Month: January 2013

Correspondent Musa Odoshimokhe writes on the life and times of the colourful Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, who was murdered in Lagos by the mutineers.

It was a trying moment. Key politicians were killed in the putsch. The unity of the country was threatened to its very foundation. All political structures were abruptly consigned to history as the citizens and members of international community watched the macabre dance.

By the time the martial music simmered down, one of those cut short was the Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh,

a flamboyant dresser whose style earned him the nickname, Omimi-Ejoh, Ejoh bilele, translated as ‘the man with long feature and flowing wrappers’.

Born July 18, 1912 to Prince Okotie Eboh in Warri Division, he attended Sapele Baptist School. In 1930, he took up an appointment as an Assessment Clerk in Sapele Township Office. After a brief stint with teaching, he joined the Bata Shoe Company Limited, where he rose to the post of Chief Clerk.

Continue reading “Okotie-Eboh: victim of circumstance”

By Bobson Gbinije

THEY have stabbed themselves for freedom – jumped into the waves for freedom – fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot-and their tyrants have been their historians—Lydia Maria.

Where does the pendulum of objectivity swing in respect of the life and times of Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh (Omimi-Ejoh) who was killed on this day? Nigeria’s political history attained a remarkably eventful crescendo on January 15, 1966, when Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, Chief Akintola, etc., were assassinated in a military pogrom and putsch led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogu.

Major Nzeogu was quoted as saying in a Radio Broadcast that: “…Nigeria will never be the same again …”

The why, where, when, how and the justification for the assassination of these crop of Nigerian politicians and its subsequent causative and bandwagon effect on the Nigerian/Biafra civil war (1967-1970) remains a riddle in a conundrum superimposed in a riddle.

Continue reading “Tribute: Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and the justiceability of history”