By Mike Awoyinfa
IT is not every day that you meet a retired Air Vice-Mar-
shal of the Nigerian Air Force sitting down with you and
looking back to tell his story as a young officer flying
high in the sky like the mythical Daedalus and Icarus.
Picture him as an old man who had freshly clocked 80 on
this very day, dressed in his artistically designed danshiki
with a Yoruba cap on his head. Nostalgically, he relives
a precious childhood memory of seeing a helicopter for
the first time when Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s helicop-
ter on campaign trail held the schoolboy spellbound as to
make him question his principal about this wonder ma-
chine that could easily land on their school field. There
and then, he nursed the dream of flying a helicopter one
day. Luckily, the dream became a reality as he flew a
helicopter and landed in a field close to his father’s house
in Uromi, drawing a crowd to the magical flying machine
piloted by their hometown hero.
Many years after, I met the retired Air Vice-Marshal
Anthony Okpere, a former Managing Director of the Ni-
geria Airways and a former Minister of Aviation at the
Motherless Babies’ Home in Lekki which he helped es-
tablish as a leader of the Lekki Lions Club. I had gone
on the invitation of my son, Kehinde Awoyinfa, whose
company, Triangle Nigeria, founded together with two
friends, was donating a N25 million naira movie theatre
to the Motherless Babies’ Home as reported last week in
this column. The event coincided with AVM Okpere’s
80th birthday who saw the movie theatre as the best birth-
day gift he ever got. It was an opportunity for Okpere to
tell the story of the Motherless Babies’ Home which is a
story for another time. After the commissioning of the
movie theatre, I sat the former Air Vice-Marshal to share
his story: The Memoirs of an Airman who saw war d ur-
ing the Nigerian Civil War. Here is the first part of the
Anthony Okpere story:
***
I thank God for making me get to age 80. I don’t feel
80. In fact, I feel younger. Fortunately whatever I have
tried to do in life, has come out very successful. It’s not by
my power but the power of God. Being a pilot has been
a fulfilling career. As a young cadet in the flying school,
flying has been one of the easiest things for me. The feel-
ings came so naturally that I didn’t see it as a career. But
it was. And I enjoyed every bit of it in the years I spent in
the service. One of my motivating factors for joining the
Air Force was when I saw Chief Awolowo campaign in
1959. I was in secondary school. The fellow came over
our school and made some series of manoeuvres, and we
asked our principal what the flying object was. And he
answered: “Children, that’s a helicopter. Twenty of them
can conveniently land on our football field.” As a kid, I was wowed. I felt it was something I would like to do and
hopefully fly it one day to my hometown.
And this dream materialised in 1981 when I was asked
to go and bring Prof. Ambrose Alli from Ekpoma to Benin
for a function. He wasn’t ready, so I flew it down to Uro-
mi my hometown which was a journey of five minutes. I
landed on a football field close to my father’s house. With
that I fulfilled my childhood ambition.
Being 80, I am grateful to God. I sleep with both eyes
closed. Nothing bothers me. I don’t need security guards.
I believe that it’s only when God protects that you are ful-
ly protected. God has already ordained how long I will
live on earth and has destined my path.
Defining leadership
To be a leader, you should be a servant. Leadership
means you are given an opportunity to look after people
and their welfare. You must look at them not as subordi-
nates but as equals, as people you have been asked to lead
to be able to achieve an objective. And a leader must have
that vision and that capacity to understand the scope of job
you have been given to do. A leader must not be afraid
to take decisions because you cannot make an omelette
without breaking an egg. If you want to favour people as
a leader, then you have failed. Because as a leader, you
are like a judge in a law court. You shouldn’t be partial.
You should follow the law as it had been laid down. And
then you achieve all the success.
The Air Force moulded me. As a young officer, I
worked under the late General Obada. I was his Admin
Officer. One day he called me and said: “Tony, let me
teach you something. Take your pen, jotter and let’s go
about. I want to teach you what management by wan-
dering is all about.” He said: “If you want to succeed,
you must learn to move about and hear the feelings of the
people at the bottom who are complaining but are afraid
to come to you.” So we went round, we went to Techni-
cal Field, everything was OK, we went to Flying School,
it was OK, then we went to the Petrol, Oil and Lubricants
(POL) section, everything was OK. When we came back,
he said: “Tony, sit down, what have you learnt today?” I
told him that I was most impressed by the POL section.
Then I saw him laughing. Then he said: “You next as-
signment is: Go and set up an audit of that unit.” By the
time we set up an audit, we found that a lot of petrol and
diesel had been stolen. A car would refuel in the morning,
in the afternoon, they come back to refuel. What they
were doing was, they will refuel, go to the town, sell the
petrol, come back and refuel again. So nobody went on
leave there because nobody wanted to be cheated out of the proceeds of the sale. So that place turned out to be the
worst place. And that taught me a very big lesson, until I
got to Nigerian Airways from the Air Force and there was
a lot of petitions on my table, and I was fed up. So one
day, I called everybody and said: “Whoever wrote a peti-
tion and didn’t sign, I don’t want to see you. But if you
sign it, come forward, we would look into your petition.”
Believe you me, nobody came forward. And that was the
last time I received any petition on my table against any
person. What I am trying to say here is, little things you
believe are not necessary are the things that are the most
important in running any outfit. So the Air Force taught
me a lot. The Air Force taught me to be a man. The Air
Force taught me to look at life very objectively. The Air
Force humbled me, apart from the humility I got from
home.