Background
He was born on December 16, 1933, at Mopa in Kabba Province of Kwara State.
He was born on December 16, 1933, at Mopa in Kabba Province of Kwara State.
Educated locally and then at Kaduna College (1948), and Government College, Zaria (1949-51). When he left school he was drafted to the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, but he wanted a full university education and turned down the scholarship he was offered to study on his own.
He bonded himself to teach for four years at the Kainji Memorial College in return for the fees to send him to Ibadan University (1954-7), where he wrote a number of history and geography textbooks while getting his BA.
At Keble College, Oxford he took a DipEd (1957-8) and, after a spell of teaching in Nigeria, studied educational psychology at Birmingham (1962-3) and taught in English schools while producing a flood of primary school textbooks on history and geography for Macmillan and Co.
At Alberta University in Canada (1963-5) he did his PhD in educational history and began to specialise increasingly in educational problems. In October 1968 he became a senior lecturer at the University of Lagos.
He was rather surprised to be appointed Federal Commissioner for Health on June 12, 1967, a fortnight after the secession of Biafra; all his previous experience had been in education, but he delegated responsibility widely and soon mastered the health field, where he already had considerable academic knowledge. He was reshuffled, becoming the Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources from February to October 1971 and Commissioner for Industries in October 1971.