Aigboje Higo; Nigerian publisher whose industry and resourcefulness brought Heinemann Educational Publishers UK into reckoning in Nigeria. When in 1964, Heinemann wanted to establish shop in Nigeria, it settled for Aigboje Higo who was at the time a school principal content with his job. Higo wrote back rejecting the offer but after more pressing, and a meeting in Akure, he accepted their offer and resumed in January 1965, starting a long career at the publishing firm.
Higo was encouraged to study English by Bishop Kale, his principal at St. Andrews College, Oyo and he opted for University of Ibadan, UI, Nigeria’s only university of the day. Students like him who had been to St. Andrews College before coming to UI were fairly older than the straight-from-secondary-school boys who were mockingly called SACOBA. Higo attended UI between 1956 and in 1959 for a degree in English. He secured a Commonwealth scholarship to do post graduate studies at Leeds University, UK. In 1960, he came out with a distinction and was allowed to do his masters at Oxford University. He completed this in 1962. He returned to take up appointment at St. Andrews College, Oyo as Senior English Master before being appointed the founding principal of Otuo Anglican Grammar School, Edo State.
Higo took a job with Heinemann in 1965, his brief covering the whole of West Africa, from Cameroon to Gambia became the Healthcare progenitor of Heinemann Publishers in Nigeria. Even when he retired as CEO in 1994, he was retained as Chairman and Consultant.
