Celebrated Governor of defunct Bendel state, Ogbemudia dies at 84
Samuel Ogbemudia the two-term governor of the defunct Bendel state who raised the benchmark of governance and laid the infrastructure for development in present day Edo and Delta states has died at 84.
Ogbemudia died in Benin on Thursday night at about 11.00 p.m according to sources close to him. He had a very successful military career that was translated into his appointment as military governor of the defunct Midwestern state at the beginning of the civil war.
The legacy he built in governance attracted the defunct National Party of Nigeria, NPN to lure him into politics in 1982 upon which he emerged as the party’s candidate for the 1983 governorship election. He won the election and served for three months before the Muhammadu Buhari led coup truncated the Second Republic.
Ogbemudia joined the Nigeria army in 1957, training at Teshie, Ghana and at Netheravon and Salisbury Plain in England (1957).
He attended the officer cadet school at Aldershot, England in 1960, and was commissioned second lieutenant in 1961.
He attended the United States Army Special Welfare School at Fort Bragg, South Carolina in 1962, and served with the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Congo for 16 months, and in Tanzania in 1964.
He was appointed as an instructor to the Nigerian Military School, Zaria in 1964.
He celebrated his 84th birthday last September.
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