The Sunny Ojeagbase I know

Dr Sunny Ojeagbase was the founder of Complete Sports.

This must be the bottom line. Sunny Obazu Ojeagbase was achingly sweet and polite that he ought to have been canonised by the Pope. But SO, as he was fondly known by several admirers, was more than this. He was equally brave.

I was still studying Mass Communication at the Auchi Polytechnic when feats of SO’s bravery were already filtering in from the village. This was a man, who had the audacity to walk away from the Army to pitch tents with the nation’s sports journalism without batting an eyelid. Not just this, but he turned sports writing from one boring literature to an art of uncommon prose laced with savvy and panache.

At once, I knew it by heart that I must reach him after my term at Auchi. SO had just established the Sports Souvenir and Complete Football. Seeing him then was like a challenging ‘moon walk,’ especially for greenhorns. But me… I saw the ‘Big Man’ in such easy fashion.

Reason? His father’s house in Owan West Edo village of Uzebba was a shout from my father’s compound at Avbiosi. Well, if I thought the village thing was going to buy me some freebies, I got it all wrong. SO had no time for tribe, religion or race. He hated small talks that could have snowballed into asking how people were faring in the village. All he craved for was performance. Like Nike’s mantra, ‘Just do it’ and be sure to be a great pal of SO.

Ojeagbase exercised prudence and was simplistic to the point of absurdity. He hated it when you were hell bent on doing what others were doing. He got easily infuriated when your ‘story hunting’ had to do with press conferences where free foods and booze and ‘keske’ were shared. ‘Keske’ took the place of ‘brown envelope’ at the time… you