Yesterday, over a dozen lives were lost in the ill-fate Associated Airlines that crashed on take-off, while conveying the remains of a former Minister of Aviation and ex-governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Agagu, scheduled to be buried in Ondo State today. Deji Falae, Tunji Okusanya (Snr.) and son, Tunji Okunsanya (Jnr.), were part of the deceased on the board of the aircraft.Take a look at the lives cut short in their prime.
As family, friends and associates sought to lay to rest the remains of one time Minister of Aviation and former governor of Ondo State, Dr Chief Olusegun Agagu, Nigeria was thrown into a devastating groaning and mourning as the aircraft bearing the remains and some other people crash landed with about 15 people losing their lives.
One of those lives cut short in the ill-fated Associated Airlines was that of Deji Falae, son of former Federal Minister of Finance, Chief Samuel Olu Falae.
Falae, whose job as the Ondo State Commissioner for Tourism and Culture was formulating policies geared at stimulating tourism and related activities for the state was on an official duty to accompany the remains of the former governor home to be interred, when the sad incidence occurred. Falae had been praised for his job of “creating conducive atmosphere and providing the necessary facilities for the development of tourism and ensuring the propagation and growth of indigenous culture in Ondo State.”
As Executive Director, Gold Estates Limited, a position he held for six years (2002 – 2008), Falae generated new development deals for a real estate development company that focuses on multi-family residential projects, including real-estate market analysis, his Linkedin account revealed. It was said by his former colleagues that the deceased managed the development of a mini residential estate from design to completion in the high end real estate market in Lagos.
Between November 2008 and September 2011, he was the C.E.O of WEST ONE RESOURCES LTD, a company some said he owned before his call to serve his fatherland two years ago as the Commissioner for Tourism in Ondo State.
Falae, a lawyer, politician and public officer in the service of the Ondo State Government was married for 14 years. He told a lifestyle blog that his marriage was a happy one. He took the liberty to share how he met with his wife, saying his wife and he were introduced by a mutual friend “while she was an undergraduate in the University of Lagos in 1993 and I was a Youth Corps member.”
He continued, “After the first date I was pretty sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her even though she wasn’t so sure about my intentions. She was very beautiful and had a comfortable ‘girl next door’ appeal that I couldn’t resist,” he said of his wife, now a widow. She was the one he shared the odyssey of life with.
Falae bagged the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), Law from the Obafemi Awolowo University (1987 – 1991). As a lover of life, he was partial to arts, entertainment and photography. Never to be alone, he belonged to several groups and associations. Some of them included Construction Management, Invest in Africa Lagos Business Club – Nigeria, Oil and Gas People, and Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Group.
Tunji Okusanya (Snr.)
Tunji Okusanya Snr. was a man of many parts. The Ijebu-born son of a carpenter-turned funeral director was the Executive Director of MIC funeral homes, a company which has been in existence for over 30 years. He was a do-it-yourself kind of person, who could, according to those who had met him, be described as a titan among equals in the business of funeral undertaking and who believed that there were lessons one could not learn and understand by bagging a degree, nor by reading books.
Okusanya was the man who, as a celebrity funeral director, brought colour and glamour to occasions that people naturally associate with mystery and gloom. MIC, coined from his father’s furniture company, Magbamowo Industrial Company, was started in 1982 and would later be transformed into a company highly sought after for its exquisite services. However, despite owning a business that spans three decades, his interests in starting the business was not entirely his own, as he revealed at various times, the business was started by his father.
“You know, this business was not started by me. It was started by my father; he was actually a cabinet maker who was involved in making different kinds of furniture including coffins. I grew up developing interest in what my father was making.
“I have discovered it is faster and easier to develop your business along the areas of your interest. Most people you see around succeeding are succeeding because they have developed their interests along the areas of their passion,” explained Okusanya in an interview.”
Not
undermining the fact that it was more or less an inheritance for him,
Okusanya still went through the normal process of grass to grace on the
job to take MIC to its present height. “I started the business on a small scale and grew with time and I can only look back to those years of toiling and hard work and thank God for bringing us this far,” he enthused.
According to Okusanya, passion for what one does could not be overemphasised because that was what would eventually drive one on where everything else might have failed.
“Funeral business is not the type of business that you go into with the mind of getting rich quick, you have to have the zeal and love for the business from within, so whether the money is forth-coming immediately or not, you will keep moving on and excelling in it. You also need to do all you can so that the product would be accepted, once there is acceptability, the sky is your limit.”
He was a man who believed that funeral undertaking business was beyond casket making, noting, that it is “an all-encompassing business”.
Tunji Okusanya (Jnr.)
Any father would be proud of leaving the family’s legacy in the hands of his descendants and the Tunji Okunsaya’s family was no different. Not only did Olatunji Okunsaya Jnr shared his father’s name, he also shared his passion for the family’s funeral business.
Ironically, alongside some others who accompanied the corpse of the former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Kokumo Agagu, to his home state for the final rites, both men yesterday, lost their lives in a plane crash.
A graduate of Banking and Finance at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Okusanya Jnr, while alive worked for the MIC Funeral Home, a family business which started with his grandfather as far back as 1946 and as a funeral specialist, he specialised in the art of cosmetic beautification for the dead.
Nursing the passion from a tender age, Okusanya Jnr. even as a primary school pupil, he would spend as much time as possible at the funeral home to learn as much as he could.
“Anytime I was on holidays, I went to the office and did what I was asked to do. At that young age, I worked in every department, from helping to make the caskets in the furniture department to the last detail. Even when I went to the university, I would still come around to learn the nitty-gritty of the business,” he said in an interview.
Making his impact known as a young entrepreneur, he was soon involved wholly in the family business. And although, he had other businesses on, the first port of call for him, was the MIC Funeral Home. As a business developer in the business, Okusanya Jnr. basically manned the background checks of the job, monitoring every aspect of the business.
A dedicated man he was and despite not being the only child, he was proud of following his father’s footsteps and it was no surprise that he was on that trip with him, hoping that he would someday take on the family business.
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