After seeing the countless threads of Beauty of so-and-so persons from so-and-so place, by posters such as Onila, i have decided to create this thread on African peoples who are not that great looking but have either achieved something, or made a positive difference to this world in which we live. you are all free to post.

let me start with:

[size=32pt]Femi Otedola[/size]




Femi Otedola (born 1967 in Epe, Lagos State) is a Nigerian businessman. He is the CEO of African Petroleum Plc, and appeared as one of only two Nigerians (alongside Aliko Dangote) to appear on the 2009 Forbes list of 793 dollar-denominated billionaires in the world, with an estimated net worth of over US$1.2 billion. Femi Otedola is the Nigerian President Chief Executive officer of Zenon Petroleum and Gas limited.

Femi Otedola is the billionaire owner of multi-billion naira indigenous oil giant Zenon. Zenon, which is directly ran by Otedola is the dominant force in diesel business among oil marketing concerns. It supplies this all important fuel used to power the generating sets of most Nigerian industries to nearly all the major manufacturing firms in the country. These include Dangote Group, Cadbury, Coca Cola, Nigerian Breweries, MTN, Unilever, Nestle, Guinness among others.

Otedola is the son of former Lagos State governor, Sir. Michael Otedola. Otedola owns one of the largest oil storage facility which he purchased for N2.8 billion. He bought hundred brand new trucks purchased for N1.3 billion to strengthen the distributive arm of his business and acquired a massive flat bottom bunker vessel with a storage capacity of 16, 000 metric tonnes of diesel for 6.8 million dollars. Zenon owns four cargo ships. He owns Atlas Shipping Agency, Swift Insurance, FO Properties Limited, FO Transport.

He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Zenon Petroleum and Gas, the company that is currently sitting at the commanding heights of the nation's diesel and kerosene business.

Otedola started Zenon few years ago and within a short time seized control of the market. Today he has become the pacesetter in the downstream sector while expanding the frontiers of competition. NNPC Group Managing Director, Engr. Funso Kupoloku acknowledged this much when he said Zenon was now the company to beat in the downstream sector.

From nowhere, Zenon is today rated among the top five companies in the country, with a huge turnover . But how did he do it many have asked? In an interview some years ago[b] he attributed his phenomenal leap to “hard-work and staying focused on what you want and going all out to get it."[/b]

He exhibited patriotic sentiments in the same interview when he said: "We are investing our money here, to create job opportunities for people. Nobody is going to take the money outside the country."

His company appeared to have fully prepared itself for the deregulation of the petroleum sector as evidenced in its purchases. Buying three cargo ships in quick succession to bring its total number of ships to four. All named after his parents and wife. MT Sir Michael (his father), MT Lady Doja (his mother), MT Nana (his wife). His latest, he named Zenon Conquest. Energy experts say Zenon's expansion is to consolidate its competitive edge in the market.

Apart from being the biggest diesel and kerosene marketer in Nigeria today, he is said to be the biggest ship owner in the country. Which partly explains his nomination as President of Nigeria Chambers of Shipping, a powerful and highly influential body in the maritime sector. The oil baron and shipping magnate also bought 100 brand new DAF trucks from Netherlands to strengthen his distribution arm. Zenon now boasts of a total storage capacity of more than 147,000 metric tonnes total holding of diesel making it the biggest depot owner with the largest single storage capacity in the country.

He is also the owner of Atlas Shipping Agency, Swift Insurance, FO Properties Limited, FO Transport and Seaforce Shipping Company Ltd. His appointment last year into the board of Nigeria Investment and Promotion Council, NIPC, observers believe, is the President’s vote of confidence on the young man's business abilities. It is for this that he was also nominated by the President on the team of top Nigerian businessmen to go on an investment drive to South Africa They are essentially to meet and interact with the South African business community and the South African President, President Thabo Mbeki.

On his part, Otedola contributed well over N100 million to the President’s re-election expenses. And under the aegis of friends of Obasanjo and Atiku, he contributed N25 towards the rehabilitation of the National Mosque in Abuja. He was one of the co-launcher of Obasanjo Presidential Library, where donated N200 million. He is said to have direct access to the President.

Femi Oteola is happily married to Nana, with 3 daughters and one son. They all reside in London.

...and Femi Otedola counts as ugly??
You need a pair of recommended glasses!

Lolll. I don't know why you guys are anti-onila's threads. NL is not that serious. Loosen up people.

im not saying he is ugly. i am just sayig that he is normal looking, but not beautiful. (physically)

Femi doesn't seem ugly to me

slimyem: ...and Femi Otedola counts as ugly??
You need a pair of recommended glasses!

