Thread by @toluogunlesi

So I took up this challenge, and found (all open-source information, only requiring a bit of digging and following loose and un-loose ends) a family story that somewhere along the line tangentially involves Russia’s MVD (a KGB sister agency) and the CIA.

#Thread

https://twitter.com/adejokun/status/1212518393368236033

The famous, sprawling Ajao Estate in Lagos—and also Papa Ajao— are named after a certain Chief Joseph Adediran (JA) Ajao, a native of Aawe town in present-day Oyo State, who became a successful import-export businessman in Lagos. He was born in 1900 and died in the early 60s.

Chief JA Ajao was one of the biggest landowners in Lagos. All of the land that’s now Ajao Estate was owned by him. And plenty other land as well. If you Google his name you’ll find a number of land-related Court cases from the 60s and 70s, involving his estate.

Let me digress a bit. One really intriguing things is the extent to which the Action Group, one is the most successful—and ideological—political parties Nigeria has ever had, went all out to mix business and politics. Many of the richest men in Western Nigeria were AG members.

I found this list of Action Group executives (1957/58) online,in Richard Sklar’s excellent book on Nigerian Political Political Parties in the Independence period. You’ll see many names you might recognize: FRA Williams, AMA Akinloye, RA Fani-Kayode, AF Alli, MA Okupe, L Omole...

Look at Number 33 on the list. Chief JA Ajao. Bizman. Prominent AG member.

As was another very famous Lagos landowner, SO Shonibare, of Shonibare Estate in Ikeja

As was Alfred Rewane

As was MA Okupe, founder of Agbonmagbe Bank (later became Wema)

All fabulously wealthy men.

Anyway, point is that one of Awo’s many geniuses lay in mixing business and politics, and using business and politics to fund each other. It got him into trouble a few times, of course, for skirting ethical lines. Awo himself, for all his asceticism, was a shrewd businessman!

Okay so let’s go back to Chief JA Ajao, after whom Ajao Estate is named. I don’t know how many children he had, but one of them, a son, gained quite some international fame in the 1960s. Here’s what happened.

His name: Aderogba Ajao. Born in Aawe in 1930, to JA Ajao. Went to study in the UK in late 1940s; joined the Communist Party while there. In 1952, perhaps out of curiosity, he traveled to East Germany, which at the time was under Soviet control. What happens next is interesting.

Aderogba Ajao spends the next six years in East Germany, in a University that’s more or less a Communist Education Camp. Offering training in a lot of things, from communist ideology, to activism & subversion, to gun-handling and military tactics.

Aderogba Ajao eventually grows disillusioned with Communism, and East Germany, and is reportedly expelled from school. He flees to West Berlin, and from there back home to Lagos, Nigeria, where he became a businessman (I guess following in his father’s footsteps).

But he also does something interesting- he writes and publishes a book — an account of his six years of indoctrination in communist East Germany—that receives quite some acclaim in the West: ON THE TIGER’S BACK. Published in hardback in the UK in 1962.

That’s not the end of the story. In 1970, in Lagos, Aderogba Ajao marries a Canadian woman (daughter of British emigrants) named Corinne Robertshaw. Corinne, a lawyer, moved to Nigeria in 1968 (during the Civil War) to work for a company owned by a University classmate of hers.

Corinne was 36 when she moved to Nigeria. She came with her 8yo son, from an earlier marriage in Canada. She was one of only 3 women in her law school graduating class of 150 people at the Univ of British Columbia in 1958.

Met Aderogba Ajao in Lagos, fell in love, married 1970.

Marriage didn’t last long. Aderogba Ajao was a traditional Nigerian man. Corinne was a law school graduate(at a time when women lawyers were a rarity even in Canada) with a strong sense of activism & social justice. She returned to Canada 1973. She had one child for Ajao, in 1971

Corinne Robertshaw died on January 21, 2013, in Toronto, Canada, aged 80.

Here’s her Obituary, in @globeandmail; written by a trio that included her 2 children, Vincent Parkin and Tola Ajao.
google.com/amp/s/www.theg…

Story doesn’t end there. Here’s where the CIA comes in:

So,in 1977, @nytimes publishes a piece on covert CIA propaganda operations, that includes the revelation that ON THE TIGER’S BACK was actually published “with CIA assistance”

CNN Influence Ops at the height of the Cold War

So that’s how I started out searching for the person after whom Ajao Estate is named and ended up with this fascinating story of Communism, Cold War — and Canada 😀

This research brought to you by Google Search. And the New Year Holiday. #2020NewYear

Random find during the excavation work.

By the way I have no idea if Motolani Aderogba Ajao is still alive, or if not, when he died.

If you do (it’s a popular Lagos family), please share, thanks. He was born in 1930 so would be 90 this year, if alive.

Also found this on Facebook. A photo of Chief JA Ajao’s (Aderogba Ajao’s father) country home in Aawe, Oyo State. So he was Bashorun of Aawe, and he built this palatial home (by the standards of the time) in the 1940s. And they say it was a tourist attraction in those days.

Another of JA Ajao’s children, a daughter, Adebola Asake (born 1933, three years after Aderogba) was Nigeria’s 1st Opthalmic Nurse, & Ondo State’s 1st Health Commissioner. Like her brother she studied in UK (1950s). She married a Prince who became Deji of Akure in 1957. Died 2012

So I forgot to add this to the thread earlier on. Here is the declassified 1960s CIA report on Aderogba Ajao’s book.

See them writing a dispassionate-sounding report; CIA recommending to CIA a book whose publication CIA allegedly supported 😀😀 #HowToDoCovertOps