The Garden City of Port Harcourt stood still on Wednesday, May 8, 2019, when the Kalabari-born Alabo (top chief), Tonye Orubibi Graham-Douglas (Alabo TOG), marked 80 years of age. The event, which he personally tagged ‘Miraculous 80’ attracted most of Nigeria’s leaders of the past and representatives of very aging associates (and mentors) as well as busy governors and government officials.
Most persons who inquired to know what made 80 years a miracle to him were later made to know that he broke the chain that limited his brothers and members of his family never to reach or cross 60 years. So, when he got to 60, there was wild and widespread trepidation that he would go the way of his family. He broke it! At 80, he rolled out the drums to laugh Mr. Death to scorn. A huge crowd joined him to do so in the Garden City.
The Alabo is largely described as the father of New Rivers State for being the man singlehandedly mandated in 1998 by the national leadership of the young PDP to hand pick governors for Rivers and Bayelsa states and he picked Peter Odili for Rivers and DSP Alamieyeseigha for Bayelsa. They each became governor for those states only to turn out as sworn rivals to each other. The Alabo himself soon fell out with Odili, a bitter experience that lingers to this day.
Graham-Douglas, however, told inner chamber friends that he chose to forget his political travails and the huge sums trapped in government vaults as debts for jobs he executed for administrations that he went through the crucibles to help. They were the first generation of godfathers after 1999 who suffered humiliation and alienation in the hands of their godsons.
For being 80, however, Graham-Douglas turned out in the best Kalabari chieftaincy regalia and radiated in the best lights nature could offer, all matching his disarming smiles that thawed the streets of the Graclands Avenue in the GRA where the church service was held all the way to the Aztech Acrum on Stadium Road where the reception was hosted. The biggest and priceliest beads hung on his broad chest to match the rimmed glasses that frame his crispy eyes which all agreed with the bowl hat brand that he alone made popular in Nigeria and overseas as the Ijaw contribution to Nigeria’s political branding.
The likes of Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State (represented by his wife), Ike Nwachukwu, Kema Chikwe, Albert Horsfall and the medical professor, Lulu Briggs took turns to pour encomiums on such a rare gem. Eight caterers took positions to ambush guests with the best of food and drinks.
In the citation read by Briggs, the professor emeritus of the University of Port Harcourt (medicine), Alabo was presented as a hero of his people and a forebear in most aspects of innovations of life and governance. He was the commissioner of youth and sports that created the Rivers Cultural Festival that sold the state to the world. This made the FG to bring him over to Lagos later as minister to replicate same.
He, it was, that also gave Nigeria the legendary Clemense Westerhof that transformed Nigeria’s football and created the route to Belgium and Europe that our boys passed to global stardom. They later used the experience to push the Green Eagles on the global stage to become Super Eagles.
He went to Ministry of Aviation and introduced the deregulation that burst the limits and exploded in the bustling aviation industry Nigeria has today, starting with Abiola’s Concord Airlines. He began as the highest indigenous staff of the Nigeria Refinery in Port Harcourt as the secretary of the company who midwifed the gradual takeover by Nigerians by proving it was possible.
He supplied the briefs to most military administrations that shaped the downstream sector of the oil industry such as equalisation strategy and subsidy policy with fuel as national security tool; even if some of those policies did not follow exactly how he suggested them, according to inside sources.
Alabo schooled both in Nigeria and overseas and met some of the best brains in the world on his life’s journey. He has been a likeable and attractive person with his celebration of dignity and respect for divine principles anywhere he operated. Yet, he so gave in to tears and heartbreaks especially when he lost the dearest and closest brother that were deepest in his heart who was father to him. It took close friends to save him from dying too.
He served on the board of several corporations in Rivers State and beyond and left initiatives that hold sway to this day. He is very creative and versatile and seems to have an answer to each Nigerian problem. He has many businesses spanning the construction to hospitality industries.
He worked closely with most military presidents and ministers and seems to know the best and worst attributes of both military and civilian regimes and how to get a good mix for Nigeria. That could explain why he very much sought to rule Nigeria and he thus was said to be the first aspirant to buy the PDP presidential form in 1998, only for him to rally round Olusegun Obasanjo who later emerged candidate to win the 1999 elections to install the PDP to control the FG. He has remained a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP to this day, despite having tentacles everywhere else. He is reputed for his principles and spiritual attachment to deep matters.
The Alabo swore to break the yoke of Under-60 in the family and did it. He became, according to Briggs, a pillar in Abonnema Council of Chiefs and one of the most respected members of the chiefs in the land.
On achievements, Briggs said it would take a book to list them. A book has actually been written by the octogenarian that would soon burst to the national scene, probably to debunk fallacies, expose most myths, and strengthen records. It may provoke political thought especially where Nigeria and Rivers got it wrong and why party supremacy died. It may suggest a way forward for Nigeria and lessons that can only be analysed at such places like the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Administrative Studies (NIPPS).
Graham-Douglas thrills his close friends and relations each time he promises to live 20 more years now that he has broken the 60 years ceiling that tormented his family and has crossed the 80 years bar that many never see; maybe, to compensate his family. May the God Almighty grant him this singular wish!
The best of Rivers and Kalabari culture and many gospel orchestras turned out to make the day very memorable.
Ignatius Chukwu
