Obafemi Awolowo University is a government-owned and -operated Nigerian university. The university is in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. The university was founded in 1962 as the University of Ife by the regional government of Western Nigeria led by late chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola and was renamed Obafemi Awolowo University on May 12, 1987 in honour of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909–1987), the first Nigerian premier of the Western Region of Nigeria. The decision to establish the University of Ife by the ruling Action Group party of the Western Region of Nigeria was in protest at the recommendations of the Ashby commission. The first Nigerian university was established in 1948 at Ibadan, in the western region as an external college of the university of London. However, the needs of Nigeria (then a British colony) far outstripped the productivity of the only university. In particular the University College at Ibadan had no faculty of engineering or technology, no law school, no pharmacy school or management training abilities. The Ashby commission, set up by the British, was to review tertiary education needs of the soon-to-be-independent nation of Nigeria.