Obafemi Awolowo

Obafemi Awolowo (6 March 1909 – 9 May 1987) was a Nigerian politician who was the first premier of the Western Region (Wikipedia). Born in the Remo town of Ikenne, in present-day Ogun State, he worked as a journalist, studied commerce in Nigeria and law at the University of London, and founded the Nigerian Tribune.

According to the Library of Congress country study, he led the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association and played a leading role in the Yoruba cultural movement Egbe Omo Oduduwa, and the Action Group, founded in 1951, was largely his creation. He was premier of the Western Region from 1952 to 1959 and leader of the opposition in the federal parliament from 1959 to 1963 (Wikipedia).

In 1962 the Action Group split between Awolowo and Samuel Akintola; Awolowo was later tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in prison (country study). He was released in 1966, after the July coup, and served as federal commissioner for finance and vice-chairman of the Federal Executive Council during the civil war (Wikipedia; country study). He was three times a leading candidate for the presidency.

He was the only son of David Shopolu Awolowo, a farmer and sawyer who was one of the first people of Ikenne to become a Christian, and Mary Efunyela Awolowo; his grandmother was a devout worshipper of Ifá. His father died of smallpox when Obafemi was about eleven. He attended Baptist Boys' High School, Abeokuta, worked as a teacher, shorthand typist, clerk and newspaper correspondent, studied commerce as an external student of the University of London, and went to Britain in 1944 to study law (Wikipedia).

In his book Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947), the first systematic federalist manifesto by a Nigerian politician, he argued for federalism as the basis of national integration, and he led the demands that produced the federal constitution of 1954. As premier of the Western Region he introduced free primary education for all and free health care for children, and established the first television service in Africa in 1959, financed largely by the region's cocoa wealth (Wikipedia).