NAWRED:130-Olikoye Ransome-Kuti

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti (30 December 1927 – 1 June 2003) was a paediatrician, activist, and health minister of Nigeria.^[1]

Early life and education

Reverend Israel and Funmilayo beside him, Dolu is behind and Fela in foreground, baby in arms is Beko, Olikoye is to the right

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti was born in Ijebu Ode on 30 December 1927, in present-day Ogun State, Nigeria. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a prominent political campaigner and women's rights activist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a Protestant minister and school principal, was the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers.^[2] His brother Fela would grow up to be a popular musician and a founder of Afrobeat, while another brother, Beko, would become an internationally known doctor and political activist. Ransome-Kuti attended Abeokuta Grammar School, University of Ibadan and Trinity College Dublin (1948–54).^[3]

Career

He was a house physician at General Hospital, Lagos. He was senior lecturer at the University of Lagos from 1967 to 1970 and appointed Director of child health at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos and became Head of Department of Paediatrics from 1968 to 1976. He was professor of paediatrics at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos until his retirement in 1988.^[4][5] He worked as senior house officer at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and as a locum in Hammersmith Hospital in the 1960s.

In the 1980s, he joined the government of General Ibrahim Babangida as the health minister. In 1983 along with two other Nigerians, he founded one of Nigeria's largest health focused NGOs - Society for Family Health Nigeria primarily concerned with family planning and child health services at the time. In 1986, he conveyed word of Nigeria's first AIDS case, a 14-year-old girl who had been diagnosed with HIV. He was minister until 1992, when he joined the World Health Organization as its Deputy Director-General.

He held various teaching positions, including a visiting professorship at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University's school of hygiene and public health. He wrote extensively for medical journals and publications.

He won both the Leon Bernard Foundation Prize and the Maurice Pate Award, in 1986 and in 1990 respectively.

Death

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti died on 1 June 2003. He was survived by his wife of 50 years Sonia and three children.^[5]

References

1.  

·  Shola Adenekan (June 1, 2003). "Olikoye Ransome-Kuti". United Kingdom: The Guardian. Retrieved March 1, 2015.

·  ·  "Analysis" (PDF). World Music. Archived from the original (pdf) on 2011-07-07.

·  Shola Adenekan, "Olikoye Ransome-Kuti: He Broke the Silence Surrounding HIV/Aids in Nigeria and Highlighted the Country's Plight", The New Black Magazine.

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NAWRED:129-Frederick Fasehun

Frederick Fasehun

Frederick Isiotan Fasehun (Yoruba: Frederick Isiotan Fáṣeun; 21 September 1935 – 1 December 2018) was a Nigerian medical doctor, hotel owner and leader of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC).^[1]

Education and medical career

He studied science at Blackburn College and furthered his education at Aberdeen University College of Medicine. He also studied at the Liverpool Postgraduate School after which he had a Fellowship at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1976, he studied acupuncture in China under a joint World Health Organization and United Nations Development Scholarship Program.^[1]

Politics

In 1977, he set up an Acupuncture Unit at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. He resigned in 1978 and immediately set up the Besthope Hospital and Acupuncture Centre in Lagos. The Acupuncture Centre once earned a reputation as Africa's first for the Chinese medical practice.

The OPC is Yoruba-based organization formed to actualize the annulled mandate of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, a Yoruba who won the presidential election of 12 June 1993 but was barred from office. Fasehun was imprisoned for 19 months from December 1996 to June 1998 during the military rule of Sani Abacha, only ending 18 days after Abacha's death.^[2]

He died in the intensive care unit of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos.^[3]

References

1.  

·  "Frederick Isiotan Fasehun at 77". ThisDay Live. 23 September 2012. Archived from the original on 18 April 2015. Retrieved 18 March 2015.

·  Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria. ISBN 1-891620-60-6.

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NAWRED:127-Olabisi Onabanjo

Olabisi Onabanjo

Chief Victor Olabisi Onabanjo (February 12, 1927 – April 14, 1990) was governor of Ogun State in Nigeria from October 1979 – December 1983, during the Nigerian Second Republic.^[1] He was of Ijebu extraction.^[2]

Background

Oloye Victor Olabisi Onabanjo was born in 1927 in Lagos. He was educated at Baptist Academy in Lagos and at the Regent Street Polytechnic in the United Kingdom, where he studied journalism between 1950 and 1951. He worked as a journalist for several years before becoming a full-time politician. His column Aiyekooto (a Yoruba word meaning "parrot" - a creature known in Yoruba mythology for telling the plain truth) appeared in the Daily Service and Daily Express newspapers between 1954 and 1962.^[3]

Political career

Olabisi Onabanjo was elected chairman of the Ijebu Ode Local Government Area in 1977 under the tutelage of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He was subsequently elected governor of Ogun State in October 1979 on the Unity Party of Nigeria platform.^[3] He was known as an unpretentious and plain-speaking man, and his administration of Ogun State was considered a model at the time and later.^[4]

On May the 13th, 1982, he commissioned Ogun Television.^[5] The Ogun State University, founded on the 7th of July, 1982, was renamed Olabisi Onabanjo University on May 29th, 2001, in his memory.^[6] He established the Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic. General Oladipo Diya, who became military governor in 1983, closed the school down, and it remained closed until it was re-opened after the return to democracy in 1999.^[7]

Later career

When General Muhammadu Buhari took power in a military coup, he was thrown in jail for several years.^[8] After his eventual release, he returned to journalism, publishing his Aiyekooto column in the Nigerian Tribune from 1987 to 1989. Chief Onabanjo died on April the 14th, 1990. Selected articles from his column were published in a book in 1991.^[3]

Bibliography

• Victor Olabisi Onabanjo (Edited by Felix A. Adenaike) (1991). Aiyekooto. Syndicated Communications Ltd, Ibadan. ISBN 978-31115-0-7.

References

·  West Africa. Afrimedia International. 1979. ISSN 0043-2962. Retrieved 2015-08-24.

·  "Ogun 2011: Those Who Want OGD's Job". Saturday Tribune. 21 November 2009. Archived from the original on November 25, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-17.

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