OLIKOYE RANSOME KUTI

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti was born in Ijebu Ode on 30 December 1927, in present-day Ogun State, Nigeria. He came from a radical and distinguished family. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a prominent political campaigner and Women's Rights Activist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was a Clergy, School Principal, and also the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. He was said to have flogged a White Colonial Inspector who flouted his directive, at a time when Nigerians treated their British overlords like demigods. His brother Fela grew up to be a legendary Musician and a founder of Afrobeat, while another brother, Beko, became an internationally known Doctor and Political Activist.
From 1948 to 1954, Olikoye attended Abeokuta Grammar School, and the University of Ibadan. Between 1948 and 1954, he studied Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. He worked as Senior House Officer at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and as a Locum in Hammersmith Hospital between 1960 and 1962.
Upon return to Nigeria, he became a House Physician at General Hospital, Lagos. From 1967 to 1970, he was Senior Lecturer at the University of Lagos, he was also appointed Director of Child Health at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, and later became Head of Department of Pediatrics from 1968 to 1976. Later on in his career, he became Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos until his retirement in 1988.
In the 1980s, Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti joined the government of General Ibrahim Babangida as the Health Minister. He made qualitative healthcare available to every Nigerian, especially through his Primary Healthcare programme which focused on the grass roots. In 1983 along with two other Nigerians, he founded one of Nigeria's largest health focused NGOs - Society for Family Health Nigeria primarily concerned with family planning and child health services at the time.
He was Minister of Health until 1992, when he joined the World Health Organization as its Deputy Director-General. He introduced free immunization for children and also gave a new lease of life to family planning programmes that previous governments had ignored. He was a defender of democracy and the rights of poor Africans. He vehemently accused some African governments of stealing money targeted for medicine. In 2001, he told a WHO Conference that only $12 out of every $100 contributed by Donors eventually got to HIV patients in most African countries.
In 1997, Prof. Olikoye set the stage for awareness of Nigeria's HIV/Aids epidemic after he announced that his brother, the Afrobeat Legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, had died of complications arising from HIV. It was a wake-up call for Nigerians, who had mostly ignored his 1986 warning when, as Health Minister, announced Nigeria's first AIDS case, a 14-year-old girl who had been diagnosed with HIV.
While in medical practice, he held various teaching positions, including a visiting Professorship at Johns Hopkins University's School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore. He wrote extensively for medical journals and publications.
Prof. Olikoye won both the Leon Bernard Foundation Prize and the Maurice Pate Award, in 1986 and in 1990 respectively for his contributions to children's health and welfare. He also bagged the UNICEF Merit Award in 1990 and another from the Bureau of Public Health in 1991.
Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti died on 1 June 2003 at age 76.
He was a Pediatrician, Campaigner, an Activist, an Administrator and former Minister of Health.

Compiled by: Nelly Nwaka Ohuche