60 Notable Heroes and Heroines that fought for Nigeria’s Independence (Concluding Part)
This October, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is marking the 60th anniversary of its independence from the British colonial masters. Kammonke Abam remembers the key actors.
Chief N. U. Ofem MBE was a leading politician and a First Class Chief in the Eastern Region House of Chiefs representing Abakaliki province. He was a prominent NCNC leader from the old Obubra Division. He was a very close ally of Dr. Azikiwe and Dr. M. I. Okpara. He was a member of the delegation to the 1957 constitutional conference on Nigeria, in London
Wenike Briggs: Wenike Opurum Briggs was a Nigerian lawyer, journalist and politician who advocated for the creation of more States in Nigeria. After starting his own weekly, The Nigerian Statesman in 1947 as its editor, he also became the secretary general of the Lagos branch of the Nigeria Youth Movement and joined the team of journalists representing the West African press who were invited by the Colonial Office for a tour of Britain. At the end of the tour, he used the opportunity to further his studies from 1951 to 1958. While Briggs was in Britain he joined the United Nigeria Committee whose members advocated for the creation of more States and becoming its secretary general. Returning to Nigeria , Wenike Briggs established his legal practice in Port Harcourt and also worked for COR(Calabar, Ogoja, Rivers) State Movement as its secretary general. He was elected parliamentary member of Degema Division in 1959, under a party in alliance with Action Group(AG) of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He was re-elected in 1964 under the platform of the United Progressive Grand Alliance(UPGA) which was an alliance of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and the AG.
Ika Ika Oqua: Ika Oqua II was the Paramount Ruler of the Qua Clan, Big Qua Town, Calabar 1951. He was a First Class Chief in the Eastern Region House of Chiefs
Musa Yar'Adua, was a teacher who later became the Minister for Lagos Affairs from 1957 to 1966 during Nigeria's First Republic. He held the chieftaincy title of the Mutawallin Katsina (keeper of the treasury).
Chief Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi C.F.R, C.M.G was a gynaecologist and obstetrician. He was also Minister of Health in the Nigerian First Republic.He was elected into the Nigerian Senate in 1960. He was appointed sole administrator of Western Region in June 1962 after a political crisis in the region, holding office in place of the Premier Samuel Akintola until December that year.
Jacob Obande was a Nigerian businessman from the old Northern region. He was a minister of state in charge of the Nigerian Army during the Nigerian First Republic. In 1959, he was the parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa.
Zanna Bukar Dipcharima was a Nigerian politician who was active during the Nigerian First Republic, he was a member of the House of Representatives and later appointed a Minister in the administration of Tafawa Balewa.[1] He was a former Minister of Commerce and Industry and also of Transport. As Federal Minister of Commerce and Industry, he traveled to U.S in the fall of 1963 to seek American commercial interests in the development of manufacturing in Nigeria, a move if successful will reduce the influence of deeply entrenched British firms in the economy. While there, he informed interested firms a promise of absence of racial antagonism and a tax holiday.
Chief Shafi Lawal Edu (1911–2002), popularly known as S.L. Edu, was a prominent Nigerian businessman and conservationist from Epe, Lagos State. He was the founder of the Nigerian Conservation Fund, a Nigerian NGO involved in conservation projects and was a former member of the council of the World Wildlife Fund. During the pre-independence period, Edu was sympathetic to the Nigerian Youth Movementas a supporter of Jubril Martin, one of the party's candidate in the 1943 election. He was elected into the Western House of Assembly in 1951 and was later nominated to represent Epe at the Federal House of Representatives.
Muhammadu Inuwa Wada was a parliamentarian and minister of Works and Survey under the administration of Tafawa Balewa.[1] He was a veteran parliamentarian towards the end of the Nigerian first republic and was given the Defense portfolio in 1965 after the death of Muhammadu Ribadu. He was first elected in 1951 as a member of the Northern House of Assembly, he was subsequently nominated to the Federal House of Representatives and was a member and later minister from 1951-1966. Inuwa Wada was known by many as a quiet figure in contrast to the hectic demands of his ministerial portfolio in the Works department which was going through a period of increased focus on major developmental projects as part of a six-year plan during the early 1960s.
