The PV Project
This is not a tribute to the memory of PV Obeng. Neither is it a eulogy to be delivered in public. PV was a man whose speeches delivered without reference to notes would crack and move mountains. His words would make even recalcitrant hearts weep and repent. I am so lost for words that the best I can do is to make a passionate plea for the preservation of his legacy.
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Since we met during our Junior College years, our lives crossed and intermingled frequently, sometimes intimately, other times at respectable distances. His name, so simple to pronounce and his personality so warming, leaves him in every mind and many hearts. He was simply infectious.
His was a long life of public service as a student politician, corporate guru, Co-coordinator of the Cabinet and Adviser to the President. In all these capacities, PV displayed his abundant multi-talents. He would boast often: “I hate reading but I listen well, interrogate and anticipate the issues, no matter the subject.” No wonder he was such a great Board Chairman.
I had one of the most intimate interactions with PV on a Tuesday afternoon one week to Easter this year. I was sitting with him in the reception of the Airport West Hotel while awaiting other colleagues for a board meeting scheduled for 2.00 p.m. PV had arrived rather early. I noticed that he seemed very relaxed and was very much his jocular self. He said he had given me an assignment for which he was not going to pay a pesewa. By this he was reminding me of several discussions we had had about the project of writing his biography, an enterprise I had half-encouraged and half-warned him for the timing.
I asked if he was sure that he was ready to tell his life story. “Why not now?” he asked as he had always done. As patiently, I would explain that he was still in the mid-stream of his political career. Opponents might seize upon certain information in the book to nail him. For me, an autobiography must be the last hurrah to signal the end of a career. He listened, as he had always done, then quickly he said he wanted the book now at all costs.
Over the Easter weekend, I drafted a long list of inputs from him. Among the requests, I wanted his brief family background. More importantly, I wanted him to gather old photographs that show PV as a baby on the mother’s lap, a baby being christened Paul and as a baby confirmed Victor. I wanted photographs showing his first day at school, as an undergraduate student with long hair, Beetle shoes and polar-neck. I asked for photographs as Hall President, SRC President…Oh yes, I asked for a lot of mementoes that included letters.
I transmitted my requests in a file titled, “The PV Project.” PV did not acknowledge receipt of this mail. Had he responded, the inevitable interviews would have followed. But knowing him for who he was, I suspected he was carefully interrogating every sentence with which to confront me at the appropriate time.
My last interaction with PV was on May 7 at the Holiday Inn. The occasion was an Annual General Meeting. Characteristically, PV was late as he breezed in. As he sat in the Chairman’s chair and took command of the meeting, I had the impression that he had not had the time to read the board papers earlier circulated. However, in a flash he caught on the issues and was his fluent self.
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PV loved working with committee reports and at this meeting when a shareholder raised some concerns I knew the Chairman would refer the matter to a sub-committee to investigate it. I tried avoiding his eyes so that he would not nominate me again to chair a board sub-committee. Typically, without PV looking in my direction, he nominated me. It was a rather marathon meeting. At the end, amid witty jokes, PV shared a few drinks with the shareholders, the directors and the auditors and we parted.
PV was a landmark. People would say, “I am PV’s year group. I served on the same Board with PV. I live in PV’s area in Tema. I attend PV’s Church.” Well, he is gone but his legacy must not be interred with his bones. For the sake of posterity, the PV Project must be prosecuted to final conclusion by whomever the family or any Trust would entrust with this task.
So long, PV. Your charisma is scripted in your initials. Yes, PV is a constant. Great men like you, they say, always go home in a fashion that leaves countrymen with the painful groan, “WHHYY?”
frazierjoek@gmail.com
(Author: Blame not the Darkness and Akora, available at Legon Bookshop, Kingdom Books, La; PAWA House)