Frederick Fasehun, founder of the Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, has died at the age of 83.
According to multiple sources, Fasehun was admitted at the Intensive Care Unit of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, on Tuesday where he was pronounced dead this morning.
Confirming the death of Fasehun, his spokesman Mr. Adeoye Jolaosho, said he was pronounced dead in the early hours of Saturday.
“It is true, Baba died this morning at the ICU in LASUTH, Ikeja,” he told Punch Newspaper.
Born in Ondo City, Ondo state, Southwest Nigeria, Fasehun studied science at Blackburn College and furthered his education at Aberdeen University College of Medicine.
He also studied at the Liverpool Postgraduate School after which he had a Fellowship at the Royal College of Surgeons.
In 1976, he studied acupuncture in China under a joint World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Development Scholarship Program.
In 1977, he set up an Acupuncture Unit at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH).
He resigned in 1978 and immediately set up the Besthope Hospital and Acupuncture Centre in Lagos.
READ: Jimi Agbaje posters ripped off Third Mainland Bridge
The Acupuncture Centre once earned a reputation as Africa’s first for the Chinese medical practice.
But he was more than just a medical doctor, he also had an active political career.
He founded the OPC, a Yoruba-based organization formed to actualize the annulled mandate of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, a Yoruba who won the presidential election of 12 June 1993 but was barred from office.
Fasehun was imprisoned for 19 months from December 1996 to June 1998 during the military rule of Sani Abacha, only ending 18 days after Abacha’s death.
