“So, I attended the 50th birthday church service for a dear friend, brother, and client yesterday, and he got me thinking about this life. He had made and lost a fortune, he has seen life in all it’s many facets. He has traveled roads that I pray never to pass.
But yesterday, I saw him prepping for the most important journey of all. The journey home. I saw him acknowledge his own humanity. I witnessed him nude before his Creator in obeisance. I watched him act out Solomon’s conviction that life is vanity. I saw a man ready to go home. He has set me thinking, and I want you along with me.”
full link here: https://www.delefarotimi.com/travelers-all/
Travelers All. 9/12/2017.
The paragraph above is taken from my tribute to Mr. Ogunwusi on the day after his 50th birthday. He is now no more, but the words still resonate with me, and I am writing this tribute in memory of the man that he was.
It was in April 2003. I had only just struck out on my own, my law firm being less than a year old, newly married with a daughter weeks old, when fate contrived to place me in a meeting with “Mr. Ogunwusi”. That was the beginning of a relationship that endured until his demise. He was a few months older than me, but he was always Mr. Ogunwusi to me. He was always the bigger man.
I experienced Mr. Ogunwusi as a God-anointed gatekeeper of my destiny and purpose in God, and he never failed to open the gates for me, whenever and wherever he was blessed with the capacity to do so. I am a beneficiary of his immense generosity, and I attest that he was always the bigger man in relation to anything that appertained to me.
About five years after our initial meeting at the instance of a mutual client, we had evolved a relationship that had me handling some of his legal affairs, particularly as it related to his dealings with the mutual client, and in his then emerging real estate business. I was in his office at Moshood Olugbani Street in Victoria Island for a meeting, and when our business was done, I made to leave, but he asked me to tarry. I explained how I had to leave, since I was scheduled to pick my daughter from school.
He was curious to know why my wife’s driver wouldn’t do the school run, and he enquired if everything and everyone was fine. His queries led me to relive my experience at a hospital in the same neighborhood as his office, Rodin Medical Center, where I had been robbed of my car and some cash just about a week before the meeting. I further explained how I hadn’t replaced the stolen car, and how the car I had was the only one in the house. He asked why I hadn’t replaced the car, knowing from my work with him that I had the financial means to do so.
After listening to my explanation of how replacing the car wasn’t a priority for me at the time as I was focused on building a house for my now expanded family, my third child having been born the previous month, and my tenancy already determined by a Quit Notice from the landlord, he looked at me with the smile that was a permanent feature of his face, and directed me to meet Kayode Fasheun of Arrowhead Automobile at Ajose Adeogun roundabout. I was to take any car of my choice, and pay whatever I could. I was robbed of a 2006 Camry LE, the last of the edition. I picked the 2007 LE, the latest iteration of the car. The Bigger Man paid for it.
Mr. Ogunwusi was a giver. He was defined by his compulsive philanthropy. He would literally give away his eyes. I was careful about expressing any kind of need in his space, such was the compulsive nature of his giving. He gave what he had, and he had no problem with giving what he had little of. He gave time. He gave money. He gave himself. He gave everything, even when he had little to give. He was a man defined by his compulsive philanthropy.
When a man is as prodigious in giving as Mr. Ogunwusi was, he would be surrounded by takers, and Mr. Ogunwusi was surrounded by takers. The stories of Adetunji Ogunwusi’s life are not mine to tell, but I am a beneficiary of his life, and I owe posterity the duty to record, that he was a good man, and that he was extremely kind to me. He was my client, my benefactor, my friend, and my brother.
Mr. Ogunwusi was a big man. He had girth, and he was tall. He was a physically imposing specimen of a man, but he was even bigger as a human being. Nothing was too much to give up, and nothing was too much to give. He must have had his detractors, and he must have had his flaws, but ultimately, he was a damn good man, and heaven gained an angel when he was called home to his God. He nurtured many, and I am one of them, and I remain eternally grateful to God for the blessing that he was.
May God grant him eternal peace, and bless his seeds.
Adetunji Adisa Ogunwusi. Re Gallantuomo!
DF
