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Mobolaji Johnson, Lagos First Military Governor, Dies At 83

His death was confirmed by his son, Deji, who said the retired general, who was born on February 9, 1936, died on Wednesday.

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Brig.-Gen. Mobolaji Johnson, the first military governor of Lagos state, is dead.

He died at the age of 83.

His death was confirmed by his son, Deji, who said the retired general, who was born on February 9, 1936, died on Wednesday.

As military governor of Lagos State, he was in office between May 28, 1967, and July 1975, under the military regime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon.

Mobolaji, in 1959, attended the Officer Cadet Training School in Ghana.

The general, who started his education at Reagan Memorial Baptist School, Yaba, in 1941, also attended the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, United Kingdom, between 1960 and 1961.

At the end of the Nigerian Civil War, Mobolaji Johnson was among the federal delegates at the ceremony to mark the end of the war.

In 1966, after the abortive coup d’etat that ended the First Republic, he became a military administrator of the then federal territory of Lagos, having been appointed by the nation’s first military head of state, Aguiyi-Ironsi.

In 1967,  Mobolaji became the first governor of the newly created Lagos State.