Alli Balogun was a Lagos politician and merchant in the 19th Century born in 1830 as Alli Makanjuola. Like his father, he was a slave dealer but he assumed a legal trade as supplier of local needs to European merchants upon the abolition of slavery in 1852. In his thirtieth year he had become rich…
Timothy Adeola Odutola was a politician and pre-independence member of the Nigerian aristocracy. Born in June 1902 to a Muslim father and a converted Christian mother. In his time Odutola was among the few kids whose parents embraced education on their behalf, and the young Odutola started with St. Saviour’s Primary School, then at Italupe.…
Ore Green was a Nigerian nurse, and celebrated avatar of Lady-like grace, born 1885 in Lagos to an ex-Superintendent of the Detective Force. Ore trained at St. Peter’s School, C.M.S. Girls’ Seminary, St. Mary’s Convent, and by private tuition in Mathematics, Latin, Greek, and Geometry under Rev. W.B. Eugba, principal of Wesleyan Boys’ High School,…
Ademuyiwa Haastrup was a flamboyant Lagos auctioneer and Local Methodist church preacher in Remo. Haastrup was an Ijesha prince with some maternal connections with Akarigbo Oyebajo. He was born to an Ifa priest in 1863 but was adopted as a child by Christians, hence his name, Joseph Pythagoras Haastrup. He later took a native name,…
Theophilus Owolabi Sobowale Benson was a Lagos lawyer and prominent member of Nigeria’s pre and post independence aristocracy. Born in Ikorodu in 1917, Benson lived for 91 years, a life that is remembered for high attainment and personal style. He attended CMS Grammar School, Lagos and after working briefly in the civil service as a…