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By Ndubuisi Orji
Former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has passed on.
He died on Saturday afternoon in his Adetokunbo Ademola Street residence, Abuja.
A press statement released in Abuja by Chief Oliver Okpala, with the consent and approval of his first son Rt. Hon Awwal Tukur and his first daughter Lami, explained that the body of the Tafida of Adamawa would be flown to Adamawa immediately for necessary burial arrangements in keeping with the Islamic rites and injunctions.
The statement noted that sympathisers, close relations, political associates of the former governor of the old Gongola State, comprising Taraba and Adamawa, have already thronged his Abuja home to pay their last respect to the departed hero of Nigerian politics.
Reacting to his father’s death, his eldest son, Awwal Tukur, said it has happened according to the will of Allah.
He said that the family will take solace in the exemplary life their father lived and the monumental legacies he bequeathed to posterity while alive.
Tukur was the first African to address the United Nations Assembly in New York as a private person and non-head of a country or government.
In business, he was an acclaimed investor, entrepreneur and technocrat with ownership of multiple business conglomerates to his credit.
He became the chairman of the African business umbrella; the African Business Round Table (ABR.)
Dr. Tukur served Nigeria in different executive capacities as the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority and later, as its chairman.
Under his leadership most of the ports serving Nigeria today were built.
He was elected governor of old Gongola State, and also served as a federal minister.
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As the national chairman of the PDP, he brought sanity, progress, electoral victories and political decorum to the party.
He died two days to his 91st birthday.
He is survived by children and many grand and great grand children including, Rt Hon Awwal Tukur, who is the secretary to the government of Adamawa State.
His politics, legacies
The late elder statesman was an active player in the politics of the country, especially in the Second, Third and Fourth Republics.
Tukur, a former presidential aspirant on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC) in the botched Third Republic was born on September 15, 1935. He had served briefly as governor of old Gongola State, which now consists of Adamawa and Taraba states in the Second Republic. He was at different times the Minister of Industry and the President of the African Business Roundtable.
The late elder statesman had a chequered political history. The Adamawa-born politician emerged unopposed as the National Chairman of the PDP on March 24, 2012, after 10 other aspirants for the coveted seat withdrew from the contest, at the party’s National Convention, in Abuja. Ironically, less than one year into his four-year tenure, aggrieved party members started calling for his exit.
The former governor soon ran into troubled waters, as the PDP governors started plotting his exit. Tukur’s travails, those in the know say, was traced to his insistence on party supremacy, as well as his face-off with his state governor, Murtala Nyako, over the affairs of the then ruling party in Adamawa State. In the PDP when a National Chairman falls out of favour with his state governor, other governors elected on the platform take sides with their colleague. Therefore, while the former PDP chairman enjoyed the backing of then President Goodluck Jonathan, those opposed to the Adamawa politician relentlessly called for his ouster.
The crack in the PDP under Tukur’s leadership worsened in less than six months of his administration with the walkout of seven governors elected on the platform of the party, as well as their supporters and other leaders of the party, from the PDP National Convention on August 31, 2013. Five of the governors, including Rotimi Amaechi, Abdulftah Ahmed, Aliyu Wammