James Abel Uloko is a man of ideas. I have said that before, and I don’t mind saying it again. James is never without an idea hovering in the foreground of his imagination. At any given time, he has one idea, may be a flitting idea, a flash of inspiration, a mustard seed, a casual idea, but it was bound to be a credible idea all the same.
When I first met James, he had an idea and was ready to share it with me. When I get to meet him again next time, he is sure to have one more idea. In the intervening period, he must have had nothing but ideas to work with. Don’t laugh till you hear some of his great ideas.
I won’t put it past James to set up a shop for ideas. I mean, as we speak, James could jolly well wake up tomorrow morning and put up a sign board with a simple inscription: “Ideas for Sale”, and expect customers to troop in for patronage.
What is James’ idea of an idea, you may ask. And I will be quick to tell you. As far as James is concerned, an idea is any decent piece of thought that gets food on the table. An idea must be practicable. It must be innovative. It must be creative. It must carry a vision, and its ultimate mission is definite, namely to put food on the table. That is more than likely to be James speaking out loud.
Many years ago, when I first met James, he was a smart dresser. He looked good in whatever he wore, and he carried himself like Aliko Dangote, with the self assurance of a man who had all the cash to be made this side of heaven. But even James knew that the only thing going for him was his smile.
He was wearing a white caftan that day I first met him. He had a swag all his own as he accompanied my boss, Sam Abah, into our open office at Grassroot Communications, Makurdi, the Benue State capital. Sam soon called all staff to take a seat. Greg Mbajiorgu was there. Yinka Olaleye was there. Jane Abah was there. Cephas Okwori was there. Olamide was there. And so were Tivdoo Adum and Joy Ajonye, both of blessed memory.
I was fresh out of national youth service. After an eventful one-year at the new FM station of Radio Benue, I had emerged as the best of nineteen award-winning corps members, and my name was all over the newspapers. Alas, my retention at the station had not quite worked out as anticipated, and I was all set to leave Benue State, a land I had come to love so much after a truly memorable stay.
On the evening before I was to leave, I met Sam and his wife, Vesta, and they persuaded me to tag along with them to a short worship session of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship. What was I doing? Nothing really. Not a bad idea to say prayers to God before the journey, so I went along.
The venue was the iconic Benue Hotels designed and built by the first-class architect and gifted crooner, Bongos Ikwue of the “Cock Crow At Dawn” fame. The hotel overlooked the banks of the River Benue, and the famous Makurdi rail bridge that I had read about as a school boy could be seen at closer range, the occasional train hooting and puffing a dark pall of smoke into the air, trundling over the calm face of the river.
The following day, Sam told me that God had answered his prayers when indeed I accepted to stay back and work for him. Grassroot Communications was a fledgling media and public relations company, the first of its kind in all of Benue State, and Sam was sure that my popularity as a radio personality would help boost the image of the company.
He conceived many radio and television jingles, and I was there to voice them for him. The most popular of these corporate jingles was for Lobi Bank. It went on national network news, on radio and television, in the days when NTA and Radio Nigeria held sway in the nation’s broadcasting space.
It was a production that took me for the first time to Jos, Plateau State, and for the first time I felt that I was outside Nigeria by virtue of the obvious change in weather. The cold was so intense that I found myself shivering to the teeth. The finishing touch to that jingle was done in the studios of the famous gospel singer, Panam Percy Paul.
But Sam was quick to notice that I had a flair for writing, and he chose to capitalize on it. He started a business and development magazine called “Strategy”. I anchored the bulk of the stories, and my by-line was all over the magazine. I wasn’t complaining, but Sam felt that was too much labour for one man. At that time, I didn’t consider myself a journalist. I simply wrote, for the heck of it, without the encumbrances that go with a label.
That was how James came into the picture. He had just finished his tenure as the youngest councillor in his Local Government Area, if not in Nigeria, and his reputation as a journalist was just picking up with the publication of Okpokwu Times, his brainchild, a community newspaper.
