FOR CHIDI AMUTA: A BIRTHDAY WISH! Femi Ojo

FOR CHIDI AMUTA:  A BIRTHDAY WISH!

Femi Ojo

Chidi Amuta remains one of the few extra-ordinary Nigerians that I have met outside the wall of the University. The man, Dr. Chidi, is surely a man of many parts, he is creative, humane, proactive, jovial, business oriented, sagacious, generous but prudent, and sometimes this literary icon, can be misconstrued to be machinating. To some of us, who were privileged to cross his path especially in the Integrated Marketing Communications Industry, we would attest that the honorific title of “Oga or Chairman” that we often call him was not only because he was our employer but he was and still “oga” indeed- in words and actions! The man is a living encyclopedia almost on all subject matters with high-ranking brilliances!

I met Dr. Chidi Amuta in 2006 after my mandatory  National Youth Service , that one year compulsory programme that this great country requires her graduates to embark on, as a Greenhorn in search of a greener pastures.  Fortunately for me, Dr. Amuta was the first employer that gave me an opportunity to hone my skills in his company, Wilson & Weizmann Associates Limited, a company that specializes in Media Communications Consultancy, Public Affairs, Publishing and Polity.  I owe my understanding of the strategic role that the media plays in the society to him. He inspired me and got me interested in political communications and this will possibly be my area of research for my doctorate degree in not too distant future. My first encounter with the erudite scholar gave me a scholarly impression of a man who is versatile, well exposed and a very calculative strategist. And these adjectives and many more truly described him for almost a decade I spent with him as his employee and even till date. The man Amuta is one of the few Nigerians who are plentiful in wits…. he is a great  literary icon, media communications guru, public affairs expert, globally cited author, well sort- after columnist both home and abroad, publisher, businessman, public intellectual on many subject matters and above all a true father to many people globally.

I remember while with Amuta’s company as an employee, our Monday’s meeting in the conference room was always a laboratory of ideas and discussions that transcended the business of PR and Media Communications. Dr. Amuta has a strategic way of explicating superior perspectives on plethora of  issues in the country and would excellently relate the nexus such had with various aspects of our national life. Not only that, he is an encyclopedia of sort on so many subject matters with evidential facts and figures. In one of such meetings, he would make his life an open book for us, going back on memory’s lanes on his humble beginning, his life as the only child of his mother in Abia State, his children, his struggles, challenges and of course some of his accomplishments just to inspire all of us to attain lofty heights.

One of the things that makes Amuta stands tall amongst employers of labour in Nigeria is his prompt payments of salaries of his staff and his quick ability to recognize talented and hardworking staff. I remember in one of our trips to Kaduna while working on a book project on the late Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki a.k.a. the man from Dogodanji, it was on this same project that he assigned to me some great responsibilities as part of the research and editorial team. On this project, Amuta discovered the potentials in me and subsequently rewarded me alongside some other team members that demonstrated great commitment to the biography book project with immediate salary increase, commendations, speedy approval of our car loans with no interest rate applied and a very ridiculous payment period/amount. Amuta in his usual generosity would later cancel the same car loan repayment with full repayment of the amount we had paid on the loan. This according to him was his small gifts to us for our hard work and loyalty to his company. 

For Amuta, one is not wealthy enough except he positively affects other less privileged persons with milk of kindness, generosity and benevolence. Dr. Amuta no doubt is a man with big heart. In his home village in Abia State, Amuta’s generosity speaks loud in the lives of his people majority of whom he does not know personally. At least while working with him, I knew of a long list of names that Dr. Amuta would instruct Biodun, one of my colleagues then and his personal assistant to wire some funds to in Abia State every month as we also got credited with our salaries. This I watched him do for close to a decade that I was with Wilson & Weizmann Associates Limited. Besides that, at his Opebi office, every week you would always see many people walked in to Weizmann House, melancholy, seated at the reception room, waiting eagerly one after the other to see just one man….Amuta.  And by the time they would leave, they would have become euphoric because somehow, Amuta had solved their problems or had given radiance in place of their hitherto sullen state.

 As Dr. Amuta turns 66 today, one can only wish this man of the pen, a great publicist of great brands but who deliberately lives his life covertly from the public eyes; a more glorious years ahead, good health, peace, joy and of course, more ink to his intellectual pens to continue to write all the wrongs in our polity.

Happy Birthday Mr. Chairman!

Femi Ojo is a media communications and public affairs strategist and consults for different brands, former online radio show host on politics and entrepreneur with Blackface Media, blogger, writer and a nascent public intellectual. You may equally describe the young chap, as a serial entrepreneur with business interests in, media communications, auto sales & logistics and agricultural value chain.