It was mourning on Saturday in Delta State following the death of the first governor of the state, Chief Felix Ibru.
Ibru died at 80 after a brief illness, according to the officials of the state.
Born on 7th December 1935 at Agbarha-Otor in the Ughelli North local government area of Delta State to Chief Peter Epete Ibru and Chief (Mrs). Janet Omotogor Ibru, Felix, the second of seven children, was a Nigerian architect, Senator before becoming a governor. He was also President-General of the Urhobo Progressive Union (UPU).
As a traditional chieftain of his homeland, Ibru bore the tribal honorific Olorogun and often used it as a pre-nominal style. This title is also borne by many of the members of his large family in the same way.
He was educated at Yaba Methodist School, and later Igbobi College where he was Head Boy in 1955. He won the Elder Dempster Lines Scholarship to travel to the United Kingdom.
After his secondary school education at Igbobi College, Ibru proceeded to the Nottingham School of Architecture in England where he qualified as an architect in 1962.
While a student in Nottingham, he was elected the first Black President of the British Council with responsibility for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.
As a result, he was presented to Queen Elizabeth II and his Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace in 1960. Shortly after his qualification as an architect in 1962, he worked briefly with the Jewish Agency SOCHNUT, on various projects relating to farm settlements (kibbutzim and moshavim) and prefabricated buildings in Jerusalem and Haifa.
He later enrolled at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology for post-graduate studies and qualified with an MSc (Arch) in 1963. He returned to Nigeria at the end of that year and took up an appointment with the Federal Ministry of Education as the first resident Lecturer in Architecture at the Yaba College of Technology.
He was elected member of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) in 1969, registered by the Architects registration Council of Nigeria in (ARCON) 1971, and elected Fellow of the Nigeria Institute of Architects in 1995.
In 1997 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by the Delta State University and a Fellowship of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).
His political activities began in 1983 when he unsuccessfully contested for a seat in the Senate. He ran for the governorship of Delta State in 1991 and emerged as the First Executive Governor of the newly created Delta State in 1992. He won the 2003 senatorial elections for Delta Central.
Meanwhile, Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Monday Igbuya joined several dignitaries across Nigeria to mourn the death of the former Governor of Delta State, Olorogun Felix Ibru.
In a condolence message to the family, Igbuya described Ibru’s death as painful.
Igbuya lauded Ibru’s great concern for the unity of Nigeria, the growth of democracy and development of Delta State.
“Chief Felix Ibru as a governor, senator, international businessman, philanthropist and politician gained the respect, trust and love of the entire country and he will be greatly missed,” he said.
Igbuya prayed Almighty God to grant the soul of the late politician eternal rest and grant members of the family the strength to bear the loss.
Also Igbuya on Saturday commiserated with the family of Nigeria’s First Republic Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie- Eboh over the demise of Mr. Lawrence Okotie-Eboh.
Igbuya described the death of Mr. Lawrence Okotie-Eboh as a loss, not for the Okotie-Eboh family alone but for the entire Sapele people.
“My prayer is that God will give the family the fortitude to bear the loss,” he said.
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