These former public officers served the country meritoriously while in office. Long after their exits, not much has been heard about them again as SUNNY IDACHABA writes.
Kema Chikwe
She was a minister of transport as well as aviation at different times in the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Her last known public office was when she served as Nigeria’s ambassador to Ireland and also as chairman, Joint Administration and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in 2014. While serving as a minister, she was often described as ‘Obasanjo girl’ not just because of her charm, but because she was, of course, one of the women in that cabinet who called the shots. At many forums, this mother and grandmother dispelled the insinuation, saying, “If at all it’s true, I don’t see why they should refer to me as the president’s girl because there were six of the ladies in his cabinet. I was really tough in a man’s job and the chauvinistic environment was quite volatile, but I tried to hold firm.”
As a woman with great political sagacity, Mrs. Chikwe, after she returned to the country from Israel, ran for governor of her state of Imo, but lost because the ambition was novel as no woman had ever aspired to that position in that part of the country. It was gathered that she recently celebrated her birthday, and that while addressing an international women conference, she admonished women never to play the role of a second fiddle. She rather enjoined them to be in the forefront with all their abilities, charging them, “I tell women aspiring to become politicians to be very prepared for it. It’s not enough to just desire to hold an elective position; you must be ready to walk the talk because politics is like smoking marijuana.”
She is although said to be the national women leader of the opposition PDP, yet may be because of age, she seems to be quiet unlike the agility with which carried out her assignments when she was in the government.
Roland Owie
Senator Roland Owie who once represented Edo South in the Senate between 1999 and 2003 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has not been able to find a space in public office since then even though he has tried a return bid several times in the past. His forays into politics started way back in the Second Republic when he served as a lawmaker in the House of Representatives. While in the Senate, Owie was made the chairman, Committee on Senate Services, Power and Steel, Agriculture, Water Resources, among others.
This former Senate Chief Whip, but now a chieftain of Action Democratic Party (ADP), is said to be planning a return to the red chamber, a place he left since 2003. Expressing disgust with the state of the nation about the immediate past administration during an interview, he was quoted to have said, “This government has brought so much hate, shedding of innocent blood and wickedness that a true child of God like the vice president should not be part of. President Buhari should sleep and ask God to allow him to have access to Idi Amin and Mobutu Seseko, and then he will know that he needs to change now from his compassionless ways and live the path of justice and equity. How do we trust a government that abolished fuel subsidy and increased fuel to N145 per litre but silently paid subsidy?”
He is no doubt someone whose wealth of knowledge is still being sought by the society, especially his home state of Edo, even though he is said to be no longer visible.
Prof Iya Abubakar
If there is anything that once stood Prof. Iya Abubakar out, apart from being a former minister, academician and lawmaker, it is the fact that he was the youngest professor of mathematics to have come out of the northern part of the country at a time when the region was largely classified as educationally backward.
Born in the present Adamawa state, he was very prominent in the second republic when he held several cabinet appointments under former President Shehu Shagari.
A first class graduate of mathematics from the prestigious University of Ibadan, he rose to become a professor and later the vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria. Just before he took what analysts often referred to as a well-deserved rest, Prof Iya contested and won the senatorial seat of Adamawa North where he represented his people between 1999 and 2007.
Since then, he has been away from in public office either due to age or health, but at a function to commemorate ABU’s alumni annual public lecture in Abuja recently, this erudite scholar made another impressionable appearance when he spoke about the state of education in the country, saying that for higher education to take its place, the Act establishing the National Universities Commission (NUC) should be amended.
He had said, “The only way to sustain educational standards is to ensure that the extant provision of the education Act only empowers NUC and its sister agencies to close down illegal institutions without provision of sanction for their operations.”
Speaking about ABU, he said, “If we resolve to recreate ABU and take it back to international standard, we must imbibe the international culture of having a vibrant alumni.”
While in the Senate, he was very prominent among his colleagues such that he chaired the committee on Finance and Appropriation and later Science and Technology. He is no doubt one of the finest brains to have come out of the north whose legacies in academia are worth celebrating even as he appears to bid farewell to active public service.
Not much has been heard about him lately.
