Dr. Obadiah Mailafia
By Our Reporter
Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr. Obadiah Mailafia is dead. He reportedly died at the National Hospital at the age of 64.
He was the Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress in the 2019 election and was a known government critic and had advocated for public sector and exchange rate reforms.
Mailafia was born on December 24, 1956, in the Sanga Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
He later graduated top of his class at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1978 with a B.Sc. Honours Social Sciences degree (Politics, Economics, and Sociology). He also has an M.Sc. from the same institution.
He subsequently won a French Government Scholarship to France, where he earned a Certificate in French Language and Civilisation from the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1985.
Mailafia later proceeded to the United Kingdom as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholar at Oriel College, earning a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1995.
He joined partisan politics in 2018 amid the rising killings in Southern Kaduna.
Despite losing, he remained an ardent government critic and got into trouble with security operatives when he alleged that a governor from the northern part of the country is the leader of the Boko Haram terror group.
The DSS described Mailafia’s comments as “fake news” designed to create “unnecessary tension” in the country.
He was invited several times by the police and the Department of State Security forcing him to recant his statement.
Mailafia had said while he honoured one of the invitations by the DSS that he was unnecessarily harassed and intimidated.
“I do not know why I have been invited yet again, this has nothing to do with politics. I spoke as a citizen of this country, who loves the people of this country.
“I am the voice of thousands of voiceless people; Muslim youths have taken me as their voice, Christian youths have taken me as their voice; thousands of people have been killed in this country, in Borno, in Yobe, in Adamawa, in Katsina, in Daura, in Birnin-Gwari, in Zamfara, in Niger, in Southern Kaduna, in Benue, in Plateau, all over the country.
“Even the other day, a pregnant woman was killed in Bayelsa. I am the voice of the holy martyrs, and if I perish, I perish.”