Alhaji Waziri Kolo Ibrahim was a Kanuri business man from Borno State, Nigeria, who became a prominent politician and party leader during the Nigerian Second Republic. Waziri was initially a member of NEPU, he organized the Damaturu branch of the association in 1950 and was the branch chairman in 1951. However, towards the end of the 1950s, Waziri joined NPC and was appointed the Federal Minister of Health in 1958. In 1960, he was part of the Nigerian delegation to the United Nation's when the country was accepted as the 99th member of the organization. He was one of the original founders and financiers of the Nigerian People's Party, but in 1978 left the party to form the Great Nigeria People's Party (GNPP). As a candidate of the GNPP, he won almost 10% of the national vote in the Nigerian presidential elections of 1979
Mbazulike Amaechi, popularly known as “The Boy Is Good” in political circles was a First Republic Minister of Aviation. He join the Zikist movement while he was still a secondary school student. He was a vibrant trade unionist for many years and held full –time offices in unions from 1949 to 1955. As a trade unionist, he demonstrated extreme boldness and spirit of sacrifice. As a member of the Zikist movement, Mbazulike Amechi together with other members took an oath never to marry until Nigeria regained her independence. Also as members of the Zikist movement, they took another oath that “no Zikist arraigned before any court should make any plea of leniency or show any sign of regret for fighting for the freedom of the nation”. Mbazulike Amechi was later elected on NCNC ticket as a member of the House of Representatives in 1959 and was appointed Minister of Aviation and Transport in 1962 and remained a Minister until the first military coup in 15th January 1966 . He was victimized; jailed, maimed, wounded, mercilessly beaten but his spirit was never dampened or his patriotic spirit dulled. He and others lost many things in the process of ensuring that Nigeria gained her independence.
Raymond Amanze Njoku was a politician and former minister for Transport. Njoku returned to Nigeria and was a successful lawyer in Aba, Eastern Nigeria, 1949–1954. He was president of Igbo State Union of Nigeria in succession to Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe; Vice President NCNC (National Council of Nigeria & the Cameroon), and also served the Aba community as the leader of the Aba Community League of the Ibo State Union. He contested for a regional seat in 1951, but was unsuccessful. However, in 1954, he was elected to the Federal House of Representative. He was appointed cabinet minister: Commerce & Industry, Transport & Aviation 1954- 1966. The final and definitive motion for Nigerian Independence on 1 October 1960 was moved by Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and endorsed by his cabinet colleague Raymond Njoku, minister of Trade & Industry.
T. O. S. Elias: Taslim Olawale Elias was a Nigerian jurist. He was Attorney-General and Chief Justice of Nigeria and a judge and President of the International Court of Justice. He was a scholar who modernised and extensively revised the laws of Nigeria. Elias moved from Manchester to Oxford in 1954 when he became the Oppenheimer Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Nuffield College and Queen Elizabeth House[citation needed]. He continued his research into Nigerian law and published Groundwork of Nigerian Law in the same year. In 1956 he was visiting the professor of political science at the University of Delhi. He returned to London in 1957 and was appointed a Governor of the School of Oriental and African Studies. As the constitutional and legal adviser to the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (which later became the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens), he participated in the 1958 Nigerian Constitutional Conference in London. He was one of the architects of Nigeria's independence constitution. In 1960 Elias was invited to become Nigeria's Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.[4] He served in this capacity through the whole of the first republic.
H.O. Davies, as Hezekiah Oladipo Davies, is popularly known, was a nationalist and lawyer, whose contribution to the Nigerian nation was momentous. He was prominent in the emerging trade union in the country and fought colonial administration through legal protests. He was the Secretary-General of the Lagos Youth Movement, which later transformed in the Nigeria Youth Movement (NYM). The NYM was a political association that became a thorn in the flesh of colonial government. He left the association in 1951 and formed his own political party, the Nigerian Peoples’ Congress (NPC). He later joined the NCNC, where he and his co-travellers impacted in the polity of the country. A successful lawyer, he was honoured by the Queen of England for his distinction.
J. M. Johnson: He was born in Lagos, and was educated at the William Wilberforce Academy. After a brief stint in the Nigerian Army during World War II, he returned to civil life after the war's end and was a bank clerk, and a radio broadcaster for a few years. From 1948, he tried his hands in business and politics and was elected into the Ibadan District Council the same year and later became the first and only ever non-indigene to serve as the Chairman of the Council. In 1956 he became a Nigerian federal cabinet minister and served in internal affairs, later in labour and social welfare and sports, acting twice as Prime Minister in the coalition Government.
Yusuf Maitama Sule was a politician, diplomat, and elderly statesman. In 1955-1956 he was the chief whip of the Federal House of Representatives. In 1960 he led the Nigerian delegation to the Conference of Independent African States. In 1976, he became the Federal Commissioner of public complaints, a position that made him the nation's pioneer ombudsman. In early 1979, he was the presidential candidate of the National Party of Nigeria but lost to Shehu Shagari. He was appointed Nigeria's representative to the United Nations after the coming of civilian rule in September 1979. While there he was chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid.
Shehu Shagari: An experienced politician, he briefly worked as a teacher before entering politics in 1951; and was elected into the House of Representatives in 1954. At various times between 1958 through independence of Nigeria in 1960 and 1975, he held a cabinet post as federal minister. In 1954, Shehu Shagari was elected into his first public office as a member of the federal House of Representative for Sokoto west. In 1958, Shagari was appointed as parliamentary secretary (he left the post in 1959) to the Nigerian Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and that year he also served as the Federal Minister for Commerce and Industries. From 1959 to 1960, Shagari was the pioneer Federal Minister for Economic Development of independent Nigeria where his Ministry was responsible for drawing the 1962-1968 development plan.
Olu Akinfosile was a politician from Okitipupa who was Federal minister of Communications during the nation's first republic. He attended the ancient Baptist Academy, Lagos and later earned degrees at North Western polytechnic, London and the University of London. He worked with the United African Company as a Labour and staff assistant; in 1946 he became an assistant federal secretary of the Nigerian Union of Students, and was on the position for three years. A decade later, he became the president of the Nigerian Union of Great Britain and Ireland. He started active political participation in Nigeria in 1959 when he was elected into the House of Representatives.
Chief Theophilus Owolabi Shobowale Benson commonly known as T.O.S. Benson, was a lawyer who became one of the most prominent Yoruba politicians in the period leading up to Nigerian independence in 1960. He served as the Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Culture in the first post-independence government. In 1950 Benson was elected to the Lagos Town Council, and later became the Deputy Mayor of Lagos. In the 1951 election Benson was chosen as one of the NCNC candidates for the five Lagos seats in the Western House of Assembly. Benson became a national officer in the NCNC. Benson was a participant in the constitutional conferences in London in 1953, 1957, 1958 and 1960 that led up to Nigeria's independence in 1960. He was elected to various positions on the NCNC platform between 1950 and 1959. He accompanied Nnamdi Azikiwe, Premier of Eastern Nigeria and President of the NCNC, to London for the Nigeria Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House.
Adeniran Ogunsanya Adeniran Ogunsanya, QC, SAN was a lawyer and politician. He was among the chief-founders of the Ibadan Peoples Party (IPP). He served as a Lagos State commissioner for Justice and Education and during the Second Republic, he was chairman of the Nigerian People's Party. In the mid 1950s, Adeniran served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons. He was the President of NCNC Youth Association and in 1959, he became a member of the parliament representing Ikeja and Mushin. He held various executive positions within his party and in local governance in Lagos. In the NCNC, he was a one-time chairman of the Lagos State executive working committee and NCNC zonal leader for colony province and later secretary of the NCNC parliamentary council.
Chief Augustus Meredith Adisa Akinloye popularly known as A.M.A, was a lawyer and politician. Akinloye was instrumental to the formation of the first ever political party in Ibadan called Ibadan Peoples Party (IPP) which he served as its president, with Adegoke Adelabu as his deputy. His IPP party later merged with the Action Group, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to form the first government in the Western Region of Nigeria, in which Akinloye was appointed the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources. During the Western Region crisis in the early 1960s, he left the Action Group for Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola's newly formed Nigerian National Democratic Party and served in the cabinet led by the then Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Akinloye was the Chairman of the then-largest political party in Africa, the National Party of Nigeria.
PRINCE ADELEKE ADEDOYIN BL., OFR is the First Elected Speaker of the Western Region House of Assembly. In the 1940s and 1950s he figured very prominently in the Lagos local politics. In 1945, he was elected Lagos member of the legislative council under the umbrella of the Late Herbert Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party and also in 1947 under the auspices of the national Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC). The same year he was also elected member of the Lagos Town Council. He was a member and Secretary of the 1947 NCNC 7-man delegation to London that met with the British secretary of State, Rt Hon. Arthur Creech Jones to demand greater participation of Nigerians in running their affairs and self-government for Nigeria. Other member of the delegation included, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Zana Dipcharima, ibiyinka Olorunimbe and Nyong Essien. He was a member of the United Front Committee that eradicated colour discrimination after the hotel Bristol incident, Sir Adeyemo Alakija was the Chairman. In 1952 Prince Adeleke Adedoyin he was elected member of the Western House of Assembly and the same year he was elected member of the federal House of Representatives. In 1957, he was back again as an elected member of the Western Region of Nigeria House of Assembly where he was elected the Speaker which office he held till 1964.
Muhammadu Inuwa Wada (c. 1917 – November 25, 2015) was a parliamentarian and minister of Works and Survey under the administration of Tafawa Balewa. He was a veteran parliamentarian towards the end of the Nigerian first republic and was given the Defense portfolio in 1965 after the death of Muhammadu Ribadu. He was first elected in 1951 as a member of the Northern House of Assembly, he was subsequently nominated to the Federal House of Representatives and was a member and later minister from 1951-1966. Inuwa Wada was known by many as a quiet figure in contrast to the hectic demands of his ministerial portfolio in the Works department which was going through a period of increased focus on major developmental projects as part of a six-year plan during the early 1960s.
Chief Ayotunde Rosiji was a Nigerian politician and statesman, who served as Minister for Health and Minister of Information. He subsequently studied law at the University of London after working at Shell as an engineer. Returning to Nigeria, he became one of the founding members of the Action Group.
Aminu Kano was a Muslim politician from Nigeria. In the 1940s he led a socialist movement in the northern part of the country in opposition to British rule. In 1959, won the Kano East federal seat as a candidate of NEPU, which was already in alliance with the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons. While in the Federal House of Representative, he was a deputy Chief Whip
Muhammadu Ribadu was a politician, who was the first Minister of Defence of Nigerian after independence
Sir Louis Ojukwu was a super successful businessman and politician. During the period of pre-independence and in the First Republic, Ojukwu was an active member and donor to the political party, NCNC. He was a one-time member of the House of Representative. In 1958, he was chairman of the Eastern Region Development Corporation and the Eastern Regional Marketing Board.[4] On May 1, 1953, he was appointed head of an NCNC peace committee and given power to choose most of the committee's members.
Chief Michael Ani was one of the pioneer Nigerian public servants who worked tirelessly for Nigeria independence. Not many people know of his close working relationship with the colonial administrators in Nigeria. While the likes of Zik, Eyo Ita, Okoi Arikpo and Awo were in the “trenches”, he was working within the system to smoothen things for his fellow compatriots. This was largely because as a civil servant, he could not directly participate in partisan politics. He later was appointed the chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) established by General Olusegun Obasanjo to conduct elections leading to the Nigerian Second Republic, which was inaugurated on 1 October 1979. He held office from 1976 to 1979
David Obadiah Lot was a religious leader from Benue State. He joined the political scene in 1940 to secure better political bargain for Nigeria. In 1946, he was part of the Nigerian delegation to London for a constitutional conference. He used the Middle Belt Zone League (MLL) to pursue his dream of a better Nigeria. He was elected into the House of Representatives. Being a teacher, he groomed ardent followers who were sympathetic to the Middle Belt cause. He was equally vocal in the creation of separate state for the region in the Nigerian composition.