Nation
UniCal Alumi Association honours late Prince Emeka Obasi
The University of Calabar Alumni Association, Lagos Chapter, on Saturday, conferred Posthumous Annual Award on late Prince Emeka Obasi.
Obasi, ace journalist and publisher of Business Hallmark Newspaper who passed away on Tuesday March 15, 2022 was a graduate of English from the University of Calabar.
Honoured alongside Prince Obasi is Dr.Ubong King, a business consultant, security expert and motivational speaker who passed away in 2020.
The award, according to the organisers, was for his selfless and tireless service to the association and to humanity in his lifetime.
Dr. (Mrs) Betty Emeka-Obasi, wife of the late publisher, was on hand to receive the award.
Prince Obasi bagged an honours degree in English and Literary Studies in 1987, before going on to accomplish great feats as a journalist, public relations expert and an author.
Upon graduation in 1987, he promptly signed up for what was to be the beginning of an engaging journalism career, one that saw him functioning in the early years as the most enterprising reporter with Quality magazine, a subsidiary of Newswatch magazine, both published by Newswatch Communications Limited, from that same year.
He had been retained in Quality magazine as a Staff Reporter, having done his youth service (NYSC) in the same publication.
Within a space of two years, he had won the Best Editorial Staff award, even though he was not originally nominated by his supervisor and editor of the magazine, May Ellen Ezekiel, popularly known by her acronym, MEE. Ezekiel was later to become MEE Mofe Damijo, having got married to popular actor, Richard Mofe Damijo.
Prince Obasi was to later move with MEE, sometime in 1990, when she founded the Classique magazine, fashioned after Newswatch Communications Quality magazine.
He joined as the magazines Features Editor, a meteoric rise for one who had been in active journalism for less than three years. His move to Classique was, however, based on a condition. He would work for just six months.
Courageous and driven, part of what helped Prince Obasi stay strong and successful on the reporters beat during these early years were his penchant for hard work, his never-say-die spirit and his knack for cultivating and sustaining contacts from among sources that were drawn from a wide variety of interest groups and blocs.
For him, it was a literal case of just give me a place to stand and I will move the world. Added to this was the fact that he, indeed, was a wordsmith who really paid attention to matters of journalistic craftsmanship, linguistic dexterity and artistic finesse.
A voracious reader and one who thus was well positioned to hold and share opinions on diverse issues of interest, a now more astute Emeka Obasi was thereafter to take time out of the daily routine of the news-hunter.
Later in 1990, he resigned from Classique magazine to set up his own company, Crown Communications Limited, a public relations outfit. Not long after, he entered into a business combination with a partner which resulted into a new company, Cameo Ad Ventures Limited, and became President and CEO of the new company, with office in high-brow Victoria Island, Lagos.
This relationship endured until the mid-1990s when he pulled out and floated a completely new outfit, Patrioni Limited. It was at Patrioni that The Prince, as he was fondly called, went full throttle and unravelled. Patrioni brought him fully into the world of Public Relations and Public Policy Advisory, Engagement and Consultancy.
Dr. Betty Emeka-Obasi receiving the award
He would in 1998 set up Hallmark Newspaper, and thereafter National Mirror in 2005, while at the same time continuing to sustain and juggle about all of the brands that he had birthed in the public service, policy and public relations arena.
Upon his relinquishing ownership of National Mirror to the businessman, Jimoh Ibrahim, in 2009, he set up Business Hallmark. The newspaper grew fast to become, for a long stretch of time, the most outstanding and most respected business publication in the country.
About 2012, he undertook a remapping of his engagements in the media terrain and took the decision to rejig the Business Hallmark brand into a daily, mass circulating product, Hallmark Newspaper. He rode on this course for three years before returning to the publishing of Business Hallmark in 2015.
Obasi also had stints in public service. He was engaged as Head of the Media Advisory Committee, Imo State in 1998. He thereafter served as Special Adviser on Media, Research and Strategy to the then Governor of Abia State and now Senator representing Abia North at the National Assembly, Orji Uzor Kalu; and later as Commissioner for Information, Culture, and Tourism, also in his home state of Abia.
But his stint in public service was short-lived. He opted to quit and return to journalism, insisting, despite persuasions by friends and associates, that politics was not his calling and that he could not do what it took to excel in the game.
Prince Obasi never looked back and continued with life as journalist, PR expert and public intellectual who dissected issues with remarkable intelligence and with such foretelling aptitude that left even prophets in awe, until his sad and untimely passage on Tuesday, March 15, 2022, at the age of 58.
In December 2022, the people of his home town, Azueke Ibeku in Umuahia North Local Government Area Of Abia State also honoured him with a posthumous award.
The award was conferred by the traditional ruler of the community, Eze Emmanuel Okechukwu Onwubuariri, the Agukwunechemba 1 of Azueke Autonomous community.
The award is in recognition of Obasi’s positive personal contributions to the development of the community and also in appreciation of his exemplary life of hard work, purpose driven and love for humanity .
Obasi gave employment opportunities to many people within and outside his community, built and rehabilitated houses of widows and gave them monthly allowances, as well as sank borehole for churches.
And Above all, he gave scholarship to many students and mentored many, who have become successful in their respective fields of human endeavour .
