There are no more worlds to conquer for Capt. Hosa Okunbo perhaps. Like an ancient mariner whose heartbeat dwarfs echoes of his incredible exploits, Capt. Okunbo commands the awe of many of his peers and admirers in Nigeria’s socio-political and business sector.
Capt. Hosa is widely admired for his exploits in industry and philanthropy. This duly earned him interminable accolades from his peers and even his business rivals.
This is simply a rare peep into his world; and tempting as it is to embark on a more extensive and revealing voyage into the fathomless folds of his private reality and unusual humanity, it is a discourse best saved till later.
From afar, Hosa cuts the picture of a man that seems too tightly packed up inside. Some would say he is chock-full of ideas and flights of imagination that are too densely cast to be undone. Unfastening Okunbo thus presents a tasking exercise. It’s an onerous task to unbolt the hub of who he is and what he represents; notwithstanding, friends, family and business associates may seek contentment from the fact that a man like him symbolises the universe’s rarest gift to mankind.
This galactic gesture is borne from the universe’s belief in man’s unusual capacity to rebel against the conventional and stun the odds while manifesting as something more than a curse or blight to humanity and the future.
Hosa is no doubt a rare phenomenon and gift to this generation. While most of his friends, family and business associates are already in the know and appreciate this fact, like the infinite crowd of folk that constitute mere acquaintances to him, they are continually stunned, captivated and humbled by the man, Okunbo’s infectious humility and generosity of spirit.
Those who are yet to encounter the benevolence of Okunbo or profit from it nonetheless share a bubbly enthusiasm for it. At the very least, everybody seems to love him. Magnificence, order, complexity, mystery and possibilities—the same things that draw folk to their most treasured daydreams lure them to Ocean Marine Solutions head honcho.
The primary difference is that subtle and blatant idolatry takes a front seat in the flurry of emotion and perpetual elocution of the rare civility and bounteousness of spirit accorded them by Hosa. Yet he is forever quick to counsel folk about his ordinariness and thus prevent them from dressing him in what he considers spurious cloaks of a ‘saviour, ‘messiah,’ or ‘deity’ or ‘tin god.’
Yeah, Hosa, for or his extraordinariness tirelessly seeks to be viewed as ordinary – which makes unlocking his core both a boon and conundrum to anyone. It is hard to be more specific about the true worth of Hosa’s humanity because unlike most of civilization’s great, contemporary statesmen and philanthropists, he has something quite different to offer to his several dependants and beneficiaries of his generosity.
He is several things at the same time to everyone and anyone: he is a humanitarian who depicts raw compassion expressed with the greatest refinement and discipline; he is an aesthete with stormy sublimity, unimaginable genius and that famed vision of ingenuity that separates the practiced from the mediocre; Hosa to most and all of his acquaintances radiates an entirely different reality amid the world’s brutal capacity for ill and insensitivity; his humility and graciousness in his dealing with friends and established foes alike manifests as a sharp, shrill yet pleasant contradiction to the ugly and vulgar reality that daily becomes the plague of the mortal world.
Yes, Hosa clocked 59 some days ago, 7th January. Very few men excite the splendid tribute of a cheer in the wake of their most glorious attainments like Dr Okunbo; the Chairman stunningly commands the inexorable tribute of ceaseless cheers – these days it reverberates as boisterous applause for the extraordinariness of the man who taught Nigeria and the African continent to trust in his entrepreneurial depth and citizenship of humanity.
Captain Idahosa Okunbor cuts an inspiring portrait of class and peerless entrepreneurship. For instance, in a move considered to be in alignment with the federal government’s bid to diversify the nation’s economy, he recently packaged a N150 billion ($750 million) agro-enterprise, named Wells Sam Carlos Farm, a 9,000-hectare concern, in Edo, his home state. The farm will provide 25,000 direct jobs and 60,000 indirect jobs to the youth. This is besides a 20-hectare greenhouse, (by the Benin by-pass) also in Edo, which is calibrated to produce 600 tonnes of vegetables monthly.
Between the agro-enterprises and the companies he owns, Captain Hosa, as he is fondly called, is responsible directly for the employment of no less than 30,000 Nigerians. If his interests in other companies are factored-in, his businesses have created no less than 100,000 jobs in the last 30 years.
“This is what I call my vision, what I call my legacy, something that has been in my dreams for some time. I have been nurturing it, working on it for over five years now. We have just started. This is very important to me because at my very young age, as a pilot, I conquered my profession at the age of 30 and I left. I went into business and by the grace of god, I have done well. With over 60 vessels in the seas, I think I have conquered the sea. And coming to land, I said that before the land takes me, I want to conquer the land. I have started already with a 20-hectare green house at the bypass,” said Idahosa.
He celebrated his birthday last week, as usual quietly. A man of humble beginnings, Idahosa was born in Benin to the family of late reverend Robert Amos Okunbo, a clergyman and teacher. He attended Government Primary School in Benin city, after which he proceeded to Federal Government College, Warri.
As a youngster he had always wanted to be a pilot thus he followed up this desire when he went to study at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Training Centre, in Zaria. Subsequently, he became a professional and commercial pilot at the age of 21 after graduation. He later attended Acme School Of Aeronautics, Fort Worth, Texas, in 1983, where he obtained his airline transport pilot license.
He is married to a beautiful woman, Nosa Okunbo who has been with him through thick and thin. Neither cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love has done in the lives of Hosa and his wife, Nosa. Nosa and Hosa’s story reads like a dreamy exposition to extraordinary verses of love. Rather than dwell on familiar intrigues and alien realities that render human passion a shoddy and infantile enterprise in the annals of mortal romance, the story of their love becomes the reference point for aspiring romantics.
Their love story is best told in a more substantive format and literary forum hence this only represents a cursory glance at the genesis of their love. They are blessed with beautiful children
