As Jide Omokore is honoured today

Consummate enthusiasts of the ecumenical history of Nigeria will readily recall the centrality of the community called Egbe in the Okun Yoruba area of Kogi State in North Central Nigeria to the subject.
The quiet community, which is a major town in Yagba West Local Government Area, is at the border of contemporary Kogi and Kwara states.
Egbe has been long-standing host of two major landmarks in Nigeria’s Christian and educational history. The famous Titcombe College, established by the Sudan Interior Mission, SIM in Egbe and the ECWA Hospital founded by the rechristened Evangelical Churches Winning All, ECWA are major critical denominators of the place of Egbe in our national educational and historical scheme.
This very important community on the North-South expressway will come alive today at the installation of the new traditional ruler of the town, the Elegbe of Egbe, Oba Ayodele Irukera, a former Deputy Registrar at the University of Ilorin. He succeeds Oba Stanley Kayode Owa, who served in the Nigerian Army, rising to the rank of Major before acceding to serve his community as traditional ruler. Oba Owa joined his ancestors a year ago on October 27, 2013.
The highpoint of today’s investiture of the new Elegbe of Egbe, which will be performed by Kogi State Governor, Capt. Idris Ichalla Wada, however, will be the conferment of one of the highest chieftaincy titles in the land, to Ashiwaju Olajide Omokore, entrepreneur, business mogul and philanthropist.
Ashiwaju Omokore hails from Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East Local Government Area. For most of his early adulthood, however, he lived and worked in Egbe, becoming a highly revered icon in the community and beyond.
From community development projects like hospital rehabilitation, schools refurbishment to ecumenical infrastructure like church buildings and critical needs, Ashiwaju Omokore has regularly given a generous helping hand towards the achievement of these desires.
Indeed, today will not be the first time the world will be congregating in Yagbaland to accord deserved respect to Chief Omokore. Today is a pleasant repeat of several others in recent past.
Indeed, the November 13, 2013 edition of Forbes Magazine aptly described him as one of 10 low-key, ultra-wealthy Nigerians.
An elder by right and achievements, he appeals to a cross-section of has kinsmen because of his ability to flow seamlessly across generations and social strata. Away from the stomp and shove of boardrooms and the cosmopolitan sphere across the world, he savours countryside serenity beneath the odan tree at the centre of his sprawling country home whenever he visits.
There he fetes his endless stream of guests-old acquaintances, family, friends and associates, remembering to throw banters and wisecracks.
Typically, Chief Omokore does not court the klieglights, preferring instead to impact on his community and the generality of his people from the quiet recesses of the background, despite his octopoidal reach.
He it was who envisioned and supported the two church projects which were commissioned that June 16, 2012 and the third project which foundation stone laying ceremony was laid. It was also at his instance that the crème-de-la crème of dignitaries from all walks of life, descended on Isanlu, on the date in question.
Nearly two decades ago when concerned, select Okun leaders came together to attempt to give a new direction to Okunland and ensure that Okun people across the six local government areas of Yagba West, Yagba East, Mopamuro, Ijumu, Kabba-Bunu and Lokoja, were integrated into the national socio-political scheme, Omokore was the prime mover from the background.
With the likes of Prince Akanmode, Otunba Owoyemi, Prof Olu Obafemi, Chief S. K. Adedoyin, Omokore facilitated the energisation of the Okun New Initiative, ONI, as the group was then called, to rouse consciousness among Okun people, to rediscover their place in the national scheme.
In 2006 when Prof Eyitayo Lambo, then Minister of Health, initiated the Isanlu Healthcare Project and organised a two-legged fund-raiser in Abuja and Isanlu respectively to put in place a sustainable fiscal infrastructure for supporting healthcare delivery in Isanlu and by extension Yagbaland, he found a very worthy ally in Chief Omokore.
Besides committing humongous resources and goodwill to the success of the appeal fund which drew the personal presence of no less a personality than Gen Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s former Head of State among other dignitaries to Isanlu, Omokore tapped into his reservoir of network of friends and associates, to support the programme.
Prof Lambo’s vision has since spawned a new Community Healthcare Centre in Makutu, Isanlu which received tremendous support from Omokore who built a block in the centre and donated a brand new ambulance. Indeed, the success of the community effort ensured that Isanlu became the first community anywhere in Nigeria, where the Community-Based Healthcare Insurance Scheme was launched by President Goodluck Jonathan, who was represented by Health Minister, Prof. Christian Onyebuchi Chukwu, at the ceremony which was held in December 2011.
A major component of the Isanlu Healthcare Scheme is the annual medical mission also anchored by Prof Lambo, where a hybrid of foreign and Nigerian medics in diaspora and their home-based counterparts in large numbers, visit and encamp in Isanlu for one whole week, attending to a broad spectrum of medical issues in the community and beyond.
Following the flooding which affected over half the total number of states in Nigeria in 2012, a deeply concerned Omokore sent a personal donation of N50 million to the Kogi State Government as his own contribution to assuage the situation.
Indeed, courtesy of the instrumentation of Omokore, Okunland, the Yoruba speaking country in Kogi State may soon be blessed with a private university, yet another initiative of this quiet champion of community development. A steering committee has long been constituted with Prof Lambo at the centre and Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN, CFR, as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, which is pioneering the project. It aims to be in eight-faculty institution, which will no doubt impact on the socio-economy of Okunland.
Ashiwaju Omokore sits atop a long-list of companies and organisations in Nigeria and outside and his interests encapsulate general commerce, merchandising, machinery and equipment, power and energy, maritime service, shipping, banking and the capital market.