Victor Adetunji Haffner
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Victor Adetunji Haffner | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1 September 1919 |
| Died | 5 November 2015 (aged 96) |
| Occupation | Telecom engineer |
| Known for | President of the Administrative Council of the International Telecommunication Union |
Victor Adetunji Haffner (1 September 1919 – 5 November 2015) was a Nigerian communications engineer. He was trained as an engineer in England during the colonial era, then returned to Nigeria in 1956 where he held increasingly senior positions in the state-owned Nigerian PTT (Post, Telegraph and Telephone) or its NET subsidiary. He represented Nigeria in various international telecom forums. In 1975 he was dismissed by the military regime, and became a consultant to a large Japanese company for many years.
Victor Adetunji Haffner was of creole descent, born at Haffner Street in Central Lagos on 1 September 1919. His family originated in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and migrated to Nigeria after slavery was abolished. His mother, Victoria Adepeju, was a niece of the lawyer John Augustus Otunba Payne (1839–1906), first African registrar of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. His father, Frederick Mathew Haffner, was a civil servant in the Lagos City Council.[1] His mother was born in Lagos into a family that originated in Ibadan, and his father was from Abeokuta.[2]
Haffner attended Christ Church School at Faji in Lagos for his primary education and then went on to CMS Grammar School, Lagos.[3] He was a classmate of Akintola Williams at the CMS Grammar School, and they remained friends for life.[1] Haffner passed the senior Cambridge Examination in 1938 with high marks, and was exempted from the London Matriculation Examination. He moved to England where he attended Northampton Polytechnic, now City University, London and the Regent Street Polytechnic, London. He graduated from the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1954 and joined the Nigerian Department of Posts and Telegraphs, who sponsored his further training with the British Post Office, and Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in Chelmsford, England.[3]