Love stories rarely end as neatly as it has in Ondo, where two coffins rest side by side, holding Chief Oludolapo Ibukun Akinkugbe and his wife of 70 years, Janet. Both died aged 97, within 11 days of each other. Today, they are being buried together, the closing act of a partnership that seemed determined to outlast time itself.
Chief Akinkugbe was not just a husband; he was one of Nigeria’s boardroom patriarchs, a pharmacist turned titan who shaped industries from banking to publishing. Born in 1928, he founded Palm Chemists in Ibadan and co-founded Spectrum Books before rising to chair over thirty companies. Colleagues called him “the Chairman of Chairmen.”
Akinkugbe represented that early postcolonial generation that built institutions where none had stood. From Union Bank to GlaxoSmithKline Nigeria, from the Ibadan Chamber of Commerce to national economic councils, his footprint ran through Nigeria’s corporate DNA. Yet those who knew him said his true genius lay in character, the quiet dignity of a man who prized integrity above wealth.
And then there was Janet. Soft-spoken but firm, she anchored the home while her husband conquered the boardroom. Their marriage, forged in postwar optimism and tempered by decades of social change, became a reference point for devotion. “Whatever I achieved,” Chief Akinkugbe is credited to have said once, “I achieved because she stood by me.”
Their deaths—her first, his 11 days later—have stirred both grief and awe. To friends, it feels like destiny’s final kindness, ensuring neither lingered too long in the other’s absence. Few couples remain so bound, even in farewell.
The Akinkugbes have truly built a different kind of legacy, far different from those measurable only in titles and towers. Theirs is a legacy of constancy, a life that proved that love and duty could coexist, and that quiet faithfulness is itself a kind of empire.
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