Blossom Ubani – A Tribute

I have known Blossom for over 30 years. We joined NTA about the same time but she left the establishment earlier than I.When we met she was in an NTA station in the East and I was in NTA Makurdi. We were greenhorns in the broadcast business, newly recruited. Blossom was witty, chatty, warm and extremely funny. We got along like we had known each other forever, spending long hours in each other’s corner, making small talk and generally been goofy. I was newly married, newly hired, newly pregnant. Blossom was my anchor those long cold nights in Jos, running the errands of an impossible pregnant woman in her first trimester and also a woman experiencing her first pregnancy. She was patient and would quarrel about the number of things I craved for, from Suya to tiger nuts to peanuts. I always say Blossom largely contributed to the nutrition, wit and wholesomeness of my first daughter who has turned out to be an awesome personality and a beautiful person inside out. In her early days in my stomach, my daughter listened to our conversations, our fears, our joys, our laughter and our jokes. It was an incredible three weeks we spent together in the NTA TV College hostel in Jos in 1984.

Our main teacher for the basic presentation course we took at the time was a man who was a quintessential broadcaster, a role model whose wit and humour got us wanting to be like him. He was brilliant on the screen, an excellent teacher, the incomparable Bode Alalade. He became our mentor throughout our careers and we both built a special bond with him. Uncle Bode Alalade as usual will pick on me and Blossom in class to deliver his daily jokes. Writing on the board words to set us cracking he will start with me. These would be his words for me to read and elocute.

Tom`s got a lot of dots on his shirt

Slowly I will read it to raucous laughter in class and a knowing look from Blossom. Tom was my husband`s name, a man Blossom adopted from Jos days, referring to him fondly as “my brother.” I have chosen to celebrate Blossom in the only way I know how, through laughter and wit. She was all of that and more. Our careers took us to different levels of broadcasting, she excelling in reporting and I following the presentation path. But she also read the News some of our mid-day and early evening bulletins in the late nineties.

As a reporter, she was fastidious about attention to detail. As part of her legacy in NTA, Blossom covered the former FCT Minister, General Useni and became our expert on works, roads, and housing while covering the colourful Minister of Works and housing the late General Adisa. Over time, she acquired the sobriquet “The General” after having covered so many Generals.

Blossom, truly blossomed in the reportorial beat rising to become Manager reportorial before she departed us for her other interests. In addition she mentored a lot of the reporters in NTA.

After she left NTA, she concentrated on her love of documentaries, spending time in production, writing and those things she did not find time for in her busy schedule. Always one to be humorous, Blossom never stopped celebrating her brother, my spouse, whom she credited with my assumed beauty. She would introduce me in a crowded gathering as “my brother`s wife who has spent all our money” and then proceed to caution whoever is staring too long at me with “wetin you dey look? No look her oh, my brother don finish with her. She get many children.”

This was her way of ensuring, according to her, that “no eye” which should not look at me one kind does. This always ended up in hilarious altercation. “How much your brother get sef?” I would say “Eeh,” she will carry on in front of all these strangers “I see. Everybody please note when she married us, she did not have pointed nose. We made her nose pointed.”

Around November of 2015, I was informed that Blossom had been ill and I rushed to her home to visit. It was a humorous Blossom chuckling in her child like manner that her brother and I met at her door. We spent a good hour together laughing and sharing. She was getting better she told us and we were glad. About two months later I visited again to find a very frail Blossom who was still able to laugh at herself despite her pain. At the top of the week, news of Blossom`s passing hit me like a bolt.

We mourn, we cry, we hug each other in tears. But we look back and thank God for her incredible life. May God grant her soul eternal repose and grant her family especially her beloved sisters the fortitude to bear the loss, Amen.

In NTA we mourn a quintessential News reporter, a mentor, a friend, a sister who would walk past you a glint in her eye and say “See ya pointed nose. My brother has pulled it for you.”

 

Eugenia Abu