Exactly 20 years (2003) this year, our paths, by sheer dint of fate, crossed. It was the birth of Nigeria’s first tabloid, The Sun newspaper.
As crew members on the Sunday desk, overseen by one of the icons of the newspaper subsector of the media industry, the Indomitable Louis Odion, Christian and I crossed paths, pens, and ideas, all fecund and sublime.
As if we were both inexorably twined or fated to trudge the route of inseparability, our camaraderie would continue even beyond our first port of encounter at Kirikiri, Apapa, where The Sun was headquartered, to midwife another brand new tabloid, National Life, a sister militant wing of The Nation Newspaper in 2008.
All through this process of our career and philia voyage, there was a symmetry and harmony of ideas and thoughts that waxed beyond description. We bantered, we poked fun, we loved, we shared and we disagreed. We were friends and brothers. For us. It was all for one and one for all. With time the frontiers of our relationship transcended the two of us to include his nuclear and binuclear family.
On numerous occasions in the course of our journalism career, Christian would farm out his contacts to me without a cringe. So I make bold to say that many of the political contacts and personages I have had to come across were through the instrumentality of my friend, colleague, and brother, Christian Raphael Ita, fondly monikered then as “Omoita or Ita-national.
Like Louis Odion, Christian saw in me what I never could have seen in myself. And they both pushed, drove, and anchored me at the dock of self-discovery and self-actualization. Both literally handheld me to where I am today.
But Christian would take it a notch higher when in 2013 he literally invaded The Nation Newspaper, where I was Assistant Editor, and poached me to Government House, Calabar; where I have been deputizing for him as Deputy Chief Press Secretary to date.
Calm, cool, reticent, and self-effacing, in Christian, you find accommodation, engagement, learning, kind-heartedness, and love. And in him, pleasant and lovely have we both been since then, without spat or strife.
We have flourished swifter than the swiftest eagle, stronger than Lions baying for their prey, and more packed than a pack of wolves.
In Christian, you never will find airs and graces. Simple, good-natured, and down to earth.
In Christian, it has been the road well taken and I will be ready to walk it again and again if offered another chance.
So as you celebrate today, my wish and prayer for you is that you may count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years. May your birthday bring happiness to your heart and many blessings to your whole life.
Mr. Linus Obogor is Deputy Chief Press Secretary to Governor Ben Ayade and writes from Calabar.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Linus Obogo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.