By Olasunkanmi Akoni
Second Republic Senator, Alhaji Sikiru Ayodeji Shitta-Bey, died yesterday at his Victoria Island residence in Lagos State, aged 79.
Although details of his last moments could not be ascertained as at press time, family source said he would be buried today at the Oke-suna Cemetery, Lagos Island, according to Islamic rite.
Prominent Lagos indigenes are expected to attend the funeral to pay their last respect to the illustrious Lagos indigene.
Before his death, Shitta-Bey, was a chieftain of the Action Congress, AC, and a lawyer by profession. The late political icon and a well respected Lagos indigene represented Lagos State in the National Assembly in the Second Republic.
In 2000, he was involved in a legal case challenging the legality of an amendment to the Constitution of the Lagos Central Mosque by a Wahab Folawiyo-led Jamaatul Muslimeen Council of Lagos Shitta-Bey was born in Lagos on 26 June 1931. He is a great-grandson of Mohammed Shitta-Bey. He married his wife, Raheenat Braimoh Igbo in 1957. He attended Olowogbowo Methodist School and King’s College, Lagos, before proceeding to study law at the University of London.
He was called to the Bar in 1960. However, he became more known for his participation in the country’s first and second republics and his role in Lagos state politics.
He married his second wife, Tayibat Adunni Seriki in 1963.
In 1965, he was elected member of the Nigerian Parliament and later in 1979, he won a seat to represent Lagos in the Senate. While serving as a senator, he was a member of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In the present democratic republic, he pitched his tent with the Alliance for Democracy and later the Action Congress.
During the early stages of the republic, he was a member of the Justice Forum along with Mumini badmus, Olatunji Hamzat and Adeyiga Ajayi. The forum was a political group within the AD and Afenifere.
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