Ernest Sisei Ikoli: Why Nigerian Government Should Name Otueke Varsity After With His Name
Enideneze Etete, writer of this article, revisits the issue he had previously advocated on Ernest Sisei Ikoli: Why Nigerian Government Should Name Otueke Varsity After With His Name
Nigeria has been honouring past and present leaders, yet Ernest Sisei Ikoli has not been immortalised like his peers, despite clamours by the Ijaws.
He was excluded even in the Railway Stations honours, when former president, Mohammadu Buhari named them after some personalities.
Even recently, the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has named University of Abuja with General Yakubu Gowon’s name, yet Ikoli hasn’t been considered for any such honour by the federal government.
Hence Ikoli appears to be a forgotten hero, perhaps, due to his so-called” minority-origin” as often alluded.
Yet, he was a pioneer Public Relations Adviser in the early Nigerian Railway Corporation; foremost journalist; public radio broadcast manager and topmost nationalist in Nigeria and Africa.
But Ikoli’s peers such as Tafawa Balewa, Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo, all of blessed memory are prominently reckoned with in Nigeria’s Naira Currencies and landmark edifices, for instance civic centres, stadia, roads, universities campuses, hostels and airports. And are still being honoured.
Earliest honour given to Ikoli, was the award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen of England, when he was alive. The other one was the Sunday Times short-lived Memorial Lectures, by the defunct Daily Times newspaper after his death.
Back home, the Press Centre of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) at Moscow Road, Port-Harcourt in the old Rivers State, was named after him. Thereafter, the Bayelsa State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), also named its Press Centre, along Azikoro Road in Yenagoa, after him, but not resonating.
These, have however, not eminently portrayed the contributions of Ernest Sesei Ikoli to the political emancipation of Nigeria and Africa as findings from research indicate.
Ernest Sesei Ikoli was born on March 25, 1893, and died on October 21, 1960. He hailed from Twon Brass in Brass Local Government Area of the present Bayelsa State.
Late Ernest Sesei Ikoli is father to Mr. Babatunde Ernest – Ikoli, a renowned playwright in the United Kingdom; Madam Elsie Ajayi Ikoli, mother to the former Commissioner of Justice/Attorney-General in Bayelsa State, Barr Anthony George (SAN); Mrs Ibidun Spiff in Twon Brass and Mrs. Folashade Ayo Ajayi living in Abeokuta. One of his daughters got married to an uncle to Femi Fani Kayode in Kayode family of Osun State.
Ernest Ikoli attended the historic Bonny Primary School, and later the famous Kings’ College, Lagos, in 1909, as pioneer student, all of which he broke records. He was Senior Prefect of King’s College in 1913.
On graduation from Kings’ College, he was employed as assistant science teacher in the school.
But as a born-freedom fighter and crusader of truth, he quitted the teaching job in 1919, due to a fracas arising from racial insults and oppression on him and other blacks, by the British teachers and authorities.
He shortly joined one of the nationalist newspapers, the Lagos Weekly Record founded in 1889 by John Payne Jackson, an American. There, he served as assistant editor and got his journalistic coaching from the publisher’s son, Thomas Horatio Jackson.
Unsatisfied, Ikoli, set up his own newspaper, the African Messenger, at number 24 Odunlami Street, Lagos, in 1921 and became its editor in order to freely attack the colonialists.
The African Messenger immediately became one of the most vocal newspapers, that used punchy editorials to criticize colonialism and the imperial misdeeds of the Colonial Masters. He was partly inspired by the early perceived marganilsation of the Niger Delta.
Ikoli’s critical journalism drew him the anger of the Colonial Government. This was more so, as he criticized the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorate in 1914, by Sir Fredrick Lord Luggard, and the final imposition of British rule. He analysed out the implications and tried to move people against the amalgamation, but to no avail. But the consequences are rife today.
Despite censorship and harassments, Ikoli was one fearless journalist that pressured the colonial government to introduce the Legislative Council in Lagos, party politics and representative government in the 1922 Clifford Constitution.
Due to lack of funds, he sold his newspaper, to the colonial government for Five Hundred Pounds in 1925. It was merged with the Daily Times, and he was made the first black editor and director in 1926, with an annual pay of Three Thousand Pounds. Becoming the first black editor is mainly what history sings to the young ones about Ikoli.
Again, unsatisfied with that position, Ernest Ikoli pulled out from the Daily Times two years later, to establish another newspaper, the Nigerian Daily Mail. This second newspaper, also stopped publishing in 1931.
Thereafter, the prolific journalist worked with the Nigerian Daily Telegraph and the Daily Service at different times.
Ikoli was even ahead of many of peers such as Late Nnamdi Azikiwe and Late Herbert Macaulay in the practice of journalism, and he ensured that ethics were strictly adhered to, even by his colleagues.
In politics, Ikoli made marks across Africa and Nigeria. He was secretary of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Movement founded by Marcus Garvey as well as pioneer member of the Lagos Youth Movement in 1934, which transformed into the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM). Ikoli was secretary of the body when Nnanmdi Azikiwe was president. Thereafter, he served as president of the NYM in 1943.
Under the Nigerian Youth Movement as a political party, which defeated Herbert Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), Ernest Sesei Ikoli, floored a Yoruba man, Chief Samuel Akinsaya in the 1938 general election, and became a member of the colonial Legislative Council in Lagos.
He was re-elected into the council as an independent candidate in 1946, retired from active politics in 1947, and got appointment as chairman of the Rediffusion Service of the colonial broadcasting service in Lagos.
These legacies, made one Yoruba-born media scholar, to lament that Ernest Sesei Ikoli would have been better styled as the Father of Nigerian Nationalism, and not anyone else, in view of his roles in Nigeria’s attainment of independence.
Records also have it that one of Ikoli’s political associates, Oba Samuel Akinsanya also described him as one of the foremost nationalist leaders in Nigeria, yet he is not so honoured.
A Mass Communication scholar Dr. Daramola Ifedayo in one of his books, described Ikoli as the only non-Yoruba man, from Ijaw, that commanded very high prominence and authority in the media and political circles in the then Lagos, the then seat of power.
Given the aforesaid legacies, Nigeria’s Government, should name the Federal University at Otueke in Ogbia Bayelsa, as Ernest Ikoli University in order to immortalise him.
Other alternatives are the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria’s Complex in Abuja or the the training school in Lagos, that could bear his name, considering the pioneering role he played in broadcasting.
The neglect in honouring Ernest Ikoli wasn’t also addressed by successive administrations in Bayelsa State, since its creation until recently when Governor Douye Diri named the state’s media complex in Yenagoa after him. Meanwhile, the NUJ in Bayelsa State had taken the lead to name its press centre in Yenagoa, with Ikoli’s name.
Appeasing the deceased patriot with an equitable honour like his peers, right now, would atone for the many years of non-recognition of his input to national development. By so doing, posterity would forgive our leaders, as future generations would get to know him more.
