Engr. Chief G.O. Aiwerioba a young Bini man, far away in London in the 1950s, helped build the very ground they now stand on.
By Isqil najim
There are men whose names live louder in records than in conversation, and Engr. Chief G.O. Aiwerioba is one of them. Many young engineers today carry the title “Engr.” with pride, sit for COREN exams, attend NSE branch meetings, and network under a banner of professional dignity, without knowing that a young Bini man, far away in London in the 1950s, helped build the very ground they now stand on.
Last week, the NSE Benin Branch honoured him once again, continuing a tradition of remembrance that has become almost sacred to the profession in Edo State. This is his story, told as plainly and as truthfully as the family’s own records allow.
This is his story, told as plainly and as truthfully as the records allow.
Aiwerioba, A Son of Benin, Built for Greatness
Chief Aiwerioba was born on January 15th, 1919, in Benin City. His father was Chief Osaghae Ogiugo, the first Aiwerioba of Benin Kingdom, and his mother was Princess Omoigui Obasogie, granddaughter of Oba Adolor. He carried royal blood quietly, the way people do when their real work is still ahead of them.
He entered Benin Baptist Mission School in 1927 and completed his early education at Eweka Memorial School in 1938. From there he won a scholarship to Government College, Ibadan, one of the finest secondary schools in the country at the time, where he studied from 1939 to 1943. He did not simply attend. He led. He became house prefect, house football captain, senior prefect, and Head of Grier House.
After finishing secondary school in 1944, he took up a brief post as a third class clerk in the office of the Commissioner for the Colony in Lagos. But clerking was never going to hold a man like him. He sat for and passed the competitive examination into the Public Works Department Technical School in Lagos, and through a demanding three year sandwich course, qualified as an engineering assistant, a role that would later be renamed Technical Officer.
In 1946, he married Grace Ebun Obatohun, and the two of them would go on to build a life together across many parts of the country.
London, and the Founding of the NSE
In 1952, he received a Federal Government Scholarship to study Civil Engineering at the University of London. He earned his B.Sc (Hons) in 1956 and, in 1957, was admitted into the Institution of Civil Engineers of the United Kingdom. While there, he worked with the consulting firm of Sir Frederick S. Snow and Partners as assistant resident engineer, helping supervise the construction of Gatwick Airport.
But his time in London was not spent only on foreign soil for foreign purposes. Nigeria was approaching independence, and Nigerian engineers scattered across Britain had no professional home of their own. Every certification and every standard ran through British institutions never built with Nigerian conditions in mind.
It was in this atmosphere, in 1957, that Chief Aiwerioba co founded the Nigerian Society of Engineers alongside Engr. Teju Oyeleye. He was elected the society’s first President, its founding President, while Oyeleye became its first Secretary General. He also involved himself deeply in Nigerian community life abroad, serving as President of the Government College Ibadan Old Boys Association of Great Britain and Ireland, President of the Edo Union, and secretary of the World University Service of the National Students Union of Great Britain and Ireland. He was, notably, the only African in the students’ union executive of the University of London at the time.
Carrying the Vision Home
Founding a society from abroad is one thing. Replanting it in Nigerian soil is another, harder task altogether. In 1958, Chief Aiwerioba returned home and set about organizing Nigerian engineers to carry the work of the society forward from where it had begun in Britain. He was appointed General Secretary of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, a position he held from 1958 until 1963.He did not found something and walk away. He stayed close to it through its most fragile years, nursing it from an idea shared among a handful of young professionals into an institution with roots in Nigerian ground.
A Builder in the Truest Sense
Engineering was never a title to him. It was work he did with his hands and his judgment. On returning to Nigeria in 1958, he took up the post of resident engineer in charge of strengthening the Lagos to Mando Road bridges and supervising construction of the Lafenwa Bridge. In 1959, he was seconded to the Lagos City Council as Deputy Engineer under the Federal Ministry of Works and Survey.
In 1963, during the plebiscite that led to the creation of the Midwest Region, he served as referendum officer for the Iyekeorhiomwon District Council. That same period, he was awarded a fellowship by the International Road Federation of Washington DC and Geneva to study advanced highway engineering at Purdue University in Indiana. He returned in 1964 and was transferred to serve as Chief Engineer in the newly created Midwest Region, eventually rising to Controller of Works Services, a federal position, and later Permanent Secretary in the State Ministry of Works and Transportation, a post he held until his retirement in 1975 after thirty one years of civil service.
In 1971, he was awarded a further scholarship to study at the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, returning in 1972.
Along the way, he earned fellowships that few Nigerian engineers of his generation could match. He became a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers in 1968, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1968, and a Fellow of the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank in 1972.
On retirement from civil service, he did not slow down. He founded Osaghae Development Enterprises Ltd, a civil engineering construction company that also expanded into property development, poultry, and farming. He remained its Chairman and Managing Director until 2010.
A Chief, A Patriot, A Quiet Pillar of Culture
In 1985, Chief Aiwerioba was conferred with the chieftaincy title of Osaguobadiaye of Benin Kingdom, a senior title within the Eghaevbo N’Ogbe group, through which he represented the palace both within and beyond the state. In 2003, His Royal Majesty Oba Erediauwa, the Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo, conferred on him the title of Uwangue of Benin Kingdom, making him head of the Iweguae palace society and, by tradition, the only chief permitted to deputize for the Oba in his absence.
He co founded and led cultural organizations such as the Benin Study Group and the Benin Forum, dedicated to protecting the interests of the Bini people, and he served as Chairman of the Benin Forum after the late Hon. Justice S.O. Ighodaro.
On October 31st, 2008, the Federal Government of Nigeria, under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, honoured him as the first President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers. That same year, on December 22nd, he received the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger, OON.
He was also patron to several socio cultural and religious groups, including Edo Renaissance, Edo Club, Ifesowapo, the Anglican Youth Fellowship, the Cathedral Choir, and the Band of Light at St. Matthew’s Cathedral Church, Benin City. In 2010, he gave his life to Christ.
Why the NSE Benin Branch Remembers Him
It is fitting that the NSE Benin Branch continues to honour him, most recently last week, through a tradition that has grown into more than ceremony. He was a son of Benin who carried his hometown’s name into rooms it had never entered before, and who returned in his later years to serve the very region that raised him. Each act of remembrance is a deliberate refusal to let a founding figure fade simply because decades have passed.
Today, when young engineers in Edo State and across Nigeria gather for that lecture, they are not merely attending an event. They are being handed a thread that connects them backward to a man who, in a room in London more than sixty years ago, decided that Nigerian engineers deserved more than borrowed institutions.
There is a quiet tragedy in how easily founders get forgotten while the institutions they build grow large enough to overshadow them. Few young engineers today can recite his name, yet nearly all of them benefit from his persistence.
He deserves to be remembered because he did not wait for permission to dream big. He deserves to be remembered because he turned frustration into structure, and structure into a lasting profession. He deserves to be remembered because long after the meetings in London and the long hours on Nigerian construction sites, the institution he helped build still stands, still gathers engineers under one roof, and still produces leaders who shape the nation’s infrastructure.
Chief G.O. Aiwerioba did not only build roads and bridges. He built the room in which Nigerian engineers could finally sit at the same table as the rest of the world.
That is a legacy worth celebrating, this year and every year after.