Dafinone: Celebrating a figure head

He had set out early in life as a head for and, later, of an exceptional family of figures. In 1943, in the Cambridge School Certificate Examination that he sat for as a student of the Abeokuta Grammar School, David Dafinone had emerged the overall best candidate in Mathematics in West Africa. As an adult […]

He had set out early in life as a head for and, later, of an exceptional family of figures. In 1943, in the Cambridge School Certificate Examination that he sat for as a student of the Abeokuta Grammar School, David Dafinone had emerged the overall best candidate in Mathematics in West Africa.

As an adult and parent, Dafinone would prove that figures weren’t just swirling in his medulla, they were also swimming in his spermatozoa.

In the midst of intense efforts devoted to accomplishments of a degree in Economics, membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ACA), and local and international recognition in the accounting profession, Dafinone created time for his beautiful wife, Cynthia, to sire five children who would turn out to be, like him, virtuosic accountants.

It must have been a spontaneity of the Dafinone DNA constituent, rather than a rash of accidents that the three sons and two daughters emerged chips off their father’s professional block, and cerebrally so. Between 1986 and 1999, they had all boasted membership of the same ACA that their father had secured in 1963. Five heads of figures – Igho, Ede, Duvie, Daphne and Joy  –  with David Omueya Dafinone as the proud figures head.

Six chartered accountants in one family. That was unprecedented. The curators of the Guinness Book of Records couldn’t have but noticed that feat in the accounting world. On August 1, 2000, the curators issued the Dafinone family a certificate confirming it as setting a world record as the first nuclear family ever to produce six chartered accountants. That record was not known to have been erased by Sunday September 30, 2018 when David Dafinone died.

The Guinness World Record recognition only further highlighted a brand that had been meticulously built over the years. Dafinone grew up with quite some cosmopolitan advantage.    Born in Sapele, Delta State on March 12, 1927, he finished his secondary education in Abeokuta, Ogun State and at only 21, was the civil servant handling the native treasury estimates for the entire Northern Nigeria for the Colonial Administration.

Such a responsibility spoke volumes of the confidence the Administration reposed in such a young man. After Dafinone had prepared the estimates, a Special Finance Committee appointed by the Administration and comprising Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, Alhaji Aliyu Makaman Bida and Alhaji Yahaya Madawakin Ilorin would vet the figures before they eventually go to the Governor-General for his consent.

Dafinone had joined the civil service on August 28, 1946 as a Third Class clerk in the Registration and Records Department, and was appointed Acting Administrative Officer in the Finance Department only two years later.

Dafinone excelled in that role, as he shone brightly as Assistant Secretary to the Special Finance Committee of the five Northern leaders named above so much so that he was recommended for the two-year First Devonshire diploma course in Public Administration at the University of Exeter in August 1951.

On completion of the course in 1953, he enrolled for a degree in Economics (with specialization in accounting) at the University of Hull. But he would transfer to the University of London as an external student in 1956, from where he graduated in 1958. He, thereafter, immediately enrolled for the ACA professional examinations and became a chartered accountant in 1963.

Dafinone came back to Nigeria and joined Delloites, Haskins and Sells, a firm of Chartered Accountants, as an Audit Manager. He was said to have established a strong relationship with leading politicians of the First Republic and credited with assisting the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, in drafting questions and answers in the parliament.

On August 18, 1966, Dafinone established his own firm of chartered accountants, D.O. Dafinone and Co., (now Horwath Dafinone).

When he was 40 years old, the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, appointed him into a three-man commission to investigate the assets of public officers in the then Mid-West State of Nigeria, in what would be the beginning of Gowon’s appreciation, through several appointments, of Dafinone’s quality as an administrator.

In 1969, the Gowon administration again appointed him a Commissioner under the Ports Amendment Decree of 1969 to serve as the Federal Government Arbitrator to take over the Warri and Calabar ports from the United African Company Limited. From 1964 to 1970, he sat on various Commissions as Administrator and member for the Apapa Road Project tribunal.

In 1971, he was appointed Sole Commissioner by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to investigate the affairs of the Nigeria Pools Company Limited. And in the same year, Gowon again appointed him as a non-executive Director of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, where he served in various capacities, like chairmanship of the Monetary and Banking Policy Committee and the Recruitment Committee.

Having served meritoriously in the federal civil service and with a flourishing private practice in accounting, Dafinone deemed it fit to track back home to serve his people by participating in politics. He joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in 1978 and was part of the writers of the NPN manifesto in his office on Broad Street, Lagos.

He contested for the Bendel South Senatorial election in 1979, which he won with 59,632 votes to beat Thompson Salubi of the Unity Party of Nigeria, who had 24,874 votes.

He was Chairman, Senate Committee on Commerce, Industries, National Planning and Steel Development between 1979 and 1983, and was re-elected for a second term in 1983.

After the truncation of the Second Republic on December 31, 1983, Dafinone went back to his practice, but began to play a leading role in the struggle for the creation of Delta State from Bendel State. That effort succeeded when Bendel State was split into Delta and Edo states in 1991.

Dafinone was one of the early accomplished arbitrators in Nigeria. One of his notable jobs was his arbitration in the dispute between the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company Limited and Thomas de la Rue Limited of the United Kingdom in 1990.

In 1990, he was appointed as a consultant to the federal government to source funds for the completion of the Lagos Third Mainland bridge project, while also serving as a committee member to review the administration of Indirect Taxation in Nigeria.

In Delta, he began paying more attention to the development of the Urhoboland and people. In league with other Urhobo leaders, he founded the Urhobo Development Association.

As an activist, Dafinone led the Union of Niger Delta, a non-governmental environmental and social justice pressure group.

Even as he aged, his desire to serve Nigeria didn’t wane. On the return to civil rule in 1998, he teamed up with his conservative likes to found the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). At 72 years old, he aspired to lead the country as President, starting the Dafinone for President campaign.

But a raging illness stopped him in his tracks. In September 1988, he was flown abroad. By January 1999 when he returned, the PDP Presidential ticket battle had gone too far for him to catch up.

Dafinone wouldn’t give up. He moved over to the National Democratic Party (NDP). But even there, he was beaten to the presidential ticket in 2003 by Senator Ike Nwachukwu.

So versatile, Dafinone was a successful industrialist, with stake in a company engaged in the production of roofing materials, and in a rubber processing plant in Sapele Local government of Delta State.

He boasted membership of several international organisations, like the Urban Land Institute of America, an organization with an asset value of $93 trillion and whose member he had been since 1992. He was elected a fellow of the National Geographical Society of Great Britain in 1990.

When David Dafinone’s life finally expired at 91 with the month of September, there seemed nothing more to add to his page. Or was there?