I met Alex Uruemu Ibru only once and our communication was limited to phatic communion and a handshake. He was dressed in white and wore a tempered smile. Although I have no personal knowledge of the man beyond this brief meeting, so much information about him has become available in a torrent of tributes since his passing on on November 20, 2011. It is now common knowledge that he deployed his talent to the service of humanity through various roles as entrepreneur; publisher; industrialist; and philanthropist. In the course of performing these roles, he garnered various titles and epithets, including Chief; Dr. (Honorary); visionary; humanist; patriot; and nationalist. Although he might have stepped on some toes and attracted less charitable labels, his good deeds trumped every perceived misdeed. And that is all that matters in funerary tributes.A unique feature of funerary tributes is their symbolism and positivity in content and tone, because their primary goal is to celebrate the achievements of the deceased. For Christians, and Ibru was a devout one, this positivity is illustrated by the pastors sermon during the funeral service, which often focuses on the deceaseds good deeds on earth. Because funerary tributes are symbolically considered part of the deceaseds luggage on the journey to Eternity, nobody wants to stuff it with rubbish.It is against this background that I became curious about tributes by former and present staff of The Guardian newspaper, which Ibru founded in 1983. I was struck by the contribution by Femi Kusa, a former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, which stood the conventional view of funerary tributes on its head. His putative tribute, published in the November 24 edition of The Nation, contained negative portrayals of Ibru in a collection of remarks and events involving other actors in the Guardian family, dead and alive.It is not the case that Kusa wrote the un-writable, and no one has said categorically that he lied. But what he wrote would have been appropriate in a memoir rather than in a tribute to the deceased founder of the organisation that gave him bread and butter for sixteen years. By focusing on negativity in a genre devoted to positivity, Kusa contravened convention and opened himself up for negative evaluation. Osaro Odemwingie, a former employee of The Guardian, took on this task (The Guardian, December 1, 2011) as did many online commentators.But then, Yemi Ogunbiyis diplomatic and nuanced tribute (The Guardian, December 12, 2011) provides a window on Kusas negativity. It became clear that the early crop of Guardians management staff got a rather rough deal from the publisher. This includes Lade Bonuola (pioneer Editor), Stanley Macebuh, Femi Kusa, and Ogunbiyi himself. Besides corroborating Kusas allegation about inadequate pay, which Ogunbiyi describes as pittance, the heavens did not fall on Kusa alone: Dr. Macebuh and I were forced to resign our appointments, while I and Amma Ogan were in far-away Pakistan conducting an interview for the paper with Benazir Bhutto. Not unexpectedly, our forced resignations led to a flood of other resignations and the company faced, in my view, its first self-inflicted crisis. The manner of the departures was painful. We all moved on, but the pain lingered for a while.How long such pain lingers depends on three important variablesindividual personality and the ability to accommodate pain and move on; individual achievements after pain was inflicted; and whether or not closure was achieved with the principal who inflicted the pain. These three factors worked in Ogunbiyis favour. Not only did he move on, he became a very successful media mogul. He also attained closure with the publisher:although the publisher and I made things up, thanks to his lovely wife, Maiden, we never really came to terms with what led to that season of rancour. Unfortunately, the publisher and Dr. Macebuh never patched things up before Macebuh himself died.The lingering venom in Kusas putative tribute indicates the absence of closure, made worse, at least in Odemwingies conjecture, by Kusas lack of success with the Comet newspaper after he left The Guardian. But there appears to be more than that. It is not the case that Kusa and Ibru were not close enough. As Kusa revealed, they shared many intimate details at home and abroad.The question then is: Where did Ibru go so wrong that Kusa could not sing an acceptable tune at his graveside' Whatever the case might be, the lesson is clear: Seek closure while the other party is still alive in order to minimise the pain of rancour. Otherwise, you should allow death to be the ultimate closure. Moreover, it is important to realise, as horse traders would say, that there are horses for courses; and there are courses for horses. Appropriateness is the name of the game in communication, more so in the composition of funerary tributes.As indicated earlier, different generations of The Guardian family had differential experiences with the publisher. It would appear that the first generation suffered the teething problems of a new business venture, while the rules of engagement were being streamlined. Intrigues, backbiting, and suspicion often engendered personnel changes and abrupt dismissals. It is not unlikely that employees stepped out of bounds in a rules book that only existed then in the head of the proprietor.However, by the time subsequent generations of employees came along, the proprietor seemed to have found his balance. The company had stabilised. Accordingly, G.G. Darah, who belonged to a later generation of the management staff, had nothing but praise for the publisher: In the six years I served as chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor, the publisher never rebuked or chastised me for any error or extremist view. He had full confidence in those he entrusted the work to and he regularly humoured us by saying, You are the experts. Whenever he showed up at editorial board meetings, he never betrayed any gesture of proprietary arrogance.By the time Reuben Abati assumed the same position, many things had been sorted out, and Ibru was no longer as involved as he was at the beginning: After many years of experience, Alex Ibru had mastered the art of separating the false tales from the truth and so he related to his senior staff according to his own codesHe took his management staff very seriously, kept in constant touch, always supportive without interfering, and forever planning ahead and insisting on fidelity to company philosophy (The Guardian, December 18, 2011).It is understandable why the tributes by later generations of top staff were filled with overflowing eulogies. In his initial reaction to Ibrus death, Abati had this to say about his own experience: What I remember him most for is what he did for me. He gave me an opportunity, a voice and a platform through which I could make full use of my God-given talents and I would not be where I am today but for that opportunity (Leadership, November 21, 2011). True, Ogunbiyi wrote in the same vein about his professional gains from working at The Guardian, but he could not overlook the teething problems of which he too was a victim.But there was one issue that no employee ever contested: Perhaps, more than any other publisher in these parts, Alex Ibru gave unfettered freedom to journalists to practise their profession, a fact that undoubtedly endeared the paper to a good proportion of Nigerians and the international community (The Guardian Editorial, December 16, 2011).
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