This thread is dedicated in memory of Nigerian men and men who achieved greatness and made a difference in their various fields
Some may not be well known in today's Nigeria
I dedicate this to them all

Please tell us of any you know about.

From my earliest recollection in elementary school,there was always a mention of his name Chike Obi
His name was synonymous with Mathematics in Nigeria and as a kid,I thought he was already dead
Professor Chike Obi deserves a place in the Nigerian history.

[size=18pt]Chike Obi (1921-2008).[/size]



ON Thursday, March 13, 2008, Prof. Chike Obi, the first Nigerian to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Degree in Mathematics, passed on. He was aged 87. While he lived, he acquired international renown as a consummate mathematician, a maverick politician, an international scholar and a passionate patriot. He, along with Adegoke Olubunmo, the late first Professor of Mathematics and Professor James Ezeilo simplified and revolutionised Mathematics research in Nigeria. In particular, Chike Obi became a role model and an inspirational figure for younger persons who developed interest in the study of Mathematics.




Prof. Chike Obi was born in Zaria (now in Kaduna State) on Thursday, April 7, 1921. He attended St. Patrick’s Primary School, Zaria (1933) Christ the King College, Onitsha (1935-39); Yaba Higher College, Lagos (1940-42); University of London, as an external student (1941-46); University College, London (1947); Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, England (1947-50), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA (1950). His consuming interest in Mathematics, a subject that many a student considered difficult was simply legendary. He exhibited extraordinary versatility in all areas of Mathematics, including pure and applied Mathematics, although his area of special focus was Non-Linear Differential Equation of the Second Order.




It was in this seemingly unnavigable labyrinth of Mathematics that Chike Obi, who became a world-acclaimed mathematical virtuoso, gave scientific proof to a 361-year old mathematical puzzle known then as Fermat’s Last Theorem, named after the 17th century French mathematician, Pierre de Fermat: This theorem stated that “xn + yn = zn; where x, y, z and n are positive integers and has no solution if n is greater than two”. For over three centuries, Western mathematicians strained at this theorem until 1994, when they solved it, with the aid of modern technological gadgets, such as the computer.




Soon thereafter, however, Chike Obi, relying only on his fertile brain, presented in 1998 an elementary proof of the arcane Fermat’s Theorem which had been described as one of the most famous problems in Numbers Theory. A Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science, the late Chike Obi won laurels, including the Ecklund Prize from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics for original works in Differential Equations and for pioneering works in Mathematics in Africa.




He started his career as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, University of Ibadan, 1959-62. He became an Associate Professor, University of Lagos (UNILAG) in 1970, and a full Professor (of Mathematics) of the same university, a year later. From 1971-73, he was Dean of the School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences of UNILAG, and Chairman, Department of Mathematics, UNILAG, from 1971-77. From 1981-82, he was acting Dean, Faculty of Science of the University, and in 1985, he became Emeritus Professor of the University.



In 1986, this illustrious polymath won the University of Lagos Silver Jubilee Anniversary Gold Medal Award. At various times, he was visiting Professor to the Universities of Jos, Rhode Island and the Mathematics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science. The late Prof. Chike Obi was a man of many parts. His incursion into the arena of politics was no less significant than his accomplishments as a teacher of Mathematics. In the days when it was almost a crime for an Easterner to belong to another political party other than the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), the late Chike Obi veered away from “custom” to found the defunct Dynamic Party, which simultaneously won seats both in the Federal House of Representatives and in the Eastern House of Assembly (1960). When, in 1961, he won election to the Eastern House of Assembly, he refused to vacate his seat in the Federal Legislature, whereupon the Speaker of the House ordered that he be physically carried out of the House. This order was obeyed, and he proceeded to the Eastern House of Assembly, where he served till 1966.




