Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo GCFR was born on March 6, 1909 in Remo town, Ogun State and died on May 9, 1987.

He was a Nigerian nationalist and statesman who played a key role in Nigeria's independence movement (1957–1960).

Awolowo founded the Yoruba nationalist group Egbe Omo Oduduwa and was the first Leader of Government Business and Minister of Local Government and Finance, and first Premier of the Western Region under Nigeria's parliamentary system, from 1952 to 1959. He was the official opposition leader in the federal parliament to the Balewa government from 1959 to 1963.

He attended various schools, including Baptist Boys' High School (BBHS), Abeokuta; then became a teacher in Abeokuta, after which he qualified as a shorthand typist. Subsequently, he served as a clerk at the Wesley College Ibadan, as well as a correspondent for the Nigerian Times.

Following his education at Wesley College, Ibadan, in 1927, he enrolled at the University of London as an External Student and graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Commerce (Hons.)

He went to the UK in 1944 to study law at the University of London and was called to the Bar by the Honorable Society of the Inner Temple on November 19 1946. In 1949, Awolowo founded the Nigerian Tribune, a private Nigerian newspaper, which he used to spread nationalist consciousness among Nigerians.

In 1945, he attended the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester as a representative of the Nigerian Youth Movement along with H. O. Davies. Also attending was an illustrious list of participants which included Kwame Nkrumah, Hastings Banda, Jomo Kenyatta and Jaja Wachuku, to name a few.

He proved to be and was viewed as a man of vision and a dynamic administrator. Awolowo was also the country's leading social democratic politician. He supported limited public ownership and limited central planning in government.

He believed that the state should channel Nigeria's resources into education and state-led infrastructural development. Controversially, and at considerable expense, he introduced free primary education for all and free health care for children in the Western Region, established the first television service in Africa in 1959, and the Oduduwa Group, all of which were financed from the highly lucrative cocoa industry which was the mainstay of the regional economy.

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