Popular northern elder and former Minister of Transportation in the Second Republic, Umaru Dikko, is dead.
Dikko, 78, died at a London hospital on Tuesday after he suffered stroke, according to his son, Dr. Bello Dikko.
Umaru Dikko was a Nigerian politician and an adviser to former President Shehu Shagari. He was also the Nigerian minister for Transportation from 1979 to 1983. 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 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 (NPN). During the nation’s Second Republic, he played prominent roles as transport minister and head of the presidential task force on rice.
When a military coup on 31st December 1983, overthrew the government of Shagari, Dikko fled into exile in London with a few other ministers and party officials of NPN. The new military regime accused him of large-scale corruption while in office, particularly of embezzling millions of dollars from the nation’s oil revenues.
On 5th July 1984, he played the central role in the “Dikko Affair”; he was found at Stansted Airport, London drugged and packed in a crate that was labelled as ‘Diplomatic Baggage.’ The crate’s destination was Lagos. Dikko was an apparent victim of a government sanctioned kidnapping.
