Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the Obasanjo administration, Engineer Mohammed Abba Gana, has paid glowing tribute to former Vice-President, Dr Alex Ekwueme, who died last week.

Engr. Gana described the death of Dr Ekwueme as the departure of a great Nigerian leader and statesman, asserting that Dr Ekwueme was a trusted and tested democrat, a proven patriot and nationalist who was “second to none team player”.

Engr. Gana is saying that the nation, more than the family, is in sorrow for losing a nation builder and a just and dependable leader. He describes Ekwueme’s acceptance of defeat in the 1999 presidential primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Jos as an act which sowed the seed for what he called enduring democracy and democratic order and rule of law Nigeria now enjoys. He must be referring to what would have happened to the PDP if Dr Ekwueme had rejected the emergence of the Obasanjo candidature and perhaps decamped to the Alliance for Democracy (AD) – All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) alliance.

Engineer Abba Gana who signed his statement as a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP also argued that the late Ekwueme’s contributions to the 1994/5 National Constitutional Conference as well as leadership of the G-34 made him a remarkable leader with courage, intellect and wisdom, proclaiming the departed former Vice-President a hero of the fight for democracy in Nigeria.

Engineer Gana was a member of the team that campaigned for Dr Ekwueme’s presidential bid in 1999, along with Major Bala Shagari (rtd), Chief Audu Ogbeh, late Ali Baba who was Shagari’s minister of Internal Affairs, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Alhaji Ashiek Jarma from Borno State and Aminu Wali from Kano, among others. They were under the leadership of Adamu Ciroma, working on the principle that, as the Vice-President to Shagari, Ekwueme was the next in line for presidential leadership in the event of the military quitting the scene.

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