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Fifi Ekanem Ejindu is a Nigerian Architect, businesswoman and philanthropist. Born in Ibadan, Nigeria, she is the great granddaughter of King James Ekpo Bassey of Cobham Town in Calabar, Nigeria, and her father, Professor Sylvester Joseph Una, is from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
Biography
Princess Fifi is the great granddaughter of King James Ekpo Bassey of Cobham Town in Calabar, Nigeria. Her mother’s grandfather was crowned King of Cobham Town by Queen Victoria in 1893. Princess Fifi goes by the title of Her Highness Obonganwan King James.
Offiong Ekanem Ejindu was born and raised in Ibadan, the Capital of Oyo State, Nigeria.
Her father Professor Sylvester Joseph Una studied at the Trinity College in Dublin and Brown University in the United States. He was the first Minister of Health in the former eastern region of Nigeria, and a member of the House of Parliament pre-independence. He then pursued an academic career and became one of the first indigenous lecturers at the University of Ibadan. Princess Fifi’s mother, Her Highness Obonganwan Ekpa Una, was also educated in England.
Princess Fifi attended the Senior Staff Primary School at the university campus and later attended secondary school at Queens College, Yaba, Lagos.
Fifi then went on to study architecture at Pratt Institute, a private design college in Brooklyn, New York. In 1983 she graduated from Pratt, becoming the first black African woman to be awarded a B.Arch. from the institute. After graduating, Fifi took courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before she went on to work at a private firm in New York City. Fifi then returned to Pratt Institute to get her Masters in Urban Planning after which she returned to Nigeria.
On her return to Nigeria, Ejindu started the Starcrest Group of companies. The company started in 1995, and comprises Starcrest Investment Ltd., Starcrest Associates Ltd. and Starcrest Industries Ltd, all involved in real estate, oil and gas, and building construction.
Princess Fifi describes her style of architecture as Neo-traditional which she defines as “building a new project [with] new materials, but with traditional and old style details and features” and hence most of her projects, as she explains, bring back the Renaissance period.
In 2013, she was awarded the African Achievers African Arts and Fashion Lifetime Achievement award.