The renowned Politician and former Minister of Transportation during Nigeria’s Second Republic, Umaru Dikko, is Dead.
Confirming his death, his son, Dr. Bello Dikko and another family member, said Mr Dikko had been sick for “quite some time”.
Mr. Dikko, 78, died early on Tuesday in a London hospital. He suffered three strokes in a row, a family member disclosed.
He was a member of the National Party of Nigeria, which was the ruling party then and was known as one of the most powerful ministers under the Shehu Shagari’s regime in the early 1980s.
When the military ousted the regime via a coup d’etat in 1983, Mr. Dikko escaped to the UK on exile.
Dikko was born in Wamba. He started playing a role in the nation’s governance in 1967, when he was appointed as a commissioner in the then North Central State of Nigeria (now Kaduna State).
He was also secretary of a committee set up by General Hassan Katsina to unite the Northerners after a coup in 1966.
In 1979, he was made Shagari’s campaign manager for the successful presidential campaign of the National Party of Nigeria. During the nation’s Second Republic, he played prominent roles as Transport Minister and head of the presidential task force on rice.
After the coup, the military regime led by the then Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, accused Dikko of massive corruption and official graft and thus secretly organised his kidnapping from the streets of London.
His abductors were later arrested by the UK police as they tried to ship him through Stansed airport in London. He later returned to the country.