Encomium
CHIEF Molade Okoya-Thomas, the business mogul and sport philanthropist who died on Sunday, February 1, 2015, will be buried on Friday, March 6, 2015, at Vaults and Garden, Ikoyi, Lagos.
According to his first daughter, Hon. Jumoke Okoya-Thomas, a high ranking member of House of Representatives, National Assembly, Abuja, the activities preceding the final burial will start from Monday, March 2, 2015.
What is the arrangement for your father’s burial?
It is going to be a whole week affair. It is starting on Monday (March 2, 2015). The Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan, Lagos will have their own. I think they will be having a Service of Songs for him.
On Tuesday, March 3, the Lagos State Government will hold its own. Theirs is going to be an Evening of Tributes and it will hold at Teslim Balogu Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.
What time will that be?
Everything will be in the evening. On Wednesday, March 4, there will be Evening of Tributes/Service of Songs by the family. This will hold at Trinity House (Zion Center, Water Corporation Road, off Ligali Ayorinde Street, Victoria Island, Lagos). It will start by 5 p.m.
That is Pastor Ituah Ighodalo’s church?
Yes. There will be Christian wake-keep on Thursday, March 5, at Landmark Event Centre. The same street with Pastor Ituah Ighodalo’s church. The headtie for that is yellow.
For the funeral itself, there will be lying-in-state at his residence between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. There will be another lying-in-state at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan from 12 p.m to 1 p.m. Then funeral mass will be at Holy Cross Cathedral (14, Catholic Mission Street, Lagos) at 2 o’clock.
This will be on Friday, March 6, 2015?
Yes. The dress code for that is all shades of green.
What about reception?
They don’t write about reception for the dead. Don’t you know that?
But where are you going to do your own reception or you are saying there is not going to be any reception?
I have not said that. What I am saying is that it is no longer fashionable to write reception place for the dead.
Why?
I think it is to avoid people that are not invited flooding the place.
Where are you going to do yours?
I know you will get it as a journalist but I don’t want you to publish it.
-TOLANI ABATTI
