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Slap That Got Ojukwu, 100 King’s College Boys Arrested In March 1944

Published

3 years ago

March 27, 2022

Bianca’s husband and hero, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the same time 78 years ago, slapped a British teacher for ‘behaving badly’.

The media is awash with a blend of serious and comic analyses of Bianca Ojukwu’s violent encounter with former Governor Willie Obiano’s wife, Ebelechukwu, and what led to it in Awka, Anambra State during the handover of power to Governor Chukwuma Soludo. The summary of the analyses in the past few days depicts the fact that, like her husband Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Bianca has very low tolerance threshold for insults and bad behaviour.

Prime Business Africa reports that the March 17, 2022 unfortunate episode involving Bianca Ojukwu, former beauty queen and daughter of another tough man and governor of the old Anambra State, Chief C.C Onoh, occurred (almost) exactly 78 years (March 15, 1944) after her husband had a similar encounter as student of the King’s College, Lagos.

A look at a historic event in the life of the late Biafran leader that led to his expulsion from Kings’ College at age 11 implies similitude of tolerance levels to certain forms of behaviour. Ojukwu’s father, Chief Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, had to send him to Epsom College, England to finish his High School before proceeding to the Oxford University and subsequently joining the Nigerian Army.

Also trending in the social media space is Ojukwu’s alleged encounter with the late Umaru Dikko during the Constitutional Conference of 1995 after the latter made some disparaging remarks when Ojukwu was speaking at the plenary. Ojukwu was said to have waited for the unsuspecting Dikko to move towards the toilet before walking up to give him a slap.Bianca Ojukwu has always relived fond memories of her late husband and how he taught her to be strong in character.

Could having low-threshold tolerance for insults be one of those lessons? No doubt, accounts of Dim Ojukwu’s childhood experiences showed he had been a fighter, a revolutionist, with very little patience for bad conduct, no matter who got involved.

Slap that got Ojukwu arrested

In 1944, Emeka Ojukwu was reported to have slapped a British member of King’s College teaching staff during a students’ protest for crossing the barricade and taunting. He and a few others were expelled after 100 students were arrested and tried.

King’s College Strike of 1944 led by Ovie Whiskey

King’s College boarding house students had written a petition letter to Principal Allan Clift but he dismissed their concerns on grounds he would not tolerate student petitions. Led by Senior Boy Victor Ovie Wiskey, the boarding house students, therefore, consulted prominent and knowledgeable personalities within and outside the school and decided to launch a sit-in protest on Monday March 15, 1944.

The protesting students barricaded the boardinghouse gates and defended their strongholds with cutlasses.Although the students, who would not dare to attack their teachers with weapons, little Emeka Ojukwu (aged 11), who was a junior boy at the time, and who was tasked with delivering water to the senior boys, could not tolerate Mr. Slee’s violation of their stronghold.

Here’s Emeka Ojukwu’s recollection in a 2003 interview

“…I was the person carrying the water to the guards at the front of the boarding school. The man guarding the gate at the time everything took a different shape was the great (Victor) Ovie-Whiskey.

“There he was, formidably attired in his shorts and wrapper around his waist. His job was to frighten anybody that was coming.

“We the small ones had the job of carrying water to them whenever it was needed. It was then I noticed my Nature Studies master, Mr. Sleigh (sic), striding towards Bonanza Gate from the police station.

“Clearly, he was coming to disperse the whole notion of strike. I don’t know what got into my head. I dropped the bucket of water and ran as fast as I could towards Mr. Sleigh, got to him, leapt up in the air and gave him the biggest slap I could muster…and that sealed my fate”.

Mr. Slee was said to have reported the 11-year-old Emeka Ojukwu’s assault to Principal Allan Clift.

Considering Principal Clift’s earlier intolerant attitude to the student petition, it is no surprise that Clift escalated the situation: later that day, Clift and Slee arrived with the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) MacNamara, many policemen and a fire brigade officer from the Tinubu Fire Station who cut open the locks of the boarding house building.

Approximately 100 students were arrested and detained at Tinubu Police Station.Bailouts and Court TrialsSir Adeyemo Alakija and Samuel Akintola, then Daily Service newspaper Editor, had to bail out in the evening of their arrest.

75 senior students were then charged to court at the Santa Anna Court, Tinubu.Emeka Ojukwu was specifically charged to court for assault.The students were defended by Eusebius James Alexander Taylor and L.J. Dosunmu while the prosecution was headed by James Egbuson.

The trial, which was published in the dailies and closely observed by the public, fortunately, saw the boys acquitted and discharged.

World War II ArmyThe court’s acquittal of the King’s College boys, however, was not the end of the story: Within hours of the court judgment, the British Colonial Government and Principal Clift struck back with World War II conscription and expulsions.

Eight students were conscripted into the World War II-bound Army with very little information on what was the rationale behind the conscription.

Principal Clift expelled 11-year-old Emeka Ojukwu.Sir Louis Ojukwu (Emeka’s father) then sent him to Epsom College in England to continue his education.The boys conscripted into the Second World War were: Ayoola Gladstone, Yon Dakolo, Adedapo Aderemi (eldest son of former Ooni of Ife), Adesoji Aderemi, Victor Ologundudu, Valentine Osula, Akanni Pratt, Yinka Akpata and Okparaocha (who reportedly died in service at Burma).Principal Allan Clift, according to Femi Okunnu, sent away some boys from King’s College to other schools within Lagos such as CMS Grammar School, Methodist Boys High School, Baptist Academy and St Gregory’s.

Those sent away from King’s College were:

1. Charles O. Idowu
2. E.E. Idehen
3. R.S. Kokori
4. C. K.Ikemefuna
5. Adenekan Ademola
6. Tira Bello-Osagie
7.Victor Ovie-Whiskey (Chairman of Nigeria’s electoral body FEDECO, 1979- 1983)
8. C.H.Oyewo
9. S.A. Fakoya
10. O. Awani
11. S.S. Young-Harry
12. Thaddeus Eziashi
13. M.Agidee.

Of course, the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Lagos intelligentsia at the time were displeased by the World War II conscription and expulsions and lobbied to reverse them.

Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful.

The NUS reportedly reached out to leaders like Herbert Macaulay, who, at 80-year-old at the time had become the ‘grand old man of Lagos politics’; Comet Newspaper owner and publisher, Duse Mohammed Ali, and rising politician, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, for support.

The NUS, on June 10, 1944, convened a gathering at the Glover Memorial Hall in Lagos to discuss nationalism and the King’s College strike.

Herbert Macaulay presided over the meeting (with Ali and Azikiwe in attendance) where a Resolution to form the NCNC, comprising representatives from political parties, trade unions, literary associations, professional associations, religious groups, social clubs, and women’s organisations, was passed.

Source: Prime Business Africa

Related Topics:Bianca Ojukwu Odumegwu Ojukwu

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Wildfire Engulfs Mountain Near Western Canada City

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1 hour ago

August 13, 2025

Editor

Nearly 20,000 residents of a community in western Canada were on standby on Wednesday as a wildfire engulfed a mountain overlooking the city of Port Alberni, the latest area threatened in the country’s second-worst fire season on record.

“I’ve lived in Port Alberni since 1956, and this is one of the biggest fires we’ve ever seen,” Russ Wetas, 69, told AFP as smoke from Mount Underwood filled the sky behind him.

The wildfire service in the west coast province of British Columbia has listed the Mount Underwood fire as “out of control,” meaning it is expected to spread further.

But it remained unclear if Port Alberni, roughly 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) north, will be evacuated.

On the opposite end of the vast country, in the easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador, parts of the capital, St. John’s, received evacuation orders on Tuesday, following several days of intensifying fire.

A wildfire was also burning on Wednesday on the outskirts of Halifax, a major city in the eastern province of Nova Scotia, with a population of nearly half a million.

This is already Canada’s second-worst wildfire season in terms of landmass burned, based on figures dating back to 1983.

So far, 7.4 million hectares (18.3 million acres) have been scorched, an area nearly as large as Panama, putting 2025 past the 7.1 million hectare mark from 1995.

But this year is not expected to pass 2023, when 17.3 million hectares burned, an extraordinary toll that focused global attention on the growing threat of wildfires boosted by human-induced climate change.

Smoke from this year’s wildfires has put tens of millions of people under air quality alerts in both Canada and the United States. The haze has even crossed the Atlantic, affecting people in western Europe.

More than 700 wildfires were burning across Canada on Wednesday, including 161 considered out of control, with nearly every province and territory impacted.

Mount Underwood is on Vancouver Island, making the blaze there part of a worrying trend of increased wildfire activity near the coast.

Experts have said that historically, coastal areas did not burn, but more serious wildfires near the ocean are being recorded, even if they remain less intense than blazes further inland.

“This is a fire that hasn’t been seen on Vancouver Island,” John Jack, a First Nations chief and regional official, told the public broadcaster CBC.

Ted Hagard, who works at Port Alberni’s paper mill, told AFP he had been watching the fire’s progression on social media but needed to see it for himself.

It’s “insane how huge it is,” the 46-year-old said, standing on the shores of a lake adjacent to Mount Underwood.

Canada is experiencing a rise in conditions that are conducive to fires, experts say, linking the trend to climate change, which has caused elevated temperatures, reduced snow, shorter and milder winters, and earlier summer weather.

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Zelensky Rules Out Swapping Territory, Calls For ‘Fair Peace’

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8 hours ago

August 13, 2025

Editor

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that Ukraine and its allies must work together to pressure Russia into ending its invasion, ahead of talks in Berlin with European leaders and US President Donald Trump.

“Pressure must be exerted on Russia for the sake of a fair peace. We must learn from the experience of Ukraine and our partners to prevent deception on the part of Russia,” Zelensky wrote on social media.

“There are currently no signs that the Russians are preparing to end the war,” he added.

Zelensky is due in Berlin on Wednesday for talks with European leaders and Trump ahead of the US president’s summit with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian leader said he and his team had held more than 30 conversations with world leaders and high-ranking officials ahead of the talks.

The flurry of diplomatic engagements have been overshadowed by rapid, but so far limited Russian push in the eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.

A member of the Ukrainian delegation travelling with Zelensky to Berlin told AFP that the Russian gains around the mining hub of Dobropillia “did not influence” preparation for Wednesday’s talks.

Zelensky conceded one day earlier that Russian forces had advanced by up to 10 kilometres (six miles), but ruled out swapping territory with Moscow as part of any deal with Russia.

AFP

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S’Africa Offers US New Trade Deal To Avoid 30% Tariff

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1 day ago

August 12, 2025

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South Africa will offer a “generous” new trade deal to the United States to avoid 30 percent tariffs, ministers said Tuesday.

Washington on Friday slapped the huge tariff on some South African exports, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, despite efforts by Pretoria to negotiate a better arrangement to avoid massive job losses.

The ministers did not release details of the new offer but said previously discussed measures to increase imports of US poultry, blueberries, and pork had been finalised.

“When the document is eventually made public, I think you would see it as a very broad, generous and ambitious offer to the United States on trade,” Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said at a press briefing.

Officials have said the 30 per cent tariff could cost the economy around 30,000 jobs.

“Our goal is to demonstrate that South African exports do not pose a threat to US industries and that our trade relationship is, in fact, complementary,” Trade Minister Parks Tau said.

The United States is South Africa’s third-largest trading partner after the European Union and China.

However, South African exports account for only 0.25 per cent of total US imports and are “therefore not a threat to US production”, Tau said.

Steenhuisen said US diplomats raised issues related to South African domestic policies, which was a “surprise given the fact we thought we were in a trade negotiation”.

The two nations are at odds over a range of policies.

US President Donald Trump has criticised land and employment laws meant to redress racial inequalities that linger 30 years after the end of apartheid.

“Things like expropriation without compensation, things like some of the race laws in the country, are issues that they regard as barriers now to doing trade with South Africa,” he told AFP on the sidelines of the briefing.

“I think we’re seeing some form of a new era now where trade and tariffs are being used to deal with other issues, outside of what would generally be trade concerns,” Steenhuisen said.