Category: History
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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,…
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Muhammadu Dildto Yusuf or MD Yusuf; was the only Nigerian politician who established his own political party to challenge a military self-succession agenda. He served as Inspector General of Police from 1976 to 1979. Yusuf was chairman of Nigeria LNG in 1994 when a consortium led by Halliburton was bidding for a contract to construct…
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IKOKU Samuel Goomsu; Socialist and first republic opposition leader in the Eastern House of Assembly. Samuel Goomsu Ikoku, together with intellectuals like Rotimi Williams, Anthony Enahoro, and J.S. Tarka formed the radical wing of the Action Group party which on the mandate of Obafemi Awolowo, sought to remove the ethnic colouration which it wore and…
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NZEOGWU Chukwuma Kaduna, Soldier and masterminder of the January 16 1966 coup which led to the dissolution of Nigeria’s First Republic, hence ushering in a military rule. No one except Nzeogwu, said the first republic legislator, Mbadiwe, thought it possible before this time[1]. Brash and naïve, Chukwuma showed good judgment on occasions, but it was…
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MBADIWE Kinsley Ozuomba; One of the fathers of independent Nigeria, who as leader of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon NCNC in the nation’s first House of Representatives, joined forces with the Northern People’s Congress NPC to create the office of the Prime Minister, an action leading up to Nigeria’s independence. Mbadiwe was second…
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MAJEKODUNMI Moses Adekoyejo, State of Emergency era Administrator of the Western region of Nigeria. Under him, Awolowo, reported by the police as having large meetings which they feared might get out of hands was restricted to an inn in Lekki, and to create a balance, Akintola was sent to Olokomeji. His conviction, however, was that…
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Margaret Ekpo; first Nigerian woman to be elected a Member of Parliament in 1961. She contested on the platform of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, and won a seat to the Eastern House of Assembly. As a member of the House, Ekpo was elected as part of the delegation to the constitutional conference…
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Remi Fani-Kayode; Deputy Premier of Nigeria’s Western Region from 1962-67. He attained this second position to the premier when an alliance was formed between members of the National Council of Nigeria Citizens (NCNC), (his party), and dissidents from the Action Group (United People Party – UPP – that had S. L. Akintola. Before this time…
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Ernest Sessi Ikoli, Nigerian first generation politician and journalist who gained a reputation in the 1920s as a colorful nationalist was born in 1893 at Brass, now part of Rivers State. The foray of this cerebral Ijaw man into newspaper publishing after the First World War would provide the energy and the participation that was…