calling as a pastor, businessman, politi­cian, technocrat and boardroom czar, Onosode proved that you can operate in the filthiest and most dreaded environment as ours and still be true to your God. Through his deeds, he proved Napoleon right that for a man of honour, ‘sweet is the sleep that knows no pain.’ That’s why Ni­geria, and the world will celebrate him on end whenever the time comes for his remains to be returned to mother earth.

When a man dies, all he leaves behind are his deeds. And no matter what a man’s motives for doing good are, good deeds have only one DNA. Only one constitution and colour. If they have a variegation of colours, or blurry consti­tution, they cannot be good deeds. Like truth, good deeds are constant. They are not once-up­on-a-time stuff. Whether the vicissitudes of life blow a good man hard like a monsoon, whether he lives in a palace or in pigs’ pen (like Steven ibn Akiga, former Police Affairs Minister, now dead, once described police barracks), a good man will always remain a good man. No matter how hard evil men try to tar Onosode’s good deeds, his good deeds remain good deeds.

Gamaliel Onosode was a good man. A very good man. A worthy man of God in whom the Almighty is well pleased. Rest in peace, my dear Pastor.

 

*Shola Oshunkeye is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief at The Sun Publishing Ghana Limited