Arthur Prest

At the Commonwealth Institute with Mr. Kenneth Bradley, C. M. G., (centre) Director of the Institute, and Chief Arthur Prest,(right) Acting High Commissioner for the Federation of Nigeria

Prest was born in February 1906 to a white English father from Liverpool who was a ship's captain and a colonialist and an Itsekiri Nigerian mother.He was an officer of the Nigerian police force the first Nigerian Police Commissioned Officer.He Studied Law In England and registered at the supreme court of Nigeria in 1947prior 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 wasdeputy leader to Obafemi Awolowo, he was subsequently appointed federal minister for communications in 1952. Prest, Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Anthony Enahoro and co fought for Nigeria's independence and attended the Lancaster House talks that negotiated and led Nigeria's independence. He left the Action Group in 1957.Prest wasHigh Commissioner for the Federation of Nigeria to the UK. 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 made theOlorogun Of Warri by the Olu Of Warri in 1946.Prest became a High Court Judge in the then Mid Western Region .

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.

• KWJ Post, The Nigerian Federal Election of 1959: Politics & Administration in a Developing Political System. Oxford, 1963
• Richard L Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation, Princeton, NJ, 1963
• Michael Vickers, Ethnicity & Sub-Nationalism in Nigeria: Movement for a Mid-West State, Oxford, 2000
• Michael Vickers, A Nation Betrayed: Nigeria & the Minorities Commission of 1957, Trenton, NJ, 2010