Dr. Frederick Fasehun, best known for founding the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), clocks 89 years old posthumously.
He died, aged 84, at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital on December 1, 2018.
Fasehun was also Africa’s first Acupuncturist.
Ondo-born Frederick Isiotan Fasehun (1935-2018) was a Nigerian medical doctor, hotel owner and leader of the OPC, that he founded in 1994.
He studied science at Blackburn College and furthered his education at Aberdeen University College of Medicine. He also studied at the Liverpool Postgraduate School after which he had a Fellowship at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1976, he studied acupuncture in China under a joint World Health Organization and United Nations Development Scholarship Program.
In 1977, he set up an Acupuncture Unit at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. He resigned in 1978 and immediately set up the Besthope Hospital and Acupuncture Centre in Lagos. The Acupuncture Centre once earned a reputation as Africa’s first for the Chinese medical practice.
The OPC is Yoruba-based organization formed to actualize the annulled mandate of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, a Yoruba who won the presidential election of 12 June 1993 but was barred from office. Fasehun was imprisoned for 19 months from December 1996 to June 1998 during the military rule of Sani Abacha, only ending 18 days after Abacha’s death.
