By Eric Teniola

Chief Eyo Ita was a leading member of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) after its foundation in 1944, and was elected to the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly in 1951on the party’s ticket. In 1948 he became the first National Vice-President of the NCNC. After elections in 1951, which the NCNC won in the Eastern Region, he became Minister for Natural Resources and Leader of Government Business for the Region. A year later there was a crisis within the NCNC, in January 1953, the nine NCNC ministers in the East resigned, but Chief Ita and five others withdrew their resignations, and stayed as ministers despite a hostile House of Assembly, until new elections in the same year installed a government under the NCNC leader, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. 

Before that, Chief Eyo Ita had formed a National Independence Party (NIP) with Dr E.U. Udoma and Jaja Wachukwu. Later in 1953 the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR) movement was founded to call for separation of the non-Ibo minorities from the Eastern Region, and Chief Ita was one of the leading figures for some years. Later his NIP joined the United National Party (UNP) of Alvan Ikoku to form the National Independence Party. 

In 1959 he announced he was leaving the COR movement, and returned to the NCNC. The “professor” as he was called, was not prominent in politics thereafter. After independence he devoted his time to developing and improving his school.

Chief Ernest Sesei Ikoli (1893-1960) was born on March 25, 1893 in Rivers State. He was the son of an illustrious merchant who traded on the coast of south-east Nigeria. His mother was among the first women from the Niger Delta to receive Western education. He had his education at the Bonny Primary School and then Kings College in Lagos, where he was one of the foundation students on its opening in 1909; later he taught there, becoming assistant Mathematics master in 1913. 

After resigning from Kings’ College in 1919, he went to journalism as editorial assistant at the Lagos Weekly Record under the editorship of Thomas Horatio Jackson, who had taken over from his father John Payne Jackson who founded the paper in 1889. After two years with the Record, Ikoli founded his own newspaper, the African Messenger, in 1921. He remained its editor and proprietor until 1926 when he was appointed the first editor of the newly founded DAILY TIMES, whose first editorial he wrote on 1 June 1926.

The previous year the Daily Times had taken over Ikoli’s African Messenger. In 1928 he left the Daily Times to found The Nigerian Daily until 1931 when it ceased publication.

Chief Ernest Ikoli also took part in politics in Lagos, starting as secretary of the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey. In 1934, he, Vaughn, H.O. Davies and others became the leaders of the new Lagos Youth Movement (NYM), which in 1938 was renamed the Nigerian Youth Movement and came under the leadership of Dr D.K. Abayomi. Three years later he was elected to the Legislative Council in Lagos, in a bitterly contested election in which he was opposed by Samuel Akinsanya (who later became the Odemo of Ishara). He was elected President of the NMY in 1943. 

Meanwhile from 1938 to 1944 he edited another newspaper, THE DAILY SERVICE, the NYM organ, with Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. Chief Ikoli was re-elected to the Legislative Council as an Independent in 1946, because of the disqualification of his opponent; in 1947 he decided not to seek re-election again. 

While Chief Ikoli’s active political life was short-lived, he is remembered by his former political colleagues as a former political colleague as a foremost politician with a determined mind. One of these, a former political opponent who became a prominent traditional ruler, Oba Samuel Akinsanya, Odemo of Ishara, said of him in the first yearly Ernest Ikoli Memorial Lecture inaugurated by the Sunday Times of Nigeria in 1979: “I worked together with Ernest Ikoli for many years. We did many things together. We fought many things together. And I cannot remember any political agitation or representation to the colonial government in those days with which Chief Ikoli was not associated. In fact, he would one of the foremost leaders.”

On 21 October 1960, three weeks after Nigeria became independent, Chief Ernest Ikoli died and was widely mourned. 

Dr Clement Isong (April 20, 1920- 29 May 2000) was the second Nigerian to be Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. Dr Isong was brilliant, industrious and highly talented who excelled in various fields. He was a teacher, banker, economist, administrator and politician.

