By Lawal Ogienagbon
Slight in frame, you can hardly miss him in a crowd. Moreover, he is the quiet type who minds his own business. Even then, that was some 34 years ago, his looks belied his age. You will take him for a young man still in his early thirties; but he was in his forties – 46 – to be precise, going by what I have just learnt. Those who passed through the Times Newspaper Training Centre (TNTC), which later became Times Journalism Institute (TJI), the school set up by the Daily Times under the leadership of its unforgettable and highly-revered one-time chairman/managing director, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, to hone the skills of journalists, will know him very well. He was the go to man at the school for many years.
He ran the school as registrar and whether you liked it or not, as a student, your path must cross that of Mr Ayo Ajibade. Until the school was thrown open to outsiders in 1987, it was an in-house training ground for journalists working with the Daily Times. It was under the Manpower and Planning Division. At inception, Pa Ajibade was seconded from the conglomerate’s corporate head office at Kakawa, Lagos, to the school in Iganmu as secretary and typist. By the time my set entered the school, he was already the registrar, a job which he combined with lecturing. He took us in typing. But many of us looked down on typing and never really appreciated what he was doing. Looking back now, I know better.
Today, I rise to toast a great man, administrator and teacher, who turned 80 on June 25. 80? Yes, 80. Unassuming, unpretentious and a paragon of diligence, Pa Ajibade’s strong sense of character stood him out. Even at 80, that is what has kept him going. Happy birthday, sir. I thank most especially, my respected senior and a former TJI Director, Pastor Ndubuisi Ugbede, for bringing Pa Ajibade’s birthday to the notice of former Daily Times workers and for representing us at the ceremony.
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