IN QUEST OF PERPETUITY
With neither dynastic heritage nor university education, Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu, OBE LLD, a creative indigenous business titan of Nigeria's colonial times, built up what was for his times a humongous transportation business from one second hand lorry. At a time many businesses knew nothing of tactical suppleness, Sir Odumegwu originated an indigenous and unique divestment strategy from an increasingly difficult and competitive transportation business into a most successful investment company which excelled in stocks and shares of Nigeria's blue-chip companies and first-class real estate. The doyen of accountancy in Nigeria, Mr. Akintola Williams, effusively affirmed Nigeria's business community and colonial and postcolonial governments, and banks held Sir Odumegwu in the greatest esteem as a founding member and an original subscriber to Nigeria's first stock market, the Lagos Stock Exchange, Sir Odumegwu was the first Nigerian president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (1963---1966). As Nigeria approached independence from Great Britain, Sir Odumegwu turned his back on unpatriotic politics, rejected his party's proposals to install him Nigeria's Federal Minister of Finance because he did not trust their motives for genuine economic development. Instead he sacrificially refocused on his economic development mission for his people and country and achieved what is to date an unequalled command of the heights of Nigeria's business, commerce, and industry up to his death in 1966. Sir Odumegwu died in September 1966 from heart failure attributable to catastrophic genocidal developments against peoples of Eastern Nigeria.
