By Lillian Okenwa
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward,” said Amelia Mary Earhart, Author, and first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
That decision to act in spite of their circumstances must have been the driving force. They defied all the odds and become success stories. Who would have believed that a bricklayer and the son of a poor widow would become heads of courts? Or that a bus conductor and a carpenter would one day become governors of states? How about the motorcycle mechanic, a truck pusher, and many more who broke the cycle of poverty? The list is legion but it goes to show how that seemingly ragged or dirt poor man or woman down the road could be the one making decisions that affect you at some point in life.
- Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan
Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan was born into a family of canoe makers in Bayelsa State. His father Lawrence was a canoe maker while his mother Eunice was a farmer in the remote district of Otuoke. Jonathan once disclosed in an interview that in his early days at school, he had no shoes and no school bags. He walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Some days he had only one meal.
- Hon. Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais
Orphaned at age six, Hon. Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais rose to become the longest-serving justice of the Supreme Court and second longest-serving Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). On losing his father at an early age, it was his mother’s second marriage to a headmaster that precipitated his going to school. After several hurdles he encountered before getting a scholarship to study law, he later rose through the ranks in the Civil Service of the then Northern Nigeria.
- Samuel Ortom
Former bus conductor and governor of Benue state, Samuel Ioraer Ortom, celebrated Christmas at the residence of Mnenge Mtenave, his former boss, and other commercial bus drivers whom he worked with at Gboko Motor Park in the state. Ortom worked with Mtenave who was a commercial vehicle driver in the 1980s. Expressing profound appreciation, Ortom said Mtenave invited him to work as a vehicle conductor and also taught him how to drive after he dropped out of primary school.
- Alhai Ibrahim Idris
Former Kogi State governor Ibrahim Idris was born in the commercial town of Onitsha to Igala parents. Early in life, he went into scavenging. Young Ibrahim would walk the streets of Onitsha, visiting every refuse dump in the neighbourhood with a sack hanging over his shoulder to collect used empty bottles of different sizes. Thereafter, he would wash them in hot soapy water. Then he would take them to the Government Hospital in the town where they would be bought off him. The bottles were used for dispensing drugs to patients. He eventually learnt carpentry and later went into furniture making.
- Hon. Justice Babatunde Adeniran Adejumo
As he heaved the head-pan of wet concrete on his head, climbing up and down the stairs of the new hotel under construction, little did the young labourer know that in a matter of years he would head a court adjudicating over matters concerning people like himself and more. It never crossed his mind that in 34 years with so much pomp, he would be ushered into a luxurious room in this very hotel —Federal Palace Hotel annex — where he was one of the many unknown manual hands that constructed it.
With the hopes of going to secondary school dashed, a glimmer of hope came when a cousin who lived in Lagos visited Ikaramu –Akoko, Akoko in North West Local government Area of Ondo State where he lived with his mum in 1969 and took him to Lagos. This cousin tried registering him at Government Trade Centre, Yaba but that too failed. Since education appeared not to be his lot, a relation that worked at Federal Palace Hotel in Victoria Island informed him that an annex of the hotel was under construction and that young men were earning money carrying concrete and working as bricklayers. He didn’t hesitate. Every morning this relation, who worked as a Maintenance Officer at the hotel, rode with him on his motorbike from their Mushin abode to Victoria Island for the labourer work. Adejumo is the past President of, National Industrial Court of Nigeria.
- Chief Mrs. Victoria Olufunmilayo Awomolo, SAN
Chief Mrs. Victoria Olufunmilayo Awomolo, the 18th female Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and former Vice President of Africa North and West Region of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, (FIDA) made a spectacular switch from being a Chemistry teacher to a Legal practitioner. The Kogi state born Senior Advocate is described as very organised, friendly, patient, and meticulous. She rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of her career.
- Jibrin Samuel Okutepa, SAN
Jibrin Samuel Okutepa was well over 17 years when he began primary school on 3rd September 1977. At a time most 17-year-olds were either seeking admission into higher institutions of learning or already enjoying campus life, the young man who was not ashamed to share learning space with seven years olds practically ran off from home to school. His father would rather have him on the farm. With so much hostility from his dad following his insistence to attain education, Okutepa dropped out after being promoted to primary three, he ran away from home and became a motorcycle mechanic apprentice to his elder brother in Idah.
- Chief Ogwu James Onoja, SAN
Born 19th February 1968, in Idah, then under Kabba Province of Northern Nigeria and present-day Kogi state the very day Idah was bombed by Biafran soldiers. Onoja went through life in pain following the separation of his parents and his father’s second marriage. Life was so tough for Onoja in the early days that when he made the sum of N400, 000 from a transaction—his first major break as a young lawyer, his heavily pregnant wife she climbed 18 floors in Lagos on 12 March 1998, as there was no elevator to collect the cheque. He was in court, and could not go for the check himself. Also, that cheque was too precious to be left waiting in another person’s hands. “The baby came the following day. I went and bought a Mercedes 200 with which I brought them home. That was my first car,” he said.
- Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN
It was a harsh beginning for Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN. There was no hope for him in those days. The future seemed bleak, but an iron will to live and succeed propelled him. That never-say-die attitude ultimately marked his life. A life characterised by multiple battles and a propelling force to triumph. A cart-pushing (omolanke) company eventually gave young Ebun-Olu a job opportunity. For over one year, he loaded local gin for sale in a neighbouring village and did a good job of pushing his cart. Sympathizers who witnessed his daily travails, prevailed on his father to bring him home to conclude his secondary education.
- Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi
Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi has been in the vanguard of ensuring that the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Bill, is passed into law in all 36 states. A Nigerian lawyer, feminist, and civil rights activist, she is the founding Director of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC), a non-governmental maternal and reproductive health advocacy organization. Akiyode-Afolabi who studied law at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, where she started her journey in human rights activism as the first female public relations officer of the institution was born in Kwara State but she grew up in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.
She is the second woman to lead Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 400 civil society organizations after Ayo Obe of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) in the ’90s. She successfully represented Monica Osagie, a student at the Obafemi Awolowo University who was sexually harassed by Prof. Richard Iyiola Akindele, a lecturer at the department of accounting in 2018.
- Mercy Johnson Okojie
Although she’s from Okene in Kogi state, Nigerian actress Mercy Johnson Okojie was born in Lagos. The actress in an interview disclosed how her family once moved into an uncompleted building, which they shared with lizards. The talented actress also revealed that when it rains they had to scamper for cover.
