Since they left public office, they are no longer visible. ELEOJO IDACHABA in this piece asks where they are now.
Ibrahim Bunu
Architect Ibrahim Bunu aws the first person to be appointed as minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) between 1999, when the country returned to democratic rule, and 2001, before he was removed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in a major cabinet reshuffle. Bunu is said to be the one who designed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) headquarters which is one of the most attractive buildings in the Central Business District of the nation’s capital. However, under him as the FCT minister, a number of federal government houses and property in the territory were sold in a manner that angered the Senate which prompted them to invite him to defend the role he played in the sale of those houses.
From 2001, when he left as minister, nothing was heard about him until former President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him to head the federal government’s Project Assessment Committee, an appointment that drew criticisms because it was viewed that the anomalies he was appointed to investigate leading to his appointment were committed under him as minister of the FCT.
Earlier, in April 2008, the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) summoned him and other former FCT ministers to defend their actions with respect to land allocations, revocations and sale of federal government houses during their tenure. This Ngala-born Borno state indigene has been conspicuously missing for some time now. Analysts are of the views that if someone like him was around, he may have made his own modest contributions especially to the insurgency problem in the North-east.
Sarah Ochekpe
Sarah Reng Ochekpe hails from Barkin Ladi local government area of Plateau state. Even though she had been in the public service since 1989, both in her home state and Abuja at the directorate level in Plateau SUBEB and NOA headquarters in Abuja, what brought her to limelight was when former President Goodluck Jonathan appointed her as the minister of water resources, a position she occupied between 2001 and 2015, before the life of that administration ended. It was under her as minister that the first alert about the danger of earth tremor from the proliferation of boreholes in the country was first reported for which she announced that government was considering the option of placing a ban on illicit digging of boreholes in every part of the country.
Ochekpe, who is married to a Benue state-born professor of pharmacy at the University of Jos, has however been away from public glare despite the fact that age is said to still be on her side. Analysts are of the view that it’s as a result of her trial before a Federal High Court over her alleged involvement in the withdrawal of N145 million from the coffers of the federal government. She was one of the prominent female faces in the then Federal Executive Council (FEC). It was said that under her as water resources minister, there was no major improvement in the sector. In fact, speaking at a ministerial platform in Abuja in 2014 about the water situation in the country, she said it would be impossible for Nigeria to have potable water due to the cost of distribution and maintenance.
She had said, “It is not possible for water to be free because it so expensive to process. There is the use of reservoir, building treatment plant, chemical, payment to professionals and channelling of water to homes.” All these continued until that administration was voted out. It is believed that she still has a lot to offer the country, but no one has heard anything about her now for nearly five years.
Rita Akpan
Rita Akpan is a former minister and at another time, she was a commissioner as well as special adviser in her home state of Akwa Ibom. She was the minister of women affairs under former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cabinet between 2003 and June 2005. Before then, she had worked as a teacher and rose to become the vice-principal of the Federal Government College, Calabar. A former governor of Akwa Ibom state, Victor Attah, appointed her as secretary to the state government during his first tenure in 1999. She was before then a cabinet member of Akpan Isemin’s administration in the early 1990s before she was appointed as special adviser on information and culture in 1992. It was gathered that in October 2004 as minister, during a workshop on the socio-economic implications of human trafficking and child labour, she said Nigeria was the first and only country in West Africa to enact anti-human trafficking act.
In January 2005, to be precise, she introduced, as part of a reform, the second periodic report on Nigeria to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, saying Nigeria had taken concrete steps towards the Rights of the Child Convention since it had presented its initial report. Despite her modest contributions to the development of women and children, she however fell out of favour with President Obasanjo because of her alleged closeness to Victor Attah who had fallen out with Obasanjo on the ground of policy differences. As a result of this, she was dropped from Obasanjo’s cabinet. It was during her tenure as minister of women affairs that the news about vaginal fistula broke out in Nigeria, especially in the northern part of the country.
According to the United Nations report then, “Nigeria may have one of the highest rates of fistula in the world. It is estimated that as many as 800,000 women could be living with fistula in the country, with another 20,000 new cases each year.” Long after this Akwa Ibom state-born trained teacher left the cabinet, nothing has been heard about her again.
