Category: History – Political
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Abubakar Abdulsalami; Nigerian military Head of State from 1998 to May, 1999. Following the mysterious death of Abacha on June 8 and a month later of Abiola, the undeclared winner of the presidential elections five years before, the emerging General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s administration considered it expedient for a Yoruba to emerge as president ostensibly to…
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Aikhomu Augustus; Nigerian Naval Officer who served as the de facto Vice-President of Nigeria during the Ibrahim Babangida military junta from 1986 to 1993. Also once a Chief of General Staff, Aikhomu was the first naval officer to be promoted as an Admiral in black Africa. He was the first signatory to the document which…
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Anthony Enahoro; Nigerian nationalist and politician of the first republic. Enahoro as an Action Group, AG parliamentarian in 1953 moved a motion for self-rule in the Federal house which proposed that Nigeria should have its independence in 1956[i]. He was detained during the emergency period in the Western Region following the Action Group crisis in…
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Bakare Tunde; Nigerian Pastor and running mate of Muhammadu Buhari in the unsuccessful 2011 presidential race. Born on 11 November 1954 to a polygamous Muslim family at Iporo Sodeke in Abeokuta, Bakare never met his father who died when he was only two. He was brought up by his mother, Abigail Ebudola Bakare. He attended…
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Alex Akinyele; Public Relations expert and politician. Akinyele was Minister for Information under the General Babangida regime form 1989-91. Once commended by Hilton Fyle, the presenter of BBC Network Africa as the best dressed man in Nigeria, Akinyele worked as the image maker of a military government experimenting a very unfavorable Structural Adjustment Programme[i]. Akinyele…
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Goodluck Azikiwe Ebele Jonathan; President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2010-2015. Following a controversial “doctrine of necessity” by the Senate on February 9, 2010 Jonathan first assumed a new role as Acting President. On May 5, 2010 when President Yar’Adua was pronounced dead, he resumed office as President. Jonathan went on to stand for the 2011…
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Adisa Meredith Akinloye, born in 1913, was among people who were held as suspects in the alleged coup plot of 1995. Akinloye was a lawyer and a politician, one of the highest ranking of Ibadan chiefs, he became a minister in the Western Region government of Obafemi Awolowo in 1952 when the highest ranking Nigerian…
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Umaru Dikko; controversial politician in Nigeria and chief strategist of the National Party of Nigeria in the Second Republic, and federal minister of transport in President Shagari’s cabinet. After the 1983 coup which displaced his boss, Dikko confronted the General Buhari regime and was reported by the government press as having threatened to recruit mercenaries…
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Mike Okhai Akhigbe; the second in command in the military government that midwifed Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999. The Admiral was between 1994 and 1998 the Chief of Naval Staff and became the Chief of General Staff in 1998, during the General Abubakar’s military government. His reported suggestion against a Government of National Unity…
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Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Nigerian civil war hero and politician. Born March 5, 1943 Shehu Musa Yar’Adua was the son of an aspiring politician who later became the first minister of Lagos Affairs during the First Republic. He retired as a major-general occupying positions of the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters which made him de facto,…