Long after they left office years back, not much has been heard about them again; ELEOJO IDACHABA in this piece asks where they could be now.
Farouk Lawan
Farouk Lawan is a former lawmaker who was popularly referred to as ‘Mr. Integrity’ while serving in the House of Representatives where he represented the people of Bagwa/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano state between 1999 and 2015.
That means he served four consecutive tenures in the lower chamber.
Lawan earned himself the name Mr. Integrity because he was said to lead a number of lawmakers who belonged to ‘The Integrity Group’ that was opposed to House’s former speaker, Mrs. Patricia Etteh, over allegations bothering on award of contracts.
However, Lawan himself was later implicated in another major bribery scandal involving Femi Otedola’s Zenon Oil to the tune of $500,000 in which he was alleged to have received as part payment of an initial $3 million agreed in that deal.
What made his own predicament more interesting was the fact that he was the chairman of the House ad-hoc committee that investigated the fuel subsidy scam after former President Goodluck Jonathan removed subsidy in 2012.
Following his indictment in the said bribery allegation, his travails began right from there until the end of that tenure in 2015.
This lawmaker who was one of the most vocal voices in the lower chamber was to said to have suddenly developed cold feet on any matter during debate as he became quiet and withdrawn to himself.
That was when he began to maintain a low profile as if to suggest that he never wanted anyone to notice him anymore.
Lawan, whose political career was on a steady rise, was adjudged a potential governorship candidate of Kano for the 2015 election before the scandal.
Writing about him, a major newspaper said in its editorial that, “Although pint-sized, those familiar with his operation said the fear of Lawan was the beginning of wisdom especially by heads of agencies his committee supervises.
He commanded respect from his then colleagues and each time he spoke either on the floor or during any other legislative engagements; other lawmakers listened with rapt attention.” However, since he left the lower chamber, no one has heard anything about him again.
Chinwe Obaji
Mrs. Chinwe Obaji is an educationist, teacher and professor; she was the minister of education between June 2005 and 2006.
Obiageli Ezekwesili was later appointed in 2006 to replace her after she was affected in a cabinet reshuffle.
It was under her watch as minister that the now-famous post-UME started as she directed that universities should administer the Post University Matriculation Examination to candidate students in an effort to by-pass what she called the inefficiency of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Expectedly, President Obasanjo called for enhanced support for the policy.
However, there was controversy over the fees charged by universities for the test but in October 2005 after a meeting between the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, it was agreed to peg the test fee at N1, 000.
The controversy that emanated from the policy was without limits as other institutions like polytechnics, colleges of education and others began to seek ways of administering such tests for their candidate students.
Writing on its fall-out, Atayi-Babs Ezekiel Opaluwa said, “Chinwe Obaji, Nigeria’s first female substantive minister of education since 1958 when the ministry was created decided, in her own wisdom and with presidential approval, to curb the problem of the absence of correlation between JAMB scores and the actual performance of candidates by directing individual universities to further screen candidates seeking admission after obtaining their JAMB results.
She went further to add in a recent publication that the screening exercise will take care of all kinds of ills in the universities as it will make sure that it is only those students who are ready to learn that are given admission.”
Upon implementation of the directive by the nation’s universities, widespread condemnation and discontentment reverberated far across the land, thus leading to a nullification of the directive and an order to return to the status quo ante coming from the House of Representatives.
However while justifying the policy many months after her exit from the cabinet, Obaji said, “When I came in 2005, I was already angry with the system because I had taught for 25 years and I knew there was no correlation between JAMB scores and actual performance of students in the class; I knew that things were growing worse and worse. You had graduates who if you asked them a question, they would answer you: ‘I does not know.’ I also knew that we had ‘miracle centres’ all over the place.
The rot was already there.” For a long while now, this former minister has been away from public glare and it is not clear if she has returned to the ivory tower.
Halima Tayo Alao
Mrs. Halima Tayo Alao once served in the cabinet of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as minister of environment and later as minister of housing.
She was earlier in the administration of Chief Obasanjo as minister of state for health between 2005 and 2006.
The stewardship of this woman from Kwara state in the administration of Yar’Adua, however, did not last long owing to certain altercation she was alleged to have had with Chuka Udom, her minister of state in the Ministry of Housing.
Her rise to political prominence began as a civil servant in Kwara State Civil Service where she worked and rose to the position of permanent secretary and sole administrator of Ilorin-south local government.
After this trained-architect-turned politician left office as minister of housing, scandal about her alleged involvement in the scandalous resale of federal government property in Lagos to a business man in the tune of over N100 million began to resurface.
She, however, denied the allegation, describing it as “absolute falsehood.” According to her, “The story alleges act of financial impropriety against me while in office.
I wish to deny categorically any involvement in the alleged improper sale of any property whether in Lagos or anywhere else for that matter.” Since then nothing has been heard about her again.
