Francis Edo Osagie (1914-1994) was a

Nigerian Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British jour ...

businessman from

Benin City Benin City is the capital and largest city of Edo State, Edo State, Nigeria. It is the fourth-largest city in Nigeria according to the 2006 census, after Lagos, Kano (city), Kano, and Ibadan, with a population estimate of about 3,500,000 as of ...

. He was born into an elite family; his father worked in the forestry department and was also a farmer in Benin City.

Education and career

He attended the Baptist primary school in Benin City and the Baptist High School,

Ibadan Ibadan (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its me ...

for secondary education. After completing his secondary education, he took on a variety of duties, from being a transport clerk to a sales agent and an accountant. It was while working as an accountant that he noticed the potential of trading in timber, especially the prospective wood resources available in the Southeastern part of the country. He left his job and formed a joint venture with two other partners to explore timber but the venture yielded little as timber prices crashed. After the closure of the venture, he started his own firm, Osagie & Sons. The new venture stayed in the timber business and finally found a successful way of selling timber. The company was advised to explore some areas where Toledo worms seemed to have caused some devastation to some trees. It was discovered that with inspection, and a little work, the core of the trees could be saved. He started exporting large-scale timber from the area to Europe and America and was very successful. He was also an apolitical community leader, this allowed him to mediate on civil duties, particularly those affecting the oil companies, their workers, and the communities they operate in.

References

*Tom Forrest, The Advance of African Capital: The Growth of Nigerian Private Enterprise, University of Virginia Press (August 1994) {{DEFAULTSORT:Edo-Osagie, Francis 1914 births 1993 deaths 20th-century Nigerian businesspeople People from Benin City