James took Sam’s offer to beef up the editorial team of “Strategy”, but he didn’t stay for long. Just one month, I guess. In fact, the second edition of the magazine was still in preparation when he got a job as Staff Writer with Newswatch magazine, and promptly left for Lagos. I was convinced, then, that if James could get a place at Newswatch, then I stood a chance of getting in there as well.
And so indeed it turned out to be. I decided to visit James in Lagos, and took the precaution of taking my credentials along, namely photocopies of everything I had written up to that time, and the only available edition of “Strategy” where my stories dominated the pages.
As fate would have it, the very day I stepped into the offices of Newswatch magazine at 62, Oregun Road, Ikeja, an interview was going on for Eko magazine, the new soft-sell magazine under the same stable. James introduced me to the newly appointed editor, Louisa Ayonote, daughter of Nigeria’s first military Head of State, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. She was tall, light-skinned, friendly and broad-minded, and I fell in love with her at first sight. I felt as though history was happening to me.
A final list had already been drawn up to face the distinguished panel of editors constituted by Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, and Yakubu Mohammed. The list was already typed, but Louisa took a cursory look at my scripts and decided to add my name in blue ink at the very bottom.
I went in and faced the respectable panel of senior journalists. I applied for the position of Assistant Editor, but I was offered Staff Writer. I felt let down, but Louisa persuaded me to take it. You will grow, she said, just take it. So I accepted the offer.
When I returned to Makurdi to pick up my things and told Sam that I was leaving, he offered to increase my monthly salary from six hundred naira to one thousand naira. In 1991, that was big money. But Newswatch was offering me N1,600, and I really wanted to write for a national medium in Lagos, and here was my chance.
I still have the personal letter Sam wrote me. He felt so distraught that I could feel him. I came close to tears. I didn’t know that I had made such a great impression on him. This was a big setback for Grassroots, but he came to accept the fact that I just had to move on.
When I finally relocated to Lagos, I stayed with James for the better part of six months before I moved into my own room. Even then, with several houses between us in the same Abule-Egba vicinity, we were like next door neighbours. He was living with his wife and two children, Jennifer and Maxwell, and it was his turn to visit me whenever he wanted, and keep me company for as long as he wanted.
My closest appreciation of James came with the day we both decided to worship God in truth and in spirit. We chose to do so at the Household of God Fellowship. Our pastor was Chris Okotie, the popular pop singer who was grabbing everyday headlines for veering into Pentecostal fellowship.
Chris Okotie was the singing sensation of my youth. I responded to his lyrics for the first time in my mother’s village, Fantuo, and I became a big fan of Okotie’s music from the first album I Need Someone, to the very last. The first time I saw him in the flesh, he was the star attraction at a poolside concert at Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt.
I saw in that performance the making of a mega-star in the mould of Michael Jackson. When he decided to quit active music making and open a church instead, I wondered why he was so wilfully starving his fans of the sonorous tonic in his voice. But it was good to see him in person, in church, singing and being his boyish self.
James and I went there knowing him as a celebrity pastor, and completely unmindful of the fact that he did not know us from Adam. We chose to serve in the security department of the church, specifically in the traffic warden section. We were called Holy Police.
Every Sunday, James and I would drive in his all-time blue Volkswagen Beetle car from our residence at Abule-Egba through Gengento, Agege, Ogba, and all the convoluted alleys of Lagos, and finally arrive at the Household of God Church in Oregun.
We would arrive early, put on the reflective jackets announcing our holy identities, and take our place along the road, directing incoming traffic to the church. There were loud speakers all around us, so we didn’t miss out on the praise and worship session, featuring none other than Okotie.
Only when all cars were properly parked, and the service got fully underway, only then would we take vantage positions by the door, and partake of the fellowship, still wearing our tags as members of the Holy Police unit.
