Communications Expert, Prof Opubor, Is Dead

Nigeria’s foremost communications teacher, Prof. Alfred Opubor, is dead.

The communications expert died in Benin Republic on December 2 during a brief illness. He was aged 75 years.

Prof. Opubor, the first African to get a doctoral degree (Ph.D) in communications, was the pioneer chairman of the board of directors of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He taught veteran journalists like Mrs. Oluremi Oyo, the Managing Director of NAN and her husband Mr. Vincent Oyo, the art of mass communications at the University of Lagos in the 1970s.

He was one of the first generation of specialists in the field of communications as a behavioural science, having graduated from the Michigan State University, in the U.S. with a PhD degree in 1969.

His expertise was in communication theories and message systems and their applications in development.

A former Head of the Department of Mass Communications at the University of Lagos, Professor Okpubor was also a researcher, government policy adviser and senior communications specialist in the United Nations system. He was also an international consultant in strategic communications and media development.

For nearly a decade (1990-1998), he served as Senior Technical Adviser in Information, Education and Communications for Reproductive Health with the UNFPA, first in Abidjan, before moving to the Country Support Team (CST) in Harare, covering more than 20 countries in East, Central and West Africa.

Between 2008 and 2009, he designed the institutional communications strategy for ECOWAS, entitled “From a Community of States to a Community of People”.

In 2009 he undertook missions on behalf of UNESCO to prepare analytical studies on the integration of communication for development in Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, within the context of the UN system’s “Delivering As One” reforms.

He also provided capacity development for members of the UN Communication Group in these countries and was appointed a member of the Experts’ Group on Media Data and Indicators of the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, Montreal, Canada, undertaking missions in 2009 to India, France and Costa Rica.

From 2003 until his death, Prof. Opubor was Secretary-General of the West African Newsmedia and Development (WANAD) Centre in Cotonou.

He was also Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Panos Institute (West Africa), and Member of the Africa Board of Inter-Press Service (IPS), the Rome-based international news agency with regional headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Prof. Opubor is survived by his spouse, Antoinette, children and grand children.