Akinola Maja

Akinola Maja was a Nigerian medical doctor, businessman and politician who was president of the Nigerian Youth Movement from 1944 to 1951 and later became president of Egbe Omo Oduduwa in 1953.

A medical doctor by training, he graduated in 1918 from University of Edinburgh and stayed in U.K. for the next three years before returning to Nigeria in 1921. He briefly worked for the colonial government before going into private practice to set up his own clinic.

In 1933, Maja was one of the founders of National Bank of Nigeria, along with T.A. Doherty, Olatunde Johnson and Hamzat Subair. The bank was a durable African institution that later developed a close relationship with the Action Group. Some of the bank's founders where affiliated with the National Youth Movement (NYM) and they later established Service Press, publishers of the Daily Service. Daily Service began operations as a mouth piece of NYM.[1] During the decade preceding Nigeria's independence, Maja was involved in a number of business ventures with varying degrees of success. In the early 1950s, Maja co-founded an unsuccessful ceramic venture in Ikorodu in partnership with Sule Gbadamosi. He was also a director of the National Investment and Properties Company used by the Action Group as a source of campaign finance.[2]

Ladipo Maja, his son was a principal witness in the 1962 treason trial of selected Action Group members.

Maja died in 1976 at the age of 88.

References

  1. ↑ L.,, Sklar, Richard. Nigerian political parties : power in an emergent African nation. Princeton, New Jersey. pp. 429, 455. ISBN 9781400878239. OCLC 927404565.
  2. ↑ Forrest, Tom (1994). The advance of African capital : the growth of Nigerian private enterprise. University Press of Virginia. pp. 17, 82. ISBN 0813915627.
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