The club has been classified as elites club though they are not much in membership but they are all quality people and top professionals in their chosen carrier, most of them are pilots, Lawyers, Educationist, Insurance guru and many other professions.
In his chart with the journalist,Mr. Anthony Temitayo Laleye,the Chairman board of trustee of The Secretariat memebership club, who is also a legal luminary ,specializes in aviation and space law bare his mind on the future of the highly rated club and their activities since its inception. And the contribution of The secretariat membership club to the society and their environment.
Temitayo maintained that The Secretariat membership club is a meeting point not for the Pilots alone but like secretariat for all profession. He said at the beginning ,their present permanent club house was rented by national association of aircraft pilot and Engineers.
” it was professional association and the union was registered under the law so group of pilot and social professionals were meeting here ,they realized that the place was belong to pilot because The pilot secretariat was on top of the building so it therefore grew up to become The secretariat membership club .The club that is compose all kind of professionals most of whom are associated with aviation or air industry in terms of pilot and aircraft engineers’,Temitayo said.
According to the Chairman board of trustee, Barrister Temitayo said, the idea of founded The Secretariat membership club was that When you have sociable people of likes mind, you will love to be seen each other regularly even if you don’t see each other in a day you will begins to wonder, when the young men those days were always coming to The secretariat, we now say can’t we have some where to recreate drink beer, meet each other. Then the group of young men then came together suggested rent a place here then the union office space was upstairs.
It was learnt that one of the offices upstairs was vacant and one of them spearheaded it that was our former President Captain Tunde Ashafa,who is late now, we went together contributed money and rented the place, that was how it began, likeminded people started coming .Sometime people credited pilots as sociable person then pilots were flying ,they go to London, New York, they are very attractive to members of opposite sex,ladeis like pilot they say they are fashionable people, that was how we all got together.
It was then decided that we should register the club because we always enjoyed each other’s company so that was how it started of course you see our motto, our motto is harmony, recreation and friendship likeminded people, people who love life, who are very sociable.
Temitayo agreed that The Secretariat membership club is a young club but quick to point to several projects done by the club in term of corporate social responsibility to the community ,he said, ‘within our community we have done a lot through our members who belong to other social and charity club. I was the President of my rotary club several years back. I joined rotary in 1984, when I was the President this club donated towards many of our projects, so in such way we have done very many CSR and our impact has been felt all over.
On the succession plan for the club, Temitayo said that one of the greatest goal that we have achieved as a club, as a young club compare to island club, Country club, is that we have our own building. This building we plan for it, it was rented before and later we bought it we are the proud owner of this place which could be developed at any time.
We have succession plan, which is one of the point in the club because we want the club to out leave us, we are planning to leave the club to our children because the average age of members of this club is 68, 69 but most of us are still looking young
In his own view the Vice Chairman board of trustee Captain Adetokunbo Adekunbi said that in the next 10 to15 years this club will contest with ASSO.and we will do better than small clubs that have been in existence but not known, we as board of trustee, we want to expose this club so that we will increase the membership to reasonable seize.
He that the new executive in conjunction with support of board of trustee and members are doing what we called membership drive for younger generation and that does not mean that if we have a formidable member that has been screen that is over 60,65 or going to 70 years does not mean we will not accommodate the person with the situation in the country if we need to subsidies we will do that for young people, Adetokunbo maintained.
The newly elected Social Secretary Micheal Adefisayo Samuel , who considered himself as the youngest in the club promised to add vigour, energy and youthfulness to the club. I am still a very young guy, I still have a very long way to go in life and I need mentorship in a way of life, he said.
The secretariat club is a funny club because they are very conservative, they do so many good things for the society but they don’t like to loud it. They do things and keep quite. In the area of helping kids, widows ,sick, they are so good in supporting them and also involved in community outreach, reaching out to adolescent kids ,train them given them proper tools for them to become good to the society.
The secretariat club will be force to reckoned with in the next five to ten or twenty years we will be competing with the likes of country club, Asso.,ikeja club so the sky is the limit and again we will keep in bring quality members, this will bring a lot of development,Adefisayo concluded.
