By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
A seemingly innocuous spark in an otherwise isolated part of a nation can change the course of history.
Nigerian history as we have it today owes its shape to the handling or mishandling of the Action Group crisis of the early 1960s. The initial crisis led to a chain of events culminating in the Nigeria/Biafra war and the deeply polarized and wounded nation such as we have today.
“May you live in interesting times,” is a twice-told charge; and thus Chief Simeon Olatunde Oloko found himself through forces beyond his control to be in the epicenter as a witness of the events that reshaped Nigerian history. Born at Agodi in Ibadan, the author who studied at the esteemed London School of Economics and Political Science, and was called to the bar of Inner Temple in 1958, served as secretary of the pivotal Western Nigeria Development Corporation (WNDC) from the vantage point of which he lived through the manifold crises that bedeviled the old Western Region and Nigeria.