A maverick politician, the late Prof. Chike Obi was a man of great conviction. He was passionate about the politics of Nigeria, and the country’s development process. He was an adherent of Kemalism, an ideology based on the teachings and beliefs of Mustapha Kemal Ataturk (1880-1938), the putative father of modern Turkey. Ataturk sought to create a secular nation-state based on the principles of Republican democracy, social revolution, rule of law, and nationalism. Prof. Chike Obi shunned tribal politics and kept religious fanaticism at an arm’s length.




He, however, was such a “fanatical” believer in one Nigeria that he christened his two sons Balogun Chike Obi and Mustapha Chike Obi, thereby building nominal bridges to link the West, the North and the East. Father also to many great mathematicians, the late Prof. Chike Obi established the Nnana Institute for Scientific Studies, located in Onitsha, Anambra State, to encourage research efforts, among other things, into mathematical theorems and “to bring about a scientific technological revolution in Nigeria”.




In appreciation of his laudable services to humankind, particularly in the realms of Mathematics, for which he became world famous, and politics, in which his positive non-conformism was generally acknowledged, the late Prof. Chike Obi was honoured with garlands of national and international awards, including, Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), and the Sigvard Ecklund Prize of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (1986). In Onitsha, his native community, he was a highly regarded member of the Agbalanze society He was also a distinguished member of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria, and author of Our Struggle, sub-titled “A Political Analysis of the Problems of Peoples Struggling for True Freedom” Part I (1986) and Our Struggle, Part II (1962).




Additionally, he had numerous publications on Non-Linear Differential Equations in both national and international journals to his credit. Survived by a widow, Melinda, herself a Mathematician and midwife of note, and four children, the late Prof. Chike Obi was a martinet, a stern disciplinarian, and an optimist who insisted that all equations must be equal.

Following....

Anyone who has read me know the men I consider heroes in Nigeria and this next man is certainly in the top 3
[size=18pt]late Gani Fawehinmi[/size]
IMHO this is the best President Nigeria never had
This man stood for all things nice
He was a voice forthe downtrodden
He stood against injustice
He spoke against corruption
He defended the defenseless
They imprisoned him but he could not be silenced
Nigeria may never have a lawyer like this again,ever.

I still remember where I was in 2009 when it was announced that he had passed on
Besides his service for humanity in general,he also touched me personally
A close family member of mine graduated medical school on Gani's scholarship and I am grateful to him
Thank you and sleep well sir

BRB with a full write up


Chief Abdul-Ganiyu "Gani" Oyesola Fawehinmi (SAN)

Gani Fawehinmi was born on April 22, 1938 into the prominent Tugbolo Fawehinmi family in Ondo. His father, a timber magnate, was fully responsible for his education and welfare. His hope of becoming a lawyer was almost dashed when he lost his father while he was a law student in London. All efforts to raise a loan to enable him to complete his university education proved abortive. So he had to fend for himself.


Although he eventually succeeded in becoming a lawyer, Gani decided to dedicate his entire life to struggle for the establishment of a society where every needy child would be educated at the expense of the State. Chief Fawehinmi and his estates have given scholarship to many indigent undergraduates on an annual basis since 1976.


Having identified law as a tool of oppression in the hands of the ruling class Gani provided legal services, on pro bono publico basis, to thousands of workers, students and other victims of social injustice, abuse of power and oppression.


Gani made most of his money from publishing the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports (NWLR). Before his revolutionary intervention in law reporting only a handful of privileged lawyers who had access to cyclostyled copies of the judgments of the appellate courts were winning cases in our Courts. Chief Fawehinmi sent his lawyers to courts around the country to obtain such judgments but decided to popularise legal knowledge by embarking on regular publication of law reports.

Upon the completion of his legal education in London Gani returned home and was called to the Nigerian Bar in January 1965. Barely a year later, the first republic was sacked by the armed forces. The Constitution was suspended while draconian decrees were imposed on the Nigerian people. In 1969, he took up the case of a factory worker whose wife had been snatched by a powerful permanent secretary in the service of the Benue Plateau State Government. Not withstanding that he was a rookie lawyer, he defeated the late Chief Rotimi Williams, QC, who was the counsel to the permanent secretary.