He was born on 20th April, 1920 in Eket, Akwa Ibom State to Mr and Mrs Nathaniel Isonguyo.

He attended University College, Ibadan, Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, USA and Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science where he obtained Ph.D. in Economics.

Dr Isong taught Economics in University of Ibadan. He joined Central Bank of Nigeria as Secretary and later became Director of Research. He was seconded to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an adviser in the African department.

Dr Isong served as the Governor of the CBN from 1967 to 1975 at a critical time in the history of Nigeria. After retirement, he joined politics. He was elected the first civilian Governor of Cross River State from 1979 to 1983. Having contributed to the growth of Nigeria, Dr Isong was honoured with Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (CFR) in 1982. He died on May 29, 2000.

Dr. Clement Isong’s portrait appears on the N1000 Note.

Sir Dennis Chukude Osadebay (29 June 1911 — 26 December 1994) was a former premier of the now defunct Mid-Western Region of Nigeria, which now comprises Edo State and Delta State. He was one of the pioneering Nigerian poets who wrote in English. 

As a politician, he was said to have detest for party politics and tried to form unbiased opinions on important matters of the period. He was also a leader of the movement to create a Mid-Western region during the Nigerian First Republic. 

Chief Osadebay was born in Asaba, Delta State, to parents of mixed cultural backgrounds. He attended Asaba Government School at Asaba, the Sacred Heart School in Calabar and Hope Waddell Training Institute. He joined the labour force in 1930 as a customs officer working in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar. He subsequently went to England to study Law during the 1940s. It was while studying that he started publishing poetic verses. He was then known as a newspaper poet, as most of his writings were published in the West African Pilot and a few other newspapers. 

In his writings, Chief Osadebay used both his personal life and public events as inspiration. In Africa Sings, a collection of poems, he delved into themes from a personal point of view, such as a sullen poem written about his 25th birthday and the coming of middle age. However, his best work in the volume were poems written from an impersonal viewpoint. In his adventurous poem “black man troubles”, he used pidgin English to lament the status of black Africans in colonial Africa and injustice in the society. His poems were also notable for faithfully representing modern poetic rhythm. 

Chief Osadebay was one of the founding members of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in 1944. He left the country to read law a few years later. After, completing his studies, he returned to Nigeria and established a law practice in Aba and was also made the legal adviser of the NCNC. In 1951, he contested and won a seat on the Western Region House of Assembly, which was dominated by the rival Action Group (AG). He soon became the leader of opposition in the region from 1954 to 1956 but gave the mantle to Adegoke Adelabu in 1956. After the death of Adegoke Adelabu, he took on his familiar oppositional role in 1958. In 1960, he became the Speaker in the Western Region and upon the creation of the Mid-Western Region in 1963, became the pioneer premier of the newly created region. 

Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh (July 18, 1912 – January 15, 1966) was the finance minister of Nigeria from 1957 to 1966 during the administration of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. 

He was born on July 18, 1912 in a town along the Benin River in Niger Delta. He was educated at the Sapele Baptist School, and after a year as a municipal clerk taught for several years. He joined the Bata Shoe Company in 1935 as a clerk. Through private study and determination, he qualified in 1942 as an accountant and was later appointed Chief Clerk in Lagos.

He went on to become a deputy manager of the Sapele branch of the Bata Shoe Company which then sent him to Czechoslovakia, where he studied for and obtained diplomas in business administration and chiropody. He was in that country at the time of the communist coup d’etat of 1948.

On his return to Nigeria, he resolved to go into business on his own. He became a timber and rubber merchant and opened a chain of schools and enterprises with which he laid the foundations for his own personal fortune. He entered politics in 1951 when he was elected to the Western Region House of Assembly. He had already been chosen the first secretary of the Warri National Union and was secretary-general of the Itsekiri National Society. He moved to the Federal House of Representatives in 1954 as the member for the Warri division and in the same year became the national treasure of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC; the party later changed its name to the National Council of Nigerian Citizens).

He was appointed Federal Minister of Labour in 1955. He became Finance Minister in 1957 combining with his duty as leader of the NCNC parliamentary party in the Federal House.
Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh was a man of influence and power, with considerable financial strength and know-how. He retained the important Finance portfolio until the fall of Nigeria’s first civilian administration. 

Professor Horatio Oritshejolomi Thomas (1917-1979), was an eminent surgeon, university teacher and administrator He combined a brilliant medical career with headship of Nigeria’s two major universities.

He specialised in facial reconstructive and plastic surgery. He trained as an assistant to the renowned Sir Archibald MacIndoe in this discipline.  

Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was born in 1917 in Sapele, where his family-owned rubber plantations. He was educated at Methodist Boys’ High School in Lagos and Birmingham University in England, where he read medicine. He was the pioneer provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Lagos, as well as the first Nigerian to be admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

For a while, from the time he completed his studies until 1948, he worked as a lecturer in Anatomy at Birmingham University as well as a surgeon in various British hospitals.

Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas returned to Nigeria in 1949, to become a member of the pioneering staff of University College, Ibadan, that was just beginning to function under a special relationship with the University of London. At that time there was a growing in Nigeria to create institutions of higher learning, both to meet individual aspirations and national manpower needs and to enable university degrees to be granted in the country. The new University of Ibadan, though short of adequate facilities, provided the basis for that development. 

Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas, who taught surgery at the university, was one of the intakes of its fifteen staff members. 

In 1953, he returned to Britain for specialist course in plastic surgery at East Grinstead, Sussex. He returned home in the mid-1950s before the new teaching hospital of the University moved to its permanent site at Agodi in Ibadan. He worked there until the University became an autonomous institution in 1962, rising to become one of its leading heads of department and respected academic staff.

In 1962, when the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and the College of Medicine was established by the Federal Government, Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was made head of its department of Surgery. Soon he became head of the College of Medicine, first as Dean of the Medical School and Chairman of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Board of Management and later Provost of the College of Medicine. 

During his seven years’ headship of the College, he served for a while as acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. He remained head of the College of Medicine for seven years, reverting to his earlier position of head of department in 1969. 

In 1972, Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was appointed Vice Chancellor of the country’s premier university, Ibadan, whose development owes much to the contributions of the generation of distinguished scholars like himself. Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas held that office until he retired in 1975. 

Chief Edwin Clarke (May 25, 1927 – February 17, 2025) attended primary and secondary schools at Effurun, Okrika and Afugbene before completing further studies at the Government Teacher Training College, which later became Delta State University, Abraka. Thereafter, Clark worked briefly as a schoolteacher before travelling to the United Kingdom to earn a law degree.
 
He worked with the administrations of the military governor Samuel Ogbemudia and head of state, General Yakubu Gowon GCFR between 1966 and 1975. In 1966, he was a member of an advisory committee to the military governor of the Mid-Western Region, David Ejoor and was appointed Federal Commissioner of Information in 1975.

Chief Clark’s involvement in the political process began during the pre-independence period when he was elected as Councillor for Bomadi in 1953. Clark later joined National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). 

He was later appointed Midwestern Commissioner of Education and later, Finance from 1966 to 1975. 

During the second republic, he was a member of the national executive committee of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the treasurer of the party in Bendel State (now, in part, Delta State and previously the Mid-Western Region province). In 1983, he was an elected senator for three months at the twilight of the Shagari administration. 

Beginning in 1996, Chief Clark was a self-described leader of the Ijaw nation. He supported the Ijaw ethnic group in Delta State during an ethnic crisis in Warri and led Ijaw leadership delegations to meet political leaders. 

Chief Edwin Clark was the founder of Edwin Clark University which was established in 2015. 

In 2016, Chief Clark founded the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) along with other leaders. The organization’s stated objective is “to dialogue with stakeholders and lobby for increased attention and implementation of restructuring, development and security policies by the Government of Nigeria.

Read the remaining part of this article on www.guardian.ng

Teniola, a former Director in the Presidency, wrote from Lagos.