Last Saturday, August 8, marked five years since Captain Idahosa Wells Okunbo, Captain Hosa, for short, passed. He would have been 68 years old this year.
Five years on, the tears have refused to stop. Not because I am weak, but because some people leave imprints that time does not erase. Captain Hosa was one of them.
—How integrity made me a brother—
Our friendship began in 2012, at the residence of Chief Tony Anenih in Asokoro, Abuja. I was handling Chief Anenih’s media affairs then. That role recommended me to Captain Hosa.
He asked me to handle some media issues for him. The fees I quoted were far lower than what he was used to. “Media interventions are very expensive,” he said. I told him it didn’t have to be. I proved it, the same way I did for Chief Anenih.
Before me, many had come with bogus proposals and bogus fees. My intervention changed that narrative. Soon, Captain Hosa began to seek my advice and final sign-off on media proposals, especially during the Goodluck Jonathan re-election campaign.
I also wrote extensively and expansively about him. I interrogated issues around him and took on hack writers without first consulting him. That earned me something more valuable than money: his respect.
Pleased, he sent me a lengthy text one day. He thanked me for all I had done and gave me carte blanche: “Let me know when you are under financial pressure. I will be glad to take the pressure off you.”
I never did. But on his own, he resorted to periodic gestures. Monthly. In between. It was incredible.
—A window into the man—
Captain Hosa meant different things to different people. To many, he was a philanthropist. To some, a businessman. To me, he was a big brother who believed in doing things right.
He opened up to me on a number of issues. That background helped me manage any media intervention for him properly.
He loved my writing. He promised to buy me a golden pen on his next trip to London as a symbolic gesture of appreciation.
He traveled to London, all right. But that turned out to be his final trip.
—The last call from London—
On getting to London, Captain Hosa called to tell me the outcome of his medicals: pancreatic cancer that had spread to the liver. I was grief-stricken. He encouraged me instead. He asked for prayers.
The next day, he called again. This time it was not about his health. It was about a communication crisis.
A mischief was doing the rounds on social media that he had collapsed upon hearing of the loss of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, whom he had single-handed sponsored against Godwin Obaseki in the 2020 governorship poll.
“There is nothing like that,” he told me. “What happened is what I told you yesterday.” He said he had asked his media assistant to issue a press release, but the brief was not well understood. “Deal with it,” he said.
I told him I would be done in ten minutes. In ten minutes, I was done. I sent it to him. After some time he called back, shouting on the phone: “My brother Ojeifo, this is it! You have done exactly what I wanted. Please send the release out. Let it go viral.”
That was Captain Hosa — appreciative, decisive, and thinking of reputation management even in the face of terminal illness. With that release, the rumours about his health were addressed once and for all.
He would live for about 12 months after that diagnosis, beating the nine-month prognosis the doctors gave him.
Even in that state, he made sure people knew who had written that release. One of those who visited him in London later told me, “Captain Hosa said you wrote the press release. That is why I reached out so we could be friends.”
—What he built, what he believed—
Captain Hosa deserved to be remembered. He conquered the air as a pilot and owner of two private jets. He conquered the sea with 52 ships under Ocean Marine Solutions. He conquered the land with Wells Greenhouse Farm.
But to be fair to him, he rejected the tag of “conqueror of the land.” He told me: “At the end of the day, we would all end six feet deep in the womb of the land.” That was Captain Hosa — perceptive, with sharp perspectives on life and mortality.
—Five years after—
As I remember him today, I am reminded of the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell: _“To live in the hearts of those you leave behind is not to die.”
Captain Hosa lives in my heart. The tears have refused to stop because the man was real. He rewarded integrity. He valued competence. He gave without making you beg. He remembered people.
Just a few acts of integrity were all it took for Captain Hosa to elevate me from a friend to a brother.
Five years after, I still miss that brotherhood.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
