Category: History – Social
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Stephen Osadebe Osita; musician credited with contributions to the growth and development of highife as well as re-inventing the music. Osadebe was the first highlife musician to bring in a Cuban sound, mixing it with meringue and rumba. By so doing, Osadebe kept his style of highlife totally different from other higlife musicians. His music…
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In 1973, crops failed and pastures dried up over large expanses of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, Chad, the Northern States of Nigeria, and parts of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Dahomey. Millions of the cattle who form the livelihood of those countries’ peoples died or were in danger of death. Human lives were…
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Omafume Onoge; was one of the never say die radical intellectuals that had incessantly pummelled the reactionary state apparatus that miitary Head of State, Yakwubu Gowon had attempted to plant on Nigeria. He is remembered for the various demonstrations of the Nigerian students demanding democratic reforms of the polity. From 1973 and until the Gowon…
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Azikiwe Uche; Lecturer, administrator and wife of Nigeria’s first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, born on February 4, 1947 in Ogui, Enugu State. Uche schooled at Salvation Army School, Ogui, Enugu, Ajeromi Central School, Lagos, Presbyterian School, Afikpa, Ebonyi State, Queen of the Rosary Secondary School, Abakaliki and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN, Enugu State. She started…
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Sokoto Caliphate; the history of which, in the 19th Century commenced in 1804, is essentially centered on the legendary Dan Fodio and his socio-religious revolution, otherwise referred to as the Islamic Jihad or holy war of 1804. Dan Fodio formed a ruling dynasty that was established by the legendary Othman Dan Fodio who launched a…
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Ibrahim Dasuki; Sultan of Sokoto from 1988 to 1994. Dasuki mounted the throne despite stiff opposition from supporters of his cousin, Muhamadu Maccido. Like it happened in 1933, an outside power eventually decided the outcome of the contest. General Sani Abacha who despised Dasuki came to power and deposed him, drove the Sultan into exile…
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Biobaku Saburi Oladeni; Historian and one-time Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Unilag. Professor Saburi Biobaku’s special Yoruba history projects, like that of Professor Akinjobi, and of the great dramatist, Hubert Ogunde, were the products of the seminal impact of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa which Obafemi Awolowo foresightedly crafted[i]. Saburi belonged to the generation…
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Nana Olomu, born 1852 in Jakpa, was the Itsekiri chief and merchant in Palm Oil who occupied the position of the comey collector, essentially the chief tax officer, hence, Governor of the Benin River area between 1886 and 1894, the fourth Itsekiri to so occupy the position. Nana was during this revolutionary phase of Benin…
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Folayegbe Akintunde, Women activist and senior civil servant of the old Western region of Nigeria; counted among the administrative elites of the early post-colonial Nigeria. Folayegbe was the oldest daughter of a leading Christian family in Okeigbo, descendant of the old Oyo war-time settler at Ife, and Ogbomoso settler at Ibadan, who both camped in…
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Garrick Braide was the first Nigerian Christian charismatic figure whose Prophetic Movement, between the years 1914 and 1916 spearheaded a strong religious awakening in the Niger Delta. Braide was born c.1882 in humble circumstances to parents from Bakana. His father was originally Igbo, but joined one of the Bakana houses early in life. His mother…