I first met Chief Joop Berkhout around 1985, when the Ugandan, Princess of Toro, the tall exotic beauty with the neck of a gazelle, visited Nigeria.
She was his guest and he wanted to throw a party for her at his place. So he invited me.
I was the Head of the Reportorial unit at the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State at that time, So I took the liberty to attend the event with my cameraman.
Joop Berkhout was so enthralled with my report of the event and he told literally everyone who cared to listen.
Three years later, we met at a book launch event at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Victoria Island, Lagos and he called me aside and said he would like me to work with him at Spectrum Books.
By then, I was already working with Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade as General Manager of Fountain Publication Ltd and we had just launched a commercially successful book titled “HOME FRONT” by Maryam Babangida, who was the First Lady at the time.
Joop taught me how to make money. He was so good in identifying and squeezing money from unlikely areas in publishing. He tagged it Contract Publishing.
He was so committed to profit and efficiency that he could often be a pain in the neck.
Throughout my stay at Spectrum, he enjoyed a Bitter-Sweet relationship with my wife. He would wake me up on the phone in the middle of the night to ask me about the job.
As the National Sales and Marketing Manager, Joop worked me to the ground: he was a classic example of a Slave Driver. If you worked under the tutelage of Chief Joop Berkhout and your head is not above the waters in your business, maybe something is wrong.
He didn’t give a damn about Sundays; he would insist that I leave for the far North or the far East of Nigeria early in the morning on a Sunday so that I could get prepared and start my job in earnest on Monday morning.
At noon on a particular Sunday, he called my line as usual and wanted to know from my wife if I had left for Zaria early in the day for an appointment with the Emir of Zauzau.
My wife, taciturn as she was, told him “Sir, but today is Sunday and my husband will like to go to church,” and Joop responded, “at Spectrum, we make money everyday including Sundays.” There was silence at both ends of the phone.
Message delivered.
He had influential friends everywhere in the country partly because of the colour of his skin but most importantly because of his uppity business aggressiveness and acumen.
He introduced me to quite a number of his friends. I became Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu’s good friend through Joop Berkhout.
It was at Joop Berkhout’s Golden Gate residence at Iyaganku, Ibadan, that Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Odumegwu Ojukwu met and shook hands for the first time after the civil war.
I was there.
Liman and Adamu Ciroma, Gen. Hassan Usman Katsina, Adamu Fika, and many other top Oligarchists in the North at that time were well known to me, courtesy of Joop.
The Nwankwo brothers, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Akinkugbes, et Al: Berkhout moved with the La creme of the society and latched only, I repeat only on the advantages which the connections can bring to his Publishing business and nothing more.
As the years went by, Joop Berkhout was forced to slow down by age; the only factor that could curb his frenetic tendency.
By the time I visited him in his house in January 2024, his famed gin and tonic were off the table and his legendary retentive memory had started to fail him. He was repeating himself so often and when I was leaving, he told me, “Dotun, by the time you come back here, I may not be here.” The Old War Horse was wrong, I visited a few more times after then but each time the bell was tolling ever so steadily for a man who was larger than life.
- Prince Dotun Oyelade, the Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Oyo State sent this from Ibadan, the capital city of the state
