A FORMER Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na”Abba has reportedly died in the early hours of Wednesday in Abuja.
A family source told this newspaper that the former lawmaker died in an Abuja hospital following a brief illness.
Ghali Umar Na’Abba CFR was born into the family of Alhaji Umar Na’Abba, a businessman in Tudun Wada, Kano City, Kano Municipal Local Government on 27 September 1958.
Na’Abba was a political scientist and a policy architect. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1979. 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 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.