For daring to challenge the corrupt establishment the Yakubu Gowon regime arrested and detained him without trial for several months. Instead of cowing him into submission, the brutal experience strengthened him as Gani resolved to wage a decisive battle against injustice in all its ramifications.

For instance, in the Garba v. University of Maiduguri (1986) 2 NWLR (PT 18 ) 559, the fundamental right of students to fair hearing before rustication or expulsion was upheld.

The injustice in the Legal Practitioners Act which made the Attorney-General of the Federation the accuser and the prosecutor with respect to allegations of misconduct involving lawyers was highlighted by the Supreme Court in the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee v. Fawehinmi (1985) 3 NWLR (PT 7) 300. The decision led to the amendment of the Act.

The dismissal of the case of Fawehinmi v. Nigerian Bar Association (1989) 2 NWLR (PT 107) 558 by the Supreme Court on the ground that the respondent was not a juristic personality led to the registration of the Nigerian Bar Association under the Companies and Allied Matters Act.

In Balarabe Musa v. INEC (2003) 10 WRN 1, the political space was liberalised when the Supreme Court struck down the stringent conditionalities imposed by INEC on new political parties.

In Fawehinmi v. Akilu (1987) 2 NWLR (PT 67) 767 the Supreme Court relaxed the anachronistic doctrine of locus standi so as to permit the private prosecution of criminal offences by concerned individuals on the ground that “we are all our brothers’ keepers”.

Since the Attorney-General of the Federation has never sued the Federal Government as a defender of public interest, the locus standi of Gani to challenge the violations of the Constitution and other illegalities was upheld in the case of Fawehinmi v. The President (2007) 14 NWLR (PT 1054) 275.

In Abacha v. Fawehinmi (2001) 51 WRN 29 the Supreme Court held that since the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights has been domesticated by the National Assembly, our domestic courts have the jurisdiction to construe and apply its provisions whenever there are allegations of human rights infringement.

In Fawehinmi v. Inspector-General of Police (2002) 23 WRN 1 it was declared by the Supreme Court that the public officers covered by the immunity clause in Section 308 of the Constitution can be investigated while in office.

However, one of Gani’s post-humous rewards for his contribution to the legal system in Nigeria is the enactment of the Fundamental Procedure Rules 2009. Under the new human rights regime in Nigeria, concerned individuals and public spirited organizations can now file actions in courts challenging the violation of the human rights of other citizens.

In 1986, while Chief Gani Fawehinmi was Dele Giwa's Lawyer, the latter was killed in a bomb blast under suspicious circumstances.

Again, in 1995, Chief Fawehinmi served as counsel to Ken Saro-Wiwa when Saro-Wiwa was being tried for murder, but Fawehinmi withdrew from the case, branding the tribunal a Kangaroo court.

As a result of his activities chief Gani Fawehinmi had been arrested, detained and charged to court several times. His international passport was seized on many occasions and his residence and Chambers were searched several times. He was beaten up time after time and was deported from one part of the country to another to prevent him from being able to effectively reach out to the masses among whom he was popular. His books were confiscated by the Federal Military Government and his library at Surulere, a suburb of Lagos, were set ablaze. His law Chambers at Anthony Village, Lagos State, were invaded by persons suspected to be agents of the government. The guards were shot, two of them seriously wounded.
Gani died in the early hours of 5 September 2009 after a prolonged battle with lung cancer. He was 71 years old.

His arrests,detainments and incarcerations

* Police Headquarters, Kaduna , 1969.
* Jos Police Station, 1969
* Ilorin Police Station, 1969
* Police Headquarters, Lagos, 1969
* Police Headquarters, Lagos 1972 (twice)

* C. I. D. Alagbon, Lagos, 1978
* Inter-Centre Detention Outpost, Lagos, 1978

* Ikoyi Police Station,1978
* Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1987
* Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1988 (three times)
* Police Station Ikeja, 1988
* Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1989 (twice)
* Ikoyi Police Station, 1989
* State Security Services (SSS) Cell Maiduguri, 1989
* State Security Services (SSS) Cell Awolowo Road, Ikoyi 1991
* C. I. D. Police Station Ikoyi, 1992
* Police Station Wuse Abuja, 1992
* Inter-Centre Cell, Lagos 1993
* State Security Services (SSS) Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, 1993
* C. I. D. Police Station Ikoyi, 1993
* Police Station Wuse Abuja, 1993
* Police Headquarters, Abuja, 1993
* Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1994
* F. I. I. B. Alagbon, Ikoyi, Lagos 1994 (Once)
* Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1995 (Twice)
* State Security Services Shangisha Cell Lagos, 1995 (Once)
* State Security Service Shangisha Cell Lagos, 1996 (Once)

In all these arrests and detentions, he was treated sometimes cruelly, sometimes crudely and sometimes with some civility.

He had also been detained in the following federal prisons by various Military Governments from 1969 to 1996:

* Kaduna Prison, 1969
* Gombe Prison, 1969 - 1970
* Ikoyi Prison, 1978
* Gashua Prison, 1989
* Nigerian Prison Ikoyi, 1990
* Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1992
* Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1993 and
* Nigerian Prison, Bauchi 1996

By Ogaga Ifowodo
ON September 5, 2012, it will be three years since Gani Fawehinmi died of cancer and joined the ancestors. The void he left in our political life remains unfilled, for so large was his presence while he breathed.

The park at the Ojota area of Lagos named in his honour has since become Nigeria’s primary spot where the suffering masses gather to expose their wounds and protest their unrelieved oppression worsened by the staggering corruption of their so-called leaders.

There is no doubt that every true patriot, every lover of freedom, democracy and good governance, mourns still the untimely departure of Fawehinmi. On September 8, 2009, a slightly different version of the following tribute appeared in the defunct NEXT newspaper. I also republish it here in the light of the declining influence of lawyers and the Nigeria Bar Association in our public life.

The office of Master of the Rolls does not exist in Nigeria. And even if, given our stunning lack of self-belief, we had also copied that most British aspect of the administration of justice, the post could not have been held by Gani.

Why then do I permit myself this allusion? Because I first “knew” Gani while a freshman law student. As virtually every Nigerian law student will testify, the late Lord Alfred Denning, Master of the Rolls, added something exhilarating to the rather staid and predictable study of law.

And he personified the office in a way no predecessor or successor did. Denning’s many astounding, even if occasionally controversial, decisions had unprecedented impacts on the development of the common law.

A man of great erudition, his writing style, more flexibly literary than rigidly legalistic, was cultivated for the purpose of simplifying the law in homage to the great dictum, Ubi jus, ibi remedium: for every wrong, the law provides a remedy. So dedicated to this principle, whether the plaintiff be a smug citizen or a harried immigrant, was he that Denning often wrote the dissenting opinion.

He would even abdicate his seat on the House of Lords’ appellate division just so that the plaintiff might have one more chance of obtaining justice! Denning became known as “the people’s judge” and retired as perhaps the greatest jurist of his time. In the late Sapara Williams, Gani found the embodiment of this principle of the lawyer as the conscience of his society.

In Gani’s dogged commitment to the law as an instrument of social change, he became for me the master of the rolls, that is, keeper of the records of our travails. You could take this literally and point to his meticulous documentation of the decisions of our superior courts of record through the law publishing arm of his practice.

Every judge and lawyer, whether friend or foe, would gladly admit that without Gani’s law reports and indexes legal practice today would be a portrait straight out of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. To be sure, the courtrooms remain, by and large, owlish edifices that admit no light of day but for the illumination provided by Gani’s Weekly Law Reports and other publications.

But that is hardly the half of my meaning. The untrammelled reputation Gani enjoyed was as much a product of his forensic legal mind as of his role as the people’s plaintiff who filed countless suits to challenge the excesses of power.

Yet, though he swore by constitutional means of struggle he saw clearly that “the mountains of costly nonsense” that emanate from the courtrooms could not be expected to break the yoke of tyranny, military or civilian. In filing case upon case, then, he merely sought to bring into the court of public opinion those high crimes and malfeasances that would otherwise be protected by secrecy.

Inevitably, he embraced defiant political activism, too often in ways that alienated many natural allies, and offered his body as the notice board of the nation’s woes. In and out of prison, at certain periods more than he was in and out of the courtroom, his body bore in every tissue the whip and lash of our successive governments’ terrorism.

I speak of Gani, then, as the embodiment of the rolls of wrongs that our self-appointed leaders have unrelentingly visited on us for five decades.

I said that I first met Gani as a law student and it is on that more personal note that I wish to end this brief tribute, too brief, alas, to be just to his greatness.

In collaboration with Professor Itse Sagay, founding dean of law at the University of Benin, Gani had endowed an annual Justice Idigbe memorial lecture. Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, then still on the Supreme Court, had come to deliver the second lecture in the series.

Imagine this for a starry-eyed law student, awakening to a social consciousness that bode no peace of mind if restricted to the complacent acquisition of knowledge and who wasn’t sure his future lay in law. The cast was assembled for me, you might say. Following my subsequent involvement in the student and democracy movements, I became a regular visitor to Gani’s Anthony Village chambers.

I had managed to complete my studies, in any case, thanks to the legal precedent of fair hearing he had fought to establish on unshakable grounds in what would become the locus classicus on the subject: Garba & Ors vs University of Maiduguri.

I recall now two visits in 1992 that helped in no small measure to resolve the conflict I was undergoing as to which to make a career: law or literature? On the first, I had gone to seek Gani’s counsel and help on my return from Makurdi after completing youth service.

Counsel given, he wrote a check for N1000 to help me with the immediate need of furnishing the room Sagay had kindly given me rent free in the Boys Quarters of his chambers in Alaka Estate, Surulere. When on the second visit I presented a money-making venture that would purportedly help me to meet the costs of setting up practice, Gani chuckled and dismissed it out of hand.

Then he looked at me and said: “Ogaga, you are a writer. I believe that is your true calling, not that of going to court everyday to nod and say, My Lord this, My Lord that. I think you should follow your heart’s desire”.

I didn’t get the loan I had asked for to underwrite my business venture, but what I got was validation of a sort that every budding writer needs. And it was even more valuable because we do not think of Gani in literary terms.

If he could discern promise worth encouraging in my tenderfoot days, then I had just been handed a fatter cheque than he could have written. In this, too, Gani was a master of my personal rolls.

Sorry OP, don't wanna derail your thread, but I just have to bring that up....carry go

Nice one!

The late Chima Ubani. A fearless hero of our democracy

hima Ubani
Dedicated campaigner for Nigerian reform
Shola Adenekan

Chima Ubani, who has died in a motor accident aged 42, was a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria and a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Since 2003, he had been executive director of the country's Civil Liberties Organisation.
Born in eastern Nigeria, Ubani was the son of a Seventh Day Adventist pastor. Charismatic and intelligent, he became a student leader in the 1980s. He graduated in crop science at the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1988, and took an MA in mass communication at Leicester University in 2002. He joined the Civil Liberties Organisation in Lagos as a researcher in 1990 after completing military service.

Ubani came into his own in 1993, when the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida annulled a presidential election that was to return Nigeria to civilian rule. He helped to bring various human right organisations together under one umbrella group, the Campaign for Democracy. He also joined the campaign against oil companies in the Niger delta, supporting such activists as the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed in 1995.

In February 1994, Ubani's house and office were raided by security agents, and a report on women and children in Nigerian prisons which he had co-authored was confiscated. He went on the run, but was arrested and imprisoned in 1995, after which his case was taken up by Amnesty International.

The following year, he was released and came to Britain for medical treatment, before returning to Nigeria. After the death of General Sani Abacha in 1998, Ubani worked to ensure a return to civilian rule. But he refused to accept the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 as a genuine return to democracy, and lampooned what he saw as a corrupt government which disregarded human rights.

In July 2000, in a case he brought against the Nigerian police, he was instrumental in the abrogation of a decree that allowed state security agents to detain people indefinitely. He also campaigned against extra-judicial killings by the Nigerian police and the use of capital punishment. At the time of his death, he was campaigning against fuel increases.

He is survived by his wife, Ochuwa, and four children.

· Chima Ubani, campaigner, born March 22 1963; died September 21 2005

joeyfire: Nice one!

The late Chima Ubani. A fearless hero of our democracy

OMG
How can we forget?
Please post something on him

babyosisi:

OMG
How can we forget?
Please post something on him

Yup.just amended my post

@ babyosisi, thanks for this wonderful biography of Chike Obi. I was trying to think what relationship he has with Mustapha Chike Obi the DG of AMCON. I remember few years back on AIT when his house in anambra was shown on TV. It was a shameful thing that such a man lived in a house which was almost collapsing. I don't know if something was done to renovate his house.

Sadly, kids of nowadays don't really know much about this legend. A man who made nigeria proud should not be forgotten at all.

Ubani knew that our "return to democracy" was a scam by a handful of generals and their boys

Please make una post more heroes
I need to milk my cows

Great thread..... Certainly didn't know Mustapha was Prof Obi's son. I thought he was one of those few Igbo muslims.

The first female to grace this thread truly deserves her place in Nigerian history.
If you are a woman and believe that women should have equal rights then You should know about Margaret Ekpo
I just learned something today.
I always thought she was from Calabar.Didn't know her father was Igbo,mother was Efik and husband was Ibibio.

[size=18pt]Margaret Ekpo was a Nigerian Women’s Rights activist and social mobilizer. She was born in 1914 and died in 2006 at the age of 92.[/size]
Margaret was born in Creek Town, Cross River State to the family of Okoroafor Obiasulor and Inyang Eyo Aniemewue. Her parents are Igbo and Efik.
In 1934 after obtaining the Standard Six School Leaving Certificate, Margaret lost her father and also her dream to further her education.
She started teaching elementary pupils and met her husband John Udo Ekpo in 1938. She moved in with him in Aba after their wedding in 1938.
In 1946 Margaret Ekpo went abroad to study Domestic Science at the Rathmines School of Domestic Economics (Now DIT Aungier Street), Dublin where she earned a diploma in Domestic Science.
She later established a Domestic Science and Sewing Institute in Aba when she returned to Nigeria,
In 1945 she started attending the colonial government meetings on behalf of her husband, a medical doctor, who could not attend such meetings as a civil servant, to discuss the colonial administrators’ treatment of indigenous Nigerian doctors.
Because of this earlier exposure she later attended a political rally, where she was the only woman in attendance. Political leaders present at the rally were Mbonu Ojike, Nnamdi Azikwe, and Herbert Macaulay.
Before 1950 Margaret Ekpo organized Aba Market Women Association to unionize the market women in the city. The association promoted women solidarity to fight for women rights.
In 1950 she teamed up with Funmilayo Ransome- Kuti to protest killings of Nigerian leaders protesting colonial practices at the Enugu Coal Mine.

By 1953 she was nominated as the regional House of Chiefs by the NCNC party and in 1954, she founded the Aba Township Women Association. By 1955, women in Aba had outnumbered men voters in a city wide election as a result of her mobilization.
She won a seat into the Eastern Regional House of Assembly in 1961 after which she left active politics.
Calabar Airport; Margaret Ekpo International Airport was named after her in 2001.
In August 2012, 6 years after her death, the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced a new N5000 note, on the note is faces of three notable Nigerian women; Margaret Ekpo, Olufunmilayo Ransome- Kuti and Gambo Sabawa.

Fully subscribed

ff

Babyosisi come and give more flesh to your thread. We're interested to know who our real heroes are and not the thieves and murderers that are brandished as heroes of Nigeria.
Prof. Chike Obi check
Gani Fawehinmi(San) check
Margaret Ekpo check
Fela Anikulapo Kuti check