Ibrahim Imam

Background

He was born in 1916 into an aristocratic family and his half-brother was the district head of Yerwa.

Education

He attended Katsina College and after completing his studies joined the Borno Native Administration as an assistant and later became the supervisor of works in 1950.

Career

He was elected into the Northern House of Assembly in 1961, representing a Tiv district. Prior to his election in 1961, he had represented his district of Yerwa in 1951 after supporting a strike of Native Administration workers. Imam was a Kanuri man from the Yerwa district of Borno.

Borno Youth Movement

A year later, he joined Aminu Kano"s Northern Elements Progressive Union and in 1956, he became the patron of the Borno Youth Movement, a young organization that had grown out of its members disappointment with the native authority in Borno and the scandal of the Waziri, Mohammed.

He left NEPU and established an alliance with the Action Group and later became the leader of opposition in the regional House of Assembly.

Achievements

• In 1951, he contested and won a seat to the House of Assembly defeating the Waziri Mohammed. In 1956, he encouraged a fruitful alliance of the movement with NEPU particularly in Borno where the alliance later won two regional seats.

Politics

While working as an engineering assistant for the Borno Native Authority, he entered the political arena as the founder of the Borno Youth Improvement Association in 1949. A year later at the inception of the Northern People"s Congress, which later became the dominant party in the region, he was nominated as the party"s secretary-general. He joined a large number of his colleagues from the regional house who enlisted on the political platform of the new Non-Player Character. As the general secretary of Non-Player Character, he became one of the party"s prominent campaigners and was involved in political tours, traveling for thousands of miles while providing support for the extension of the party through the establishment of branches in various towns and cities in the region.

In 1954, however, Imam resigned his position from Non-Player Character and left the party, citing the lack of a revolutionary platform for political reform of the local government in the north and also Non-Player Character"s movement towards a reactionary and imperialistic political union. But in a few years, Imam an ambitious politician was in need of resources to organize the alliance in Bornu and in the Northern region left the merger due to the inability of NEPU to contribute enough resources to strengthen the party in the region.

Membership

After leaving the Native Authority, he became a building contractor to supplement his income as an honourable member of the House.