By Chris Udochukwu
A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba, is dead.
Na’Abba, the second Speaker of the House of Representatives in the current 4th Republic, died in the wee hours of Wednesday.
The details surrounding the circumstances of his death as at the time of this report have not been ascertained, but Ghali was a diabetic patient.
Precise Post recalls that he was elected Member of the House of Representatives in 1999 from Kano State. He became the Speaker a few months after the inauguration of the House following the resignation of the then Speaker, Salisu Buhari, from the same Kano State, over certificate forgery scandal.
Na’Abba CFR was born 27 September 1958, into the family of Alhaji Umar Na’Abba, a businessman in Tudun Wada, Kano City, Kano Municipal Local Government on 27 September 1958.
His father was a firm disciplinarian and an Islamic scholar.
His father taught him virtues of hard work, entrepreneurship, forthrightness, audacity, sincerity, dynamism, liberal disposition, prudence, modesty and strong religious inclination.
His early education was at Jakara Primary School, Kano where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate in 1969.
He later attended Rumfa College, Kano for his West African School Certificate and was also at School of Preliminary Studies, Kano, between 1974 and 1976, before gaining admission into Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in October, 1976.
He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1979.
He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1979.
He completed a postgraduate programme on Leadership and Good Governance at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in the United States in 2004.
He served as Speaker of the House, and led several international bodies on parliament at the wake of the millennium.
He has also attended, chaired and presented papers at several international seminars, conferences on politics, parliament, development and good governance.
Among them were Conference of Presiding Officers of National Parliaments held in New York in 2000; West African Speakers Conferences held in 2000 and 2001 in Ouagadougou and Abuja respectively; Commonwealth Parliamentary Association annual conferences held variously in 1999, 2000, 2001 at Trinidad and Tobago, London and Melbourne, Australia and several others.
He was elected as representative for the Kano Municipal Federal constituency in April 1999, on the PDP ticket.
He was appointed Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee before he was elected speaker of the House of Representatives.
