Chief Dr. Ifeanyi Patrick Ubah, who died last August, blazed into the Nigerian public space in 2011 with an unprecedented media splash celebrating his 40th birthday. He would have been 53 on September 3rd

this year. Many knew him as Capital Oil man, but the legendary Ubah had notched up huge successes in various business fields and countries. To put this in true perspective, bear in mind that he was born in 1971.

By age 20 in 1991, he had verifiable track records in many countries as he was already flying out tires from Nigeria to Mali and Ghana, for instance. The real spirit of Ifeanyi Ubah, the one that made him different showed this early in his life; he would often identify ways to do things differently. While other major players in the tire sector were fighting themselves over turfs in Nigeria, Ubah identified open markets overseas and exploited them. By 1991, when the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was sapping life out of Nigeria, the 18-year old Ubah had a business relationship with tire manufacturers across the globe. From there he ventured into auto spare parts sales.

He bought his first car after he had been fully established. Yet, when he died many wrote that he was showy.

From Ghana Ubah moved to DR Congo in 1991, became the President of the Nigerian Community same year and served for 12 years. I met Ubah in Kinshasa, DR Congo capital city by year 2000. Prof Sylvester Monye and I, travelling with late Ambassador Raph Uwechue, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Minister for Conflict Resolution in Africa, who was on a peace mission there, and a solicitous Ubah remained close to meet our needs.

  At 21, Ubah had built his first house at Nnewi, got married same year, and was doing business across Europe and USA. In 1993, he attended the Las Vegas (USA) Auto Show at Las Vegas Convention Centre to study the auto industry – as he had a big dream but Innoson Motors beat him to it. He frequented the world’s biggest Auto Mechanical workshops in Frankfurt, Germany, to arm himself for his entry into the auto-manufacturing business. That dream died with him.

From 1993, Ubah invested in South Africa and opened a Dubai office. From Congo he made business forays into Angola, taking fish from Windhoek, Namibia, can beer from South Africa Brewery and freighted them by chartered flight to Congo and from there to Angola. He moved goods crossing from Lubumbashi in Congo, to Tanzania. Ubah had Mining concessions in diamond and gold rich Kisangani province of Congo.

He returned to Nigerian in 2001 after Congo’s President Laurent Kabilla was assassinated and dreamt up the Capital Oil idea. By 2015 Capital Oil was relevant enough to unilaterally break an embargo on petrol sales the Independent Oil Marketers had ordered against President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. He had the seventh biggest petrol storage tank farm in Nigeria – in Lagos, Kano, Suleija (near Abuja) and perhaps in Nnewi and owned hundreds of tankers.

Instead of the 30, 000 litres tankers that Ifeanyi met, his tankers carried 60,000 litres of petrol. Ubah’s Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), changed Nigeria’s political landscape. It was a nationwide grassroots people’s movement not funded by a political aspirant or political party in support of the PDP in 2015 election.

TAN, an NGO, really independent, pursued its goal with a focus that was amazing in its unrivalled intensity and absolute single-mindedness.  I sat through all TAM’s formation meetings but refused to serve in it because of my Ibori camp roots. It was supposed to outlast the 2015 election. It tested the road for today’s Obidients Movement.

Ubah was an innovator. He used novel and creative means to do things differently. A month before he died, he said about his chances in the next Anambra state election; “any enwetegoya” (Igbo for we have

already achieved it). Now, the innovations he could have brought to office will only be among the “ifs” of history.

Ubah wanted me to head the media arm of his 2014 political Anambra state governorship campaign; I turned it down. Through Barr Afam Iluno (now US-based) Ubah offered me the Managing Director post of his newspaper, The Authority; I turned it down. When the DSS detained Ubah, he sent a message; that “Tony Eluemunor” should write and sensitize the world that he was being persecuted unjustly. I did but

refused to sign it because I couldn’t be Media Assistants to him and Ibori at the same time or the speculation could spread that I had abandoned Ibori – and Ibori was in London by then.

Yet, one day, Ubah addressed over 20 leading journalists. His opening statement: “I want to be very clear. I never met any of you before, except Tony Eluemunor – who is a member of my family”.  I’ll never forget that.

Please, forget his two private jets, his stately mansions, his Rolls Royce and Maserati cars, when Ubah died, Nigeria lost an incredible son, a sports enthusiast, a man of vision, of boundless energy (who

knew neither day nor night but would place his head on a table or a seat’s arm rest and simply dose off while holding meetings in his office for 10 or 20 minutes and then wake up and continue the meeting), an inspired innovator. The ex-Super Eagles stars and Nollywood lost a pillar of support, the common people lost a listening ear and helping hand (his house was always thickly parked with common folks like Nkwo Nnewi (Nnewi’s major market), yes, Ubah loved to be with the people, often just sitting and discussing with his drivers, photographers, tailors, about past experiences, eating with his recent acquaintances and old friends. Let a wrist watch or phone seller come in then and everyone present would receive a gift. But against powerful enemies, he was a formidable adversary. 

I lost a friend.