Where these individuals who made news years back could be after their meritorious service to their father land is not certain; ELEOJO IDACHABA wonders where they could be now in this piece.
Mike Ahamba
Chief Mike Ahamba, conferred with the title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) in 1992, was the legal counsel to Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) before they parted ways. He is a household name as far as the country’s legal matters are concerned as he’s in every respect a legal luminary. Chief Ahamba’s professional experience spans over a vast area of adjudicative and procedural laws. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK), among others. He was appointed a notary public in 1991 and SAN on July 20, 1992.
Ahamba studied Law at the University of Maiduguri and graduated in 1981. His first work experience was as a legal trainee in Kano after which he worked with Legal Resources Consortium in Imo state from 1986 to 1988, before he established Mike Ahamba & Associates in 1989.
Chief Ahamba is a member of various professional and social organisations and has presented several papers on various issues of law and practice. Besides being a sportsman and ardent golfer, Chief Ahamba is also a humanitarian. His firm is one of the leading law chambers in the country with over two decades of operation and core experience in a wide range of national and international legal services. His firm has developed an enviable portfolio of clients cutting across various industries and economic sectors and has handled over 1,000 cases that have contributed to jurisprudence in Nigeria. The firm’s experience spans through commercial and financial transactions, corporate legal services, capital market operations, privatisation, telecommunication, maritime law, constitutional law, oil and gas and litigation.
As a constitutional lawyer, he has criticised the National Assembly for not initiating impeachment proceedings against presidents who have deployed troops in civil operations without their approval.
“The National Assembly should explain why they have not initiated impeachment proceedings against all these presidents. If you look at Section 143 of the constitution, breach of the constitution is impeachable.
“Now, things go wrong in this country because the institutions that are supposed to carry out the letters of the constitution have refused to do their work,” he said. Chief Ahamba has never occupied any public office, but he has been very vocal in private legal firms, especially election matters. However, in recent times, not much has been heard about him and it’s not clear where he is at the moment.
Hauwa Baba Ahmed
In the lineup of the foremost newscasters the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) has ever paraded, the name Hauwa Baba Ahmed now Hauwa Shaibu stands out. What is remarkable about her is the fact that at a time when it was viewed that owing to cultural and religious backgrounds, someone like her from the northern axis of the country cannot attain a celebrity status on live television, she did.
Hauwa, in the course of her job at the nation’s premier television station, combined beauty with intelligence in the discharge of her duties. Until 2018, when the NTA brought her and other former employees (now retired) back on the tube momentarily in commemoration of its 40th anniversary, not much was heard about her.
Speaking about her, a TV presenter with Arewa Television, Madinah Muazu, said she got her inspiration from Hauwa. According to Madinah, “Well, I can say that my career began when I used to watch the 7:00pm news presented by Hauwa Baba Ahmad on NTA Kaduna. I was actually inspired by her. I liked what she was doing to the extent that I ended up imitating her. I used to insert a cassette in a tape deck and record the news I read in newspapers as I saw her doing on TV.”
Scanty information about her has it that she later joined Larfage as the employee relations manager. Aside from this, not much has been heard about her in recent times.
Theophilus Bamigboye
He’s a former military officer who had served in senior administrative capacity as military administrator in many states like Bauchi, Osun and Kwara. As a matter of records, he was the first military administrator of Kwara state. Though alive, he is one man that had also been erroneously pronounced dead in the media. He was wrongly reported to have died in 2018 by one of the major newspapers in the country. However, the man who is said to be in his early 80s now, is still waxing strong despite his age.
To buttress that fact, he made a comment recently after Chief Obasanjo revealed the fulanisation and islamisation plan of the current administration in which some persons condemned the former president. Bamigboye said, “This is the problem we have. Somebody who is of the standing of Obasanjo, people should respect his opinion and statement. He could not have made that statement anyhow. In any case, you do not expect me to lambast my former Command-in-Chief. I am not good at that. But people who are doing it, should, for God’s sake, weigh it and then see reasons instead of castigating him. This is the way I look at him. This is a former head of state and respected elder statesman; I think people should respect his opinion instead of castigating him.”
Bamigboye who is now retired to his home state of Kwara was sometime in 2018 appointed to head a 30-man committee on Olomu stool, a traditional chieftaincy stool in Omu Aran community of Irepodun local government of the state. According to the chairman of the local government, Mr. Muyiwa Oladipo, “This committee has been put in place to give the community an auspicious and memorable coronation to depict maximum love and respect in line with our tradition.”