LOL That man is ugly abeg. . . .

@PAGAN

What difference? You mean the wuruwuru they do behind closed doors? i.e scandal with Farouk Lawan

You could have just left the "ugly" part out.

ok people i have changed the title. .

next comes our beloved playright & Nobel Prize (Literature) Laureate,


[size=32pt]Wole Soyinka[/size]



Professor Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, notable especially as a playwright and poet; he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first person in Africa and the diaspora to be so honoured.

Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.

Soyinka has strongly criticized many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it".During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–1998), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.


Legacy and honours

In 2011, the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located in Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme that enables writers to stay for a period of two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing.
1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds
1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge
1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United States.
1986: Nobel Prize for Literature
1986 Agip Prize for Literature
1986 Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR.
1990: Benson Medal from Royal Society of Literature
1993: Honorary doctorate, Harvard University
2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton University.[16]
2005: Conferred with the chieftaincy title of Akinlatun of Egbaland by the Alake, Oba of his Egba clan of Yorubaland. He was made a tribal aristocrat with the right to use the Yoruba title Oloye.[17]
2009: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award

Works

Plays
The Swamp Dwellers
The Lion and the Jewel
The Trials of Brother Jero
A Dance of the Forests
The Strong Breed
Before the Blackout
Kongi's Harvest
The Road
The Bacchae of Euripides
Madmen and Specialists
Camwood on the Leaves
Jero's Metamorphosis
Death and the King's Horseman
Opera Wonyosi
Requiem for a Futurologist
A Play of Giants
A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
The Beatification of Area Boy
King Baabu
Etiki Revu Wetin
Sixty Six (short piece)[18]

Novels
The Interpreters
Season of Anomie

Memoirs
The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971)
Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
Isara: A Voyage around Essay (1990)
Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65 (1994)
You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)

Poetry collections
A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison)
Idanre and other poems
Mandela's Earth and other poems
Ogun Abibiman
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known
Abiku
The Ballad of the Landlord
After the Deluge
Prisonnettes
Telephone Conversation

Essays
Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition
Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture
Myth, Literature and the African World
From Drama and the African World View
The Burden of Memory - The Muse of Forgiveness
The Credo of Being and Nothingness
A Climate of Fear

Movies
Kongi's Harvest
Culture in Transition
Blues for a Prodigal

Pagan, [size=5pt]you be gay[/size] how did you arrive on this decision?

this PAGAN is confused...
Why not just make the title 'People of Africa that have made a difference'?
Of what importance is the 'not that goodlooking/normal' phrase in this case?
Why the emphasis on their facial features?

ok ok i am changing!

Lmao @ PAGAN changing the topic multiple times to satisfy his critics

Ileke-IdI:
Lmao @ PAGAN changing the topic multiple times to satisfy his critics

i dey tire oo

Add Fela (his contribution in music) and Chinua Achebe.

How is femi otedola ugly?

Not looking arab means you're ugly?

stillwater: Add Fela (his contribution in music) and Chinua Achebe.

yes Fela was my next plan.i dont know who is Chinua Abeche but i just read a brief about him. his parent were converts to christianity. what is noticed is that many of our great writers, including Wole Soyinka, have orthodox xtian parents, but the writers themselves lean towards their Traditional Religion. he was also supporter of Biafra.

Thanks OP for the thread. I am too lazy unmotivated to find out so much about these people on my own. All this info in one place makes it far easier.

Nice thread !I'd say Nnamdi Azikiwe who was a great nationalist leader (inner and outer)

^yes true. Zik has certainly achieved a lot in his lifetime. .

fellis: Thanks OP for the thread. I am too lazy unmotivated to find out so much about these people on my own. All this info in one place makes it far easier.

you are welcome. .

next in line, the ONE & ONLY . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .



[size=32pt]FELA KUTI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[/size]




Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick.
Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria into a middle-class family. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a feminist activist in the anti-colonial movement and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a Protestant minister and school principal, was the first president of the Nigerian Union of Teachers. His brothers, Beko Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, both medical doctors, are well known in Nigeria. Fela was a first cousin to the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the first African to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Fela was sent to London in 1958 to study medicine but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music. While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos, playing a fusion of jazz and highlife. In 1960, Fela married his first wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he would have three children (Femi, Yeni, and Sola). In 1963, Fela moved back to Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All Stars.

In 1967, he went to Ghana to think up a new musical direction. That was when Kuti first called his music Afrobeat.[4] In 1969, Fela took the band to the United States. While there, Fela discovered the Black Power movement through Sandra Smith (now Izsadore)—a partisan of the Black Panther Party — which would heavily influence his music and political views and renamed the band Nigeria '70. Soon, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was tipped off by a promoter that Fela and his band were in the U.S. without work permits. The band then performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles that would later be released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions.


After Fela and his band returned to Nigeria, the band was renamed The Africa '70, as lyrical themes changed from love to social issues. He then formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune, a recording studio, and a home for many connected to the band that he later declared independent from the Nigerian state. Fela set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel, named the Afro-Spot and then the Afrika Shrine, where he performed regularly. Fela also changed his middle name to Anikulapo (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch", stating that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name. The recordings continued, and the music became more politically motivated.[citation needed]

Fela's music became very popular among the Nigerian public and Africans in general. In fact, he made the decision to sing in Pidgin English so that his music could be enjoyed by individuals all over Africa, where the local languages spoken are very diverse and numerous. As popular as Fela's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was also very unpopular with the ruling government, and raids on the Kalakuta Republic were frequent. During 1972, Ginger Baker recorded Stratavarious with Fela appearing alongside Bobby Gass. Around this time, Kuti was becoming more involved in Yoruba religion. (Note: even in this case, he was born to orthodox christian parents but his leaning was towards Traditional Religion).

In 1977, Fela and the Afrika '70 released the album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the zombie metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The album was a smash hit and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo's residence, and to write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier", referencing the official inquiry that claimed the commune had been destroyed by an unknown soldier.

Fela and his band then took residence in Crossroads Hotel as the Shrine had been destroyed along with his commune. In 1978, Fela married twenty-seven women, many of whom were his dancers, composers, and singers to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic. Later, he was to adopt a rotation system of keeping only twelve simultaneous wives. The year was also marked by two notorious concerts, the first in Accra in which riots broke out during the song "Zombie", which led to Fela being banned from entering Ghana. The second was at the Berlin Jazz Festival after which most of Fela's musicians deserted him, due to rumors that Fela was planning to use the entire proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.

Despite the massive setbacks, Fela was determined to come back. He formed his own political party, which he called Movement of the People. In 1979, he put himself forward for President in Nigeria's first elections for more than a decade, but his candidature was refused. At this time, Fela created a new band called Egypt '80 and continued to record albums and tour the country. He further infuriated the political establishment by dropping the names of ITT vice-president Moshood Abiola and then General Olusegun Obasanjo at the end of a hot-selling 25-minute political screed titled "I.T.T. (International Thief-Thief)".


In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari's government, of which Kuti was a vocal opponent, jailed him on a charge of currency smuggling which Amnesty International and others denounced as politically motivated. Amnesty designated him a prisoner of conscience, and his case was also taken up by other human rights groups. After 20 months, he was released from prison by General Ibrahim Babangida. On his release he divorced his twelve remaining wives, saying that "marriage brings jealousy and selfishness".

Once again, Fela continued to release albums with Egypt '80, made a number of successful tours of the United States and Europe and also continued to be politically active. In 1986, Fela performed in Giants Stadium in New Jersey as part of the Amnesty International A Conspiracy of Hope concert, sharing the bill with Bono, Carlos Santana, and The Neville Brothers. In 1989, Fela and Egypt '80 released the anti-apartheid Beasts of No Nation album that depicts on its cover U.S. President Ronald Reagan, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and South African Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha.

His album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. In 1993, he and four members of the Afrika '70 organization were arrested for murder. The battle against military corruption in Nigeria was taking its toll, especially during the rise of dictator Sani Abacha. Rumors were also spreading that he was suffering from an illness for which he was refusing treatment.

On 3 August 1997, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, already a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, stunned the nation by announcing his younger brother's death a day earlier from Kaposi's sarcoma which was brought on by AIDS. More than a million people attended Fela's funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound. A new Africa Shrine has opened since Fela's death in a different section of Lagos under the supervision of his son Femi Kuti.


As a supporter of traditional religions and lifestyles, Kuti thought that the most important thing for Africans to fight is European cultural imperialism.

some pictures of Fela Kuti:


[img]http://tinkjewellery.files./2011/08/fela-kuti-ses-756625.jpg[/img]













[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91gSCuO+3yL._SL290_.jpg[/img]

Ngozi Okonjo Iweala a nigerian economist ,former vice president and corporate secretary of the World bank
Finance minister of nigeria[img][/img]

Kenneth (ken) Dike a great nigerian historian who accomplished a lot in his life as well

I like Fela's pictures. Lovely. As per thread, I think Pagan lost the plot along the line. Haha