We were almost putting the week past us when the sad news dropped. Ebenezer Olanle, assistant manager, production, was everybody’s darling. He was close to the young and the old, a dedicated staff, one who had one of the best records with the directors. Jovial, kind, the man we call evangelist, because of Olanle’s love of propagating the word.
The surging crowd at his house in Sango-Ota last Friday was a testimony to how much they loved him in his neighbourhood and his church too. Many attested to his meekness, a great virtue that readily preached to others who have had encounters with Olanle.
We also saw in him the quintessential father, doting on his children and working hard to ensure proper training for them. The children and their mother will miss him. But they won’t know how much members of TELL family [including our former colleagues who either visited or called] will miss ‘Ebenekoko’!
He was a bridge between the newsroom and production unit. Except when he was on leave, the stories you read in the magazine, like in this edition – except the ones about him – passed through Olanle before our colleagues in production could work on them.
Among other things, we will miss his sense of duty. You need to know the distance he covered to get to work and return home daily, some of the time staying over when necessary to work all through the night. Little wonder that the sad occurrence threw TELL into mourning. We just hoped it never happened, but as I looked at his desk while doing this piece, and remembering that we just returned from his interment, the reality dawned that our dear Ebenezer is no more!
That means he would not read the cover story on Shrinking Govt: The Ministries Not Needed, even though he passed it after it was edited. Neither will he be able to excitedly discuss with the editors – as if they did not edit the stories in the first place – whatever may thrill him in the alternate cover, The Media On Death Row. Nor will he be able to secretly toast Iseribhor Okhueleigbe, assistant editor, who wrote the two major stories.
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