In May this year, I received a message that my uncle was involved in a car accident the previous day and had passed on that morning, at 82. He was a good man. Though I had always tried to show him kindness from time to time, I had planned bigger things I would do for him in December 2022. But he passed on in May.
That experience further drove home to me the aphorism about life: that kind word you need to say to someone; that good deed you need to do to someone; do it today.
Today, I choose to say just a few words about one of the most remarkable professors of mass communication that Nigeria has ever produced. He is Professor Charles Chiedu Okigbo, who turns 72 today, December 6, 2022.
I do not have to wait until his 75th or 80th birthday. Or worse still, when he is no more. I have learnt that it is better for a man to read the tributes to him on a flimsy postcard than that great epitaph on his tombstone that he would never read. And who knows between the two of us, who will go before the other. Earth’s journey is not “First Come, First Go”. And in the case of Okigbo, one might have to wait for long because longevity genes run in his veins – his mum departed only recently, at over 100 years.
Those who studied Mass Communications (in the famous Jackson Building) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, during the eighties could never forget the youngest of the herd of true academics in that department. The pack was led by the enigmatic Professor Sylvanus Ekwelie, who is perhaps the greatest teacher of communication still alive in any corner of the globe today. Following him, in no particular order, were Okonkwo, Idemili, Agba, Ume-Nwagbo, Ogbodo, and the youngest of them at the time, CC Okigbo.
If Ekwelie was enigmatic, Okigbo was simply charismatic. Every student in the department fell in love with him at first sight. At 35 then, he already possessed five degrees – two Ph.Ds, two M.Scs and a bachelor degree. He has since gone ahead to acquire additional three, bringing his total haul of degrees to eight, from five different universities, in three continents.
A scion of the famous Okigbo family of Ojoto in Anambra State, very handsome, with so much qualification, Charles Okigbo had every reason to be an arrogant lecturer, but he chose to be humble and treated everyone with utmost courtesy and decency.
He was very brilliant and everyone knew it. Even Professor Ekwelie once described Okigbo to our class as a “big brain.” Such validation from the oracle himself doesn’t come cheap!
Okigbo’s lectures were so practical and enchanting one never wanted to miss them. No one wanted to miss his classes on Advertising and Public Relations or International Communication or Communication Research. The glamour he brought to his work made many of his students to fall in love with teaching and the subject areas he taught. He loved the lecturer job. And he loved the university community. Everyone could see he was not struggling financially. Even at that time, he had three cars – his beloved Toyota Celica car that had boldly on the number plate: “Nsukka – the University City; a Peugeot 504 and a VW Beetle. For this generation, those cars may not sound like great acquisitions, but if one gets to know that some professors then had just VW Beetle or Citreon or even the Peugeot 504 as their only car, perhaps it might register a little better.
Okigbo was not your academic who pretended about money or cars. He loved and still loves cars and he doesn’t hate money (don’t forget he is from Anambra State), but not cheap money. He believed in the American model of gown meeting town. Before side gigs (not side chicks o) gained currency in business lingo, Okigbo was already master of the game! He was always writing proposals for image research consultancies, as much as ethically allowed. Some of his proposals clicked once in a while. And some of us who were close to him were brought in to work on the projects. On one of the occasions he even paid us some money. When I told someone how much he gave me for the project, the person told me “this man is just using you people.” My answer was “I would like to be used more often!” He was a special breed. Most lecturers then and now would not as much as acknowledge their student who contributed to a project, not to talk of paying anything from the proceeds of the effort.
Okigbo is not the Professor who doesn’t know what is happening in town. He encourages you to take interest in the budget or any government policy and ask yourself, what “can I do for myself in spite of how things look.” He would never have got involved in some of the mean things some lecturers are associated with today. He always believed his brain would give him the money he would need. And he has been proved right.
When he takes interest in a student he goes all the way to encourage that person. In 1988/89, I was doing my NYSC programme in Bori, Rivers State. Professor Okigbo had something doing in Port Harcourt, and from there he drove the 60km from Port Harcourt to Bori to see me. I was thrilled!
Okigbo recognizes and celebrates others ahead of him. Accomplished in his own right as he is, he remains in touch with his former senior colleagues at Nsukka. He reaches out often to the oracle, Professor Ekwelie, as well as to Ume-Nwagbo, who is now in his 90s.
What is actually most remarkable, thinking about Okigbo on his 72nd birthday today, is that he was only 34/35 years old then when he was so full of knowledge and wisdom and made so much impression on us then in Nsukka. It’s a challenge to us all, 34 years after graduation (not of age!), no matter what our sphere of influence might be.
It is saddening that the later crop of the UNN Mass Communication graduates never experienced Okigbo and people of his ilk, because the system soon proved unworthy of him. Soon after we left, the world outside spotted him. In 1990/91, he was hired as the founding Registrar/Chief Executive of Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON). That was double portion of blessing for me, because he was also adjunct lecturer at University of Lagos, and taught me in my M.Sc. class as well. On completion of his term at APCON, he became Executive Secretary of the African Council on Communication Education (ACCE) in Nairobi, Kenya, and then back to US where he had studied. He rose to become head of department of Communication at North Dakota State University, Idaho, where he is now an emeritus professor of Strategic Communication.
Okigbo is a genuine family man. You couldn’t have been close to him if you didn’t know his wife, Carol, (now a professor too) and “Charlie’s Angels”, his three daughters, before his son, Kene, was born. He is proud of them, and rightly too.
Though still in far away United States of America, Prof is always close-by. He remains in touch with, not just his former students, but the entire Naija. He knows what is happening in Nigeria more than some of those who live and work in Nigeria. And he closely follows the progress of his former students.
Okigbo’s life shows that there is no end to learning. With all that he knows, he is still reading voraciously, especially in the areas of communication research, strategy and strategic communication – the love of his life. He is the only one who gives books as Christmas or birthday present! From him we also learn commitment to one’s vocation, humility, hardwork, love of family and loyalty to friends.
The joy of today is that one is able to tell him how much he is appreciated, while he has a chance to read it. Unfortunately, there is so much to say that one write-up cannot do it. But let’s start at all.
I know all who have passed through him will join me today to say: Happy Birthday to Prof. Charles Chiedu Okigbo at 72.
EMMA ESINNAH, Mass Comm graduating class of 1988.
