Second Republic Minister of Transportation, Alhaji Umaru Dikko, is dead. Credible online newspaper, Premium Times, quoted Dikko’s son, Dr. Bello, as confirming the demise of his father.
He was reported to have died in a London hospital in the early hours of Tuesday. Family sources claimed he had suffered three strokes in a row and he had been ill for a while.
Dikko was 78.
Dikko was a trusted adviser to President Shehu Shagari. He was also the Nigerian Minister for Transportation from 1979-1983. 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 Kastina 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.
A military coup on December 31, 1983 overthrew the government of Shagari. Dikko fled into exile in London as well as a few other ministers and party officials of the National Party of Nigeria. The new military regime accused him of large-scale corruption while in office, in particular of embezzling millions of dollars from the nation's oil revenues.
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