Tribute To Mister Money by Pope Pen
By Pope Pen – ISAAC OMBE was one of two passengers who died when their bus was involved in an accident along the Toru-Orua axis of the Sagbama-Ekeremor Road on Friday January 30, 2026. The bus was conveying staff of the Niger Delta Basin Development Authority to Ofoni. Ombe was the media aide to the boss of the agency, a former gubernatorial aspirant in Bayelsa State, Honourable Ebitimi Amgbare.
Like many other sympathizers, the staff were on their way to attend the funeral obsequies and eventual interment of the remains of Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, who was reported to have collapsed in his office on Thursday December 11, 2025, and was soon confirmed clinically dead at the Federal Medical Center, FMC, Yenagoa.
Bayelsa was thrown into mourning over the loss of Ewhrudjakpo, and the train of consolation visits, to say nothing of condolence messages to Creek Haven, came from far and near. Isaac Ombe had gone along to cover the event, and to do what he had been trained to do. He was a journalist of considerable standing who had become all too familiar with swinging his pen. He had a nose for hard news, and his reports could be depended upon for their forthright integrity.
That is because Isaac Ombe was reared in the best tradition of journalism. He was taught to be on the lookout for news, to ask the right questions, to probe for tenable answers, to respect objectivity and balance in every report, and to cultivate forthrightness as a tenet of good journalism conduct. Ombe was a practitioner who had taken his rightful place with quiet confidence in a long-running catalogue. Isaac was the sort of reporter who would be given an assignment in quick time, and he was sure to beat the deadline.
In fact, he was afraid of failing to meet timelines. He had a sleepless knack for work, and I can afford to say all this because I knew Isaac Ombe one-on-one at the infancy of his career as a journalist. He was one of my reporters in the days when I served as Editor of the Tide On Sunday in Port Harcourt.
A new media revival crusade was building up in Rivers State at the time, following the appointment of Dr Kudo Eresia-Eke as Commissioner for Information under the military administration of Colonel Dauda Komo. The state newspaper was aground, and Kudo’s mandate was to revive it. As a journalist who had written for The Guardian newspaper in the golden years of Nigerian journalism, Eresia-Eke thought it fit to assemble a crop of homegrown journalists, sons and daughters of Rivers State who could qualify to do the job.
I was one of two editors imported from Lagos, the other being Dagogo Ezekiel-Hart, Editor-In-Chief. He was coming from Classique magazine, and I was coming from the Newswatch stable. Kudo had given the task of selecting a team to a media consultancy firm called Taijo Wonukabe, a tag-team comprising Taiwo Obe and Chido Nwankanma, two standard bearers in sterling journalism practice in Nigeria. A good number of young and promising reporters passed the drill that day in Port Harcourt. One of them was Isaac Ombe.
It turned out that I was blessed with a noble crop of young reporters who went on to prove their worth in the profession. In my capacity as editor of the Sunday paper, I could assess the potential of each reporter assigned to work under me. From the very first assignment, I knew I could trust Isaac Ombe. And what was that assignment? We went looking for Harcourt, the man who gave Port Harcourt the name of the city. Who was this Harcourt fellow? What did he look like? Where did he erupt from? How come he left his name behind for the port city?
Did he really live in this same Garden City of ours?
Isaac’s contribution to the story was remarkable, and he was duly rewarded in the respectable row of by-lines. Ombe’s stamina for leg-work was established from that day. He followed up every other story idea with the same intense zeal and dedication. Isaac was respectful from the first day I knew him. His humility of spirit was his primary identity. He was a cool-headed, soft-spoken gentleman with a stutter between words and a ready smile to fill up the gap. I don’t mind saying again that it was easy to like him because he had a healthy appetite for work. Just name the assignment, and Isaac was ready to go for it, so long as it was decent.
Isaac and I became closer when we both realized we were sons of Bayelsa, following the creation of the state four months after we met along the corridors of the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation in Port Harcourt. I was hopeful that Ombe would be among my team to start the Bayelsa State newspaper, but he had bigger aspirations. He broke off from the civil service and joined a private paper with a national spread and a better offer.
He wasn’t the only one. John Iwori also did the same. I had mixed feelings about letting both of them go — as if I had a choice in the matter — because they were among my best reporters. Iwori had a bent for stories related to tourism, and Isaac Ombe was interested in the pages that had to do with money. As may be expected, I was delighted to see the by-lines of two of my staunch reporters in national newspapers, in the pages of ThisDay, and The Nation. I could only do my best to encourage them.
Funny that up to this point, I have been writing about Isaac Ombe. I didn’t call him that when we met along the streets of Yenagoa. I called him Mister Money, with an exclamation mark. That is because I told him that he was carrying a great story, and I would be glad to write about him some day. He said he was not worthy of the honour, but if I would ever write about him, I should remember to call him all his names.
I asked to know what name I was missing, and he said his middle name, the name actually given to him by his parents was Money. His early certificates identified him as Isaac Money Ombe, and the old people in his village knew him from childhood as Money. From that day on, I called him Mister Money, and nothing else. He would give me his trademark smile, and chat with me about a thing or two, between polite hiccups, and take leave to catch up with the next breaking story.
Till his last day, he could not bring himself to call me by my name. Afar and at close quarters, he called me Editor. On my part, I was always ready to hail him whenever I ran into him along the road, or else at the press center.
“Mister Money, when shall we get the money?” With a laugh, he would reply: “That would be when the economy improves.”
“It is taking too long for the economy to improve,” I would say, and we would share a short laugh. Pity that he will not be here when the economy improves.
When news broke that Isaac Ombe was one of the two people confirmed dead on the trip to Ofoni federated community, home of the deceased Deputy Governor, I was so distressed that all I could do was scream my anguish on the NUJ Bayelsa platform — Mister Money…!
Fellow journalists in Bayelsa State were understandably shocked when Isaac Ombe was confirmed dead. His passing was as untimely as it was painful, and every journalist in Bayelsa worth their pen and paper, everyone who knew him in person would miss the simple, easy-going gentleman in Mister Isaac Money Ombe.
