A socio-cultural group, Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) has mourned the death of Chief Innocent Nwoga, a former Minister of Establishment, who passed on at the age of 85.
In a statement signed by Mr Abia Onyike, Chairman, ADF Bureau of Media & Publicity, it described Nwoga as a leading light and an iconic figure in the development of Igboland and Nigeria.
According to the statement, Chief Nwoga made some epochal contributions in Igbo nationalism, by pioneering the Ahiajoku Lecture Series in Imo state, which provided a new bastion for Igbo renaissance in the first decade of the post-civil war era.
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Onyike in the statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) described Nwoga, who was a minister in 1991 as a man full of experience and commitment, whose political experience would be missed.
“This is just as his highly valued counsels will be missed,’’he said.
Nwoga served as a member of the first Ahiajoku Organising Committee in 1979 and later headed the Committee for subsequent series of the annual intellectual harvest.
He was one of the founding fathers of ADF, which began in 2014 with the Enugu Colloquium on the Igbo Question in Nigeria.
Son of Chief P.O.Nwoga of Ekwerazu Mbaise, a former minister in Eastern Nigeria, Innocent Nwoga attended Stella Maris College, Port-Harcourt.
He later went to the University of Belfast and Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
A consummate and seasoned administrator, Innocent Nwogu began his civil service career as a Divisional Officer in the defunct Eastern Region.
He became the Deputy Head of Biafran Fuel Directorate during the Nigeria-Biafra war, Chief of Staff in East Central State and was one of the longest serving permanent secretaries in the old Imo state.