Kio Amachree: A self introduction of the critic

My Name is Kio Amachree. Let It Be Known.

I am a political commentator, scientist, businessman, and historian. I was educated at Eton College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. I read law in both Sweden and the United Kingdom. I write music. I write political commentary. I conduct my own research. I work for myself. I finance myself. I answer to no one.

I am the product of Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC — Nigeria’s first Solicitor-General, Acting Attorney-General, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Africa’s first Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Nigeria’s first Chairman of the Nigerian Football Association and Nigeria’s first oil bloc owner. He was a giant. He built things that lasted.

My grandfather was Chief Sekin Amachree — a constitutional fighter, a delegate to the 1958 Constitutional Conference, a Willink Commission figure — a man who stood in the room where Nigeria’s future was being decided and made his voice count.

My mother was Otunba Nike Oluwole, daughter of Chief Ben Oluwole — one of Nigeria’s first bank managers, attached to the Governor-General of Nigeria, a man who travelled with the Governor-General to England in 1902. A trader. A businessman. A man of Shagamu and old line. She carried that dignity all her days.

I come from an old Royal family. I am an Ijaw Prince of the Kalabari Kingdom, of the Amachree Royal Dynasty. That is not a title I claim. It is a fact I was born into.

I was born in colonial Nigeria. I have seen the coups. I have seen the wars. I have watched Governors and Generals come and go. I have watched my country’s wealth stolen in broad daylight, its institutions hollowed out, its people betrayed again and again by men who were trusted and proved unworthy of that trust.

I have seen enough. Enough is enough.

I stand. And I fight.

I was trained — by blood, by example, by everything the men and women who made me embodied — to stand up for what is right and to fight what is wrong. That is not politics for me. It is inheritance. It is obligation. It is identity.

I am one hundred percent son of the soil. And I am fighting for my people.

Let it be known.

Kio Amachree | Stockholm, Sweden | President, Worldview International