Category: Lifestyle – Others


  • 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…

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  • African Renaissance term used by authors is  descriptive of  the cultural movement in the British West Africa, in which the pioneer set of educated Africans, erstwhile propagators of the New Africa ideology, began to go native, in reaction to the racist tendencies of the whites. The term, “Renaissance” though qualified as “minor” was used by Ajayi JFA in…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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,…

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  • 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,…

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  • 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…

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  • Sarah Forbes Bonetta was the name given to the lady of regal manners from the Egbado extraction of western Nigeria, who enjoyed close relationship with and was mentored by Victoria, Queen of England. Bonnetta was born in 1843 at Okeadan village. When she was only four years old, King Gezo of Dahomey visited her village…

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  • Victoria Davies was the eldest daughter of Labulo Davies, a Lagos businessman and Sarah Forbes, goddaughter of the Queen Victoria of England. When Victoria Davies was born in 1863 she was named in honour of the Queen, who accepted to be her godmother, as she had been to her mother, Sarah. At her christening, Queen…

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