Name Arthur Prest Role Politician | Died September 26, 1976 | |
Chief Arthur Edward Prest (February 10, 1906 – September 26, 1976) was an Itsekiri politician of biracial heritage from the Warri division of southern Nigeria.
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Life
Prest was born in February 1906 to a white English father from Liverpool and an Itsekiri Nigerian mother. He was an officer of the Nigerian police force prior to his nomination as a representative of the Warri district in the Western Regional House of Assembly.
In 1950 he and Anthony Enahoro founded the Mid-West Party. Enahoro had already started the Mid-West Press and he published the Nigerian newspaper from 1950 to 1953. The Mid-West Party became part of the Action Group in 1951.
Prest was later made regional minister at Ibadan and deputy leader to Obafemi Awolowo, he was subsequently appointed federal minister for communications in 1952. He left the Action Group in 1957.
In 1960 he and his wife Mabel had a son, Anthony Tosan Prest.
In 1971, he was involved in a prominent court case. Then, he challenged the Itsekiri Communal Lands Trust which wanted to use the purported overlord rights of the Olu of Warri over lands in Warri. The overlord rights would have given the trust indirect ownership of all lands including overriding the rights of ownership of landlords. However, the communal lands trust lost the case.
He was an Olorogun due to being appointed a traditional chieftain.
Prest died in 1976. His son Chief Anthony Tosan Prest is a businessperson based in Lagos but active in Delta State politics. His grand-daughter is Helen Prest-Ajayi, a former Miss Nigeria in 1979; while his grand-son is Michael Prest, the millionaire brought to fame from the Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd case in London.