Born in Warri, Delta State, of an Itsekiri father and a mother of mixed race, he received his secondary school education at King's College, Lagos, and obtained an LLB.
Part of Philip Begho's elementary education was received at Grange School, Ikeja, Lagos, but when his father, who had been a chief magistrate at Ikeja, was transferred to Benin City and subsequently appointed a judge in the newly created Mid-Western Region,[3] he continued his elementary education there at Emotan Private School.
In 1967 he was admitted to King's College, Lagos and began writing at the age of eleven for the two school publications – The Searchlight and The Mermaid.
He represented his school and Lagos State in athletic competitions, excelling in the high jump and pole vault events, and was appointed vice-school captain in his final year.
A few months after his call to the bar in 1978, Philip Begho was drafted into the National Youth Service Corps and posted to Jos in Plateau State, where his primary assignment was as a researcher in the Police Staff College at Bukuru.
But the imperatives of earning a living meant he first had to take up a job, so when in 1979 he was invited to join the law firm of a former lecturer of his, he readily agreed.
He completed three novels before his money ran out, and two of them – Alero: of Dreams... and The Lecturer’s Dilemma – were accepted for publication by African Universities Press.
He practised law[2] from 1984 until he relocated temporarily in 1987 to the UK But before he left he had written and published the first edition of Company Formation: Precedents on Objects of Incorporation.
So, engaging in cleaning jobs that lasted only a few hours in the evenings, he toiled away in the afternoons in libraries, training for a writing career.
Riding the tiger-back of the power outages and social unrest that characterised Lagos in 1993, he started and completed Daniel, another verse play.
[5] The cast featured such leading lights of the Nigerian stage as Joke Silva, Ayo Lijadu and Ihria Enakimio,[6] and since then there have been several re-runs.
[10] As for style, Philip Begho, even in his prose, embraces drama with a strong appetite, and his stories and plots do not shy away from the sensational, thus lighting up the face of serious issues.