Nigeria’s former permanent representative to the United Nations and foremost elder statesman, Dr. Yusuf Maitama Sule, is dead. He was 88 years old.
According to report reaching us, Dr. Yusuf Maitama Sule died in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt in the early hours of today, Monday, after a brief illness.
His death was announced by one N. A Sheriff, in a Face book posting.
Also, the former President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Alhaji Haliru Baba Dantiye, confirmed to our publisher, through cell phone, that the doyen of politics is actually dead. Dantiye is a political son of Maitama.
He said: “Allah has taken the soul of our father.”
The deceased, a confirmed orator, was born in 1929 and taught in secondary school between 1948 and1955 and a visiting teacher between 1955 and 1958. He was elected; Minister of Mines and Power and served between 1959 and 1966.
He was leader of a delegation to Conference of Independent African States, Addis Ababa 1960 and proposed resolution at conference that led to creation of Organization of African Unity (OAU)).
He was minister of National Guidance between 1983 and 1984. He bagged an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Bayero University in 1989.
The Wikipedia rendition of the life and time of Maitama Sule said he was a Nigerian politician, acclaimed orator and diplomat.
In 1976, he became the Federal Commissioner of public complaints, a position that made him the nation’s pioneer ombudsman. In early 1979, he was a presidential candidate of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) but lost to Alhaji Shehu Shagari. He was appointed Nigeria’s representative to the United Nations after the coming of civilian rule in September 1979. While there he was chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid.
After the re-election of President Shagari in 1983, Maitama Sule was made the Minister for National Guidance, a portfolio designed to assist the President in tackling corruption. [myad]
