Tribute: High Chief Raymond Dokpesi, A Pacesetter, Comet, Dashes Across The Sky, By Shedrack A. Akolokwu

HIGH CHIEF RAYMOND ALEOGHO ANTHONY DOKPESI, Ph.D, OFR, FNSE: A PACESETTER, COMET, DASHES ACROSS THE SKY

Comets are rare occurrences in the solar system. I have hated the arrival of these moments when my family and I would be made to scribble mournful word saboutour most beloved brother, father and uncle, only in the eulogy of eternal passage. He was so many things to us all. He freely loved us and we still love him. But it is deeply bitter to accept that the Ezomo of the Universe has set sail on a voyage of no return! My wife Dr Grace Akolokwu and all our children and grandchildren, mark your departure.

For Twenty-four solid years since the The Governor Of Rivers State, His Excellency, Dr. Peter Odili, summoned me to his presence as his Senior Special Assistant and pointed at a prodigious man-mountain figure, full of life and energy, asked me whether I had met his guest, neatly decked in traditional kaftan, as the pioneer in private radio and television broadcasting in Nigeria, nay Africa, whom he simply called “Super Ray”. I replied in the negative. Governor Peter Odili handed me a folder, directed me to review the content of the proposal from the towering High Chief Dr. Aleogho Raymond Dokpesi. Back in my office, he thoroughly explained the proposal to open a South-South Regional Office in Port-Harcourt of DAAR Communications company for the business of private broadcasting, soliciting strategic partnership with the Rivers State Government. High Chief Dr. Raymond Dokpesi dazzled my intellect and convinced me that his proposal was a necessary foundation for the deployment of public communication in development and development communication to showcase Rivers State, the Niger Delta, Nigeria and Africa to the world and to bring the world to our doorsteps via the African prism. Rivers State and the Niger Delta, ever since, have received primary focus in positive public attention. Several indigenes of these areas today, have discovered the beauty of the profession of journalism outside government monolithic control. His vision has shone like the Milky Way — a galaxy of stars among other asteroids.

The news of Ezomo’s sudden voyage, hit us as a thunderbolt. Like Prince Henry the Navigator who built the Maritime Academy in Sagres, Portugal that trained Christopher Columbus; Vasco Da Gama; Ferdinand Magellan and all those who led the voyages of discovery that opened the world’s maritime domain. A hater of dogma, he would yield to no inferior logic in his burning passion to challenge the exiting order and make you see things differently. Like Galileo Galilei, father of modern science and the founder of the scientific method and Sir Isaac Newton, born on the day Galilei died, who also pontificated on the laws of motion, gravity, and thermodynamics to the greatest scientist of the 20‘°Century, Albert Einstein, who gave the world the theory of relativity. Einstein invented the Hydrogen Bomb, space science and declared that: politics is for the moment, equations are for eternity. Raymond Dokpesi’s background in Marine Engineering, he revolutionary pioneering role in private broadcasting in Nigeria and Africa, made him a vita anima. He would, like the mathematical equations of Einstein, last for eternity!

Through the Federal Ministry of Transport and the National Inland Waterways Authority, he led the way in the setting up of new seaports at Tin Can Island, Onne Deep and Lighter Ocean Terminals, Warri, Sapele and Calabar and the creation of Africa Ocean Lines.

He was more than a genetic or blood brother and father. He was a human ebenezer,  who provided succour to so many daunting challenges. A humble lover of knowledge and an uncommon statesman, he was a university of sorts. Full of knowledge and loved humanity, so freely, this piece is too short to tell his tale. Like the famed Atlas in Greek mythology, cursed by Zeus, the greatest of the Greek gods, to permanently bear the world on his shoulders, Nigeria’s problems were his. He set agenda for public discourses on Nigeria, akin to what Socrates, Plato and Aristotle did in classical times,to save the dying order of the Greek City States. His passion for the African condition and all blacks in the Diaspora, beginning with Nigeria,would someday form part  of our academic curriculum.

We know that this voyage is long and lonely, we shall all, by turn, queue up, sailing on the vast and endless seas, in the realm of silence.

You have just travelled, not gone! Your ovation is still standing!

Dr. Shedrack A. Akolokwu