Former governor and ex-women’s affairs minister, Aisha Al-Hassan, popularly called ‘Mama Taraba,’ has died at the age of 61.
According to reports, she died in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, on Friday, May 7.
Here are some facts to know about the lawyer and politician.
1. Aisha Jummai Al-Hassan was born on 16 September 1959 in Jalingo, Taraba State.
2. Her father, Alhaji Abubakar Ibrahim, was a member of the House of Representatives in the First Republic.
3. She attended Muhammed Nya Primary School, Jalingo, and LEA Primary School, Tudun Wada, Kaduna, before proceeding to Saint Faith College (now GGSS), Kawo, Kaduna, where she studied between Jan. 1973 and June 1977.
4. She studied law at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, and was called to the Bar in 1986.
5. Al-Hassan started work as a Magistrate Grade II in April 1988 in the Kaduna State Judiciary before she went for the Technical Aid Corps Programme of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs (on secondment) to the Republic of Fiji from 1990 to 1992.
6. She was admitted to the Fijian Bar and enrolled as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of Fiji in 1991. While she was in Fiji, her services were transferred from the Kaduna State Judiciary to the FCT Judiciary in 1991 as Magistrate Grade I.
7. Al-Hassan is a woman of many firsts. She became the first female chief magistrate in the FCT in 1996; the first female attorney and commissioner of justice in Taraba State in 1997; the first female secretary of the FCT Judicial Service Committee in 2002; and the first female chief registrar of the FCT High Court in 2003.
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8. She was elected senator representing the Taraba North senatorial district under PDP in the April 9, 2011, elections, making her one of the four women elected on the PDP ticket.
9. She became the first woman in Nigeria to become a governor in 2015 when a tribunal removed Taraba Governor Darius Ishaku and declared her the winner of the 11 April 2015 poll. This decision was again reversed by the Appeal and Supreme Courts of Nigeria.
10. She was appointed in 2015 as minister of women’s affairs by President Muhammadu Buhari, but she resigned on 27 July 2018 to contest for the 2019 elections.
11. She is widely known as “Mama Taraba” because of her influence in the politics of her state.
12. She met her first husband and the father of her three children as a student in 1979. Her husband, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, was then deputy vice chancellor of her school and later became the vice chancellor three months after their marriage.