ARINZE IGBOELI
October 11, 2026 by Igboeli Arinze
Last week I began a list of 66 Nigerians who, in my view, helped shape our nation during its 66 years of freedom from colonial rule. I shall continue it now.
Readers pointed out last week that I had skipped entries 8 and 9. I apologise for the omission.
8. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi became Nigeria’s first military head of state after the January 1966 coup, when a panicked civilian government handed power to him. His Unification Decree of May 1966, which abolished the federal structure, inflamed northern fears and sparked riots. He meant well, but he seemed ill-advised and trusted too readily. He was killed in the July 29 counter-coup. Sadly, those who cited the unitary system as their excuse for killing him kept the policy itself, changing only its name.
9. Ibrahim Babangida remains the clearest example of the dual personality. He ruled from 1985 to 1993, and IBB was everything a leader should and should not be. He brought such intelligence to governance that the Pan-African scholar Ali Mazrui wondered why his administration failed to propel Nigeria into second-world or even first-world status. He introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme, built Abuja into a working capital, and gave Nigeria some befitting infrastructure. He charmed the nation with his political theatre and dazzled the world with an innovative foreign policy, second only to that of the Murtala/Garba era. Yet the same man ran a “transition without end” and annulled the June 12, 1993 election that his own system had produced. Nor can we forget the murder of Dele Giwa. Brilliant, passionate, and deeply flawed, he left Nigeria with both gifts and wounds.
13. Muhammadu Buhari, like Obasanjo, had the unusual distinction of ruling twice: as military head of state from 1983 to 1985 and as an elected president from 2015 to 2023. His first reign brought the War Against Indiscipline, a clean-up campaign that also involved detention without trial and a gag on the press. In 2015 he became the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president at the polls, on a promise to fight corruption and insecurity. Critics point to economic recessions, rising insecurity, and perceptions of nepotism. Admirers, myself among them, saw an honest, austere man. He died in 2025, and the debate over his legacy continues.
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14. Fela Kuti was the controversial Afrobeat pioneer who spoke truth to power. (Afrobeat is the genre he created, distinct from today’s Afrobeats.) He fused jazz, funk, and Yoruba rhythm into a sound that doubled as protest, and he used it to rouse black consciousness across Africa. Songs like ODO (Overtake Don Overtake Overtake), Unknown Soldier, BONN (Beasts of No Nation), Zombie, and VIP (Vagabonds in Power) tore into the Nigerian leadership class, from brutal soldiers to a pampered political elite. The state answered with repression. He was jailed several times, and in 1977 soldiers raided his Kalakuta compound. During the raid his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was thrown from a window, and she later died of her injuries. Fela kept singing until his death in 1997. Few artists have paid so heavily for telling the truth.
15. M.K.O. Abiola was the flamboyant “Chief,” a self-made billionaire, publisher, philanthropist, and politician. He built schools and mosques, gave to numerous causes across the country, and entertained on a scale Nigerians still talk about. He also courted the military for years. His closeness to the men in uniform, and the alleged role of his interests in the intrigues around the Second Republic, helped smooth the path for the coup that ended it in 1983 and for the palace coup that toppled Buhari in 1985. Yet courage redeemed him. On June 12, 1993, he won what is widely regarded as Nigeria’s freest election. When the military annulled it, he refused to surrender his mandate, declared himself president, and was jailed. He died in detention in 1998. That defiance helped birth the democracy we now enjoy.
16. Aminu Kano was the voice of the talakawa, the commoners, in a north ruled by tradition and privilege. Through NEPU and later the PRP, he fought feudal power and argued that politics should serve the ordinary man. He never won the presidency, but he helped change the national conversation.
17. Shehu Shagari was Nigeria’s first civilian president. Little known as a minister and federal commissioner, he rose from relative obscurity to the presidency, defeating, in a curious manner, the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Nigerians still recall the controversy over the “twelve-two-thirds” (12⅔) formula and the judgment that endorsed it. Shagari ruled for four years and three months, a period marked by a leap in unbridled corruption and lacklustre policies.
18. Alex Ekwueme was an architect by training and a nation-builder by temperament. As vice president in the Second Republic, he helped design the party framework behind it. Later he joined the G-34 in challenging Abacha and helped found the PDP. His calm, intellectual style set him apart. He is also reputed not to have enriched himself in a government where corruption was the order of the day.
19. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti led the Abeokuta Women’s Union against unfair taxes and, in 1949, helped force the Alake of Egbaland from his throne. A teacher, women’s rights champion, and anti-colonial activist, she was also the mother of Fela. She died in 1978 from injuries sustained in the army raid on Kalakuta.
20. Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and playwright, became the face of the Ogoni struggle against oil pollution and neglect. Under Abacha, he and eight others were hanged in 1995 after a trial the world condemned. His death exposed the human cost of Niger Delta oil and still shapes debates on environmental justice.
21. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Nigeria’s best-known economic reformer. As finance minister under Obasanjo and later Jonathan, she led the negotiation of the 2005 Paris Club deal that wiped out a large part of Nigeria’s external debt. In 2021 she became the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization. Her record at home is not beyond argument, but her global stature is.
22. Aliko Dangote built a modest business into a grand empire, spanning cement, sugar, fertiliser, and, finally, a giant refinery in Lagos. He is Africa’s most prominent industrialist and proof that Nigerian capital can build at scale. Critics worry about concentrated market power, but few dispute that he has made Nigeria produce what it once only imported.
23. Gani Fawehinmi, the “Senior Advocate of the Masses,” used the courts against military regimes and was jailed repeatedly for it. He turned law into a tool for the powerless, and his bookshop and chambers became a meeting point for dissent. He was the voice of the people. Fearless, he took on several dictators, particularly the Babangida and Abacha administrations.
24. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, Fela’s brother, was the quiet reformer. As health minister under Babangida, he pushed primary healthcare and mass immunisation, saving countless children. He proved that a Nigerian ministry could deliver real results.
Notes on the edit
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