Photo credit: RNN.NG
Nigeria used to have quite a few number of colourful politicians. Some of them were TOS Benson, Adeniran Ogunsanya, Adegoke Adelabu, Maitama Sule, Aminu Kano, Chuba Okadigbo, JM Johnson, Obafemi Awolowo, Ladoke Akintola, Ahmadu Bello,KO Mbadiwe, Bola Ige, etc.
Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe was born in Arondizuogu in 1910. He was educated at Hope Waddel Training Institute, Aggrey Memorial College, Arochukwu, Igbobi College and Baptist Academy both in Lagos.
He then proceeded to New York University, Columbia. While there, he helped in founding the African Students’ Association. He was subsequently received in the White House by the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt with other members of the Association.
When he returned to Nigeria, he joined the NCNC. He was elected into the Eastern House of in 1951. He was appointed as Minister of Land and Natural Resources in 1954. He became the Minister of Commerce in 1957.
In 1958, he and Kola Balogun attempted to remove Sir Nnamdi Azikiwe as leader of the NCNC.
He set up his own newspaper, The Daily Telegraph as an organ of protest.
He rejoined NCNC and became Minister of Trade and Communications. He served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on African Affairs. He later became the Minister of Aviation where he made Nigeria Airways go into partnership with Pan American Airways. He took the Atilogwu Dancers and Royal Trumpeters from Kano on the maiden flight from Lagos to New York.
Characteristically, he termed the flight as Operation Fantastic.
He had a preference for a nationally based political party over any party with a regional bias.
When KO was Minister of Lands, he conceived and established Surulere to settle victims of the Lagos Slum Clearance Project. He thereby created a model estate out of a virtual forest. Incidentally, the Action Group, the dominant party in the then Western Nigeria, resisted and opposed the scheme then.
KO moved the motion in 1952 that , in view of its status as capital city, Lagos should be removed from the Western Region.
He was indeed walking his talk as a nationalist.
At the onset of the 1965 political crisis in the former Western Nigeria, KO declared that, ‘When the come comes to become, we shall come out’.
In the second republic, he was Personal Adviser to President Shagari on National Assembly Affairs and the only Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He was known as a man of timber and caliber.
He received various chieftaincy titles among which were the Agadagbachirizo of Arondizuogu, the Onomenyi of Orlu and the Maye of Lagos.
He died in 1990.
At his death, the Ikemba of Nnewi, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu said of him, ‘KO was grand, his activities grandiose, his speeches grandiloquent’.
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