Former Governor of defunct Western State of Nigeria, General Adeyinka Adebayo, is dead.
Family sources said died in his sleep on Wednesday.
Born on March 9, 1928, he would have been 89 on Thursday.
The late Adebayo became governor after Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi’s death in the 1966 coup d’état, ruling from August 1966 to April 1971.
His son, Niyi Adebayo, also served as governor of Ekiti State from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2003
Gen Adebayo was the son of a Public Works employee from Iyin Ekiti, near Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.
He was educated at All Saints School, Iyin-Ekiti, and later attended Eko Boys High School and Christ’s School Ado Ekiti. He joined the West African Frontier Force in 1948 as a regiment signaller and later completed the Officer Cadet Training Course in Teshie, Ghana from 1950 to 1952.
After passing the War Office Examination for Commonwealth cadets in 1952 as well as the West African qualifying examination in 1953, he was commissioned as an officer in the Royal West African Frontier Force as the 23rd West African military officer with number WA23 and 7th Nigerian military officer with number N7 after completing the War Office Cadet Training in Eaton Hall, England.
He later attended the Staff College course in Camberley in 1960 and the prestigious Imperial Defence College, London in late 1965 where he was the only African officer.
He retired from the Nigerian Army with the rank of major-general in July 1975.
Joining politics, he was one of the founders of and vice chairman of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) from 1979 to 1983, and later Alliance for Democracy (AD), which produced his son as governor.
