It was an exciting moment for former directors, managers and staff of the defunct Sunray Publications Limited yesterday when they gathered together in Port Harcourt for their first reunion since the company closed shop in 1998.
Sunray Publications Limited attracted global attention to Port Harcourt in 1992 when it began the publication of full colour daily newspaper in Nigeria, the first by a newspaper company in Nigeria.
It introduced a brand of journalism that focused on developmental journalism and kept high ethical standards for its journalists. It attracted top rated journalists and scholars from other media houses, universities and even blue chip companies. Both the newspapers and the journalists consistently won awards with their investigative stories and informed commentaries and cartoons.
The company was also a first choice graphics company that printed quality jobs for customers and ran a books publishing section that edited and published many books.
A combination of boardroom battles, political interference and marketing challenges however led to its closing down in 1998.
After the closure, many staff members of the company scattered and took up opportunities in other companies and establishments abroad. Many others also set up their private practices and became highly successful.
However, many other former workers passed on and were aptly remembered during the reunion.
Former Managing Director of Garden City Sunray Limited, Amaopusenibo Bobo Brown, who presided over the reunion, praised the resilience of former Sunray staff members even after the company closed down.
He noted that the fact that many of them went on with their lives and became huge success stories was a testimony that Sunray gathered the right people to execute the vision the promoters of the company had.
He urged the SUNRAY Family, as the group now call themselves, to always find a way of contirburing to the betterment of the society, saying that the Nigerian society was worse off now than it was when Sunray came in with a vision to support national development.
People that spoke at the Reunion included renowned political science scholar, Prof. Eme Ekekwe, who was the Chairman of the Editorial Board of Sunray and the pioneer Personnel Manager of the company, Dame Ngozi Pearse.
The Chairman of the Reunion Planning Committee, Dr. Gloria Ijeoma Aso, thanked members of the Sunray Family for the support they rendered to ensure that the reunion held successfully.
Members resolved that the reunion should henceforth be hosted annually in a bigger way that would include their family members. A special musical rendition was made by children of Mr. and Mrs. Canice Ezirim, both former staff members of Sunray.
Prominent among people that were at the reunion were Chief Ernest Chinwo, the General Manager of Rivers State Newspaper Corporation, publishers of The Tide newspaper; Chief Lawson Hayford, former General Manager of Bayelsa Radio; Mr. Ifeatu Agbu of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Prof. Hart Awah of the University of Port Harcourt; Pastor (Dr.) Kathie Young-Ukpai of the Presbyterian Church and Dr. Ken-Fash Ayibaemi, a prominent alternative dispute resolution specialist.