| It was 7.45 am and my phone rings at the Doral Inn, a mid-town New York hotel, now closed. I had arrived in New York with my family the day before and Tuesday August 1, 1989 was my first day at UNDP. Mr. John Ohiorhenuan? My name is Hebert M’cleod and I would like to welcome you to UNDP and New York. Your first meeting is with Henri Bazin, our Division Chief at 11 and, as we’ll be working together, I thought you might like a preliminary review of our work. That was classic Mc’leod, the quintessential manager. I was to find out that he never failed to do his homework, he insisted on the meeting before the meeting to ensure there would be no surprises, and he insisted on the after action discussion to prepare the report for our boss. We shared a perpetual search for excellence. That first day, I was both surprised and honored that Mcleod had no qualms throwing me in the deep end of our work. He had reviewed my CV and checked my references and had stuck his neck out with Mr Bazin and assured him that I would be ready to lead a project formulation mission to Tanzania from the following Monday. Knowing on my side that I had only one chance to make a first impression, I accepted the challenge. That first meeting went so well and Bazin was rather surprised at how well I knew the project. Neither Herbert nor I was going to tell him that I was totally ignorant at 8 am that morning. The rest of the week flew by as we worked the long hours required to be ready to leave for Dar es Salaam on Friday night. From that first day, Herbert and I grew into close friends, brothers and mutual confidants. We worked together on the fourth floor of DC1 for three years before he was re-assigned to Cameroon as RR/RC. We stayed in close touch through his reassignments and mine. We found ourselves back together in New York a few years later and our professional collaboration continued. It continued as he returned to the field as RR/RC in the DRC. It continued as we both retired, he a few years earlier than me. Post-retirement, we worked together with other colleagues on the Ebola response program for West Africa in 2014. Our professional plans were interrupted by the pandemic, but we continued to share ideas, review each other’s work and plan collaboration. Our most recent intellectual engagement was a critique of Africa’s knee-jerk beggar’s approach to crisis as exemplified most recently by the early African response to COVID-19. His passing took me totally by surprise as we had big plans for a major joint paper now that the pandemic seems to be easing. It was not to be. I was lucky to have met M’cleod on my first day on the job. When it came to promoting programs to advance Africa, I couldn’t have asked for a better comrade in arms. I will always remember our long hours of negotiation with development partners on the social dimensions of structural adjustment and later, the intense discussions in UNDP on the Programme Approach and Resource-Based Management under his leadership. I will also remember fondly our joint love of West and Central African music and dance. Our hearts go out to his wife Selina, children, Hirut, Rinde and Ronke, and the grandchildren. Rest in Peace, brother. John Ohiorhenuan |
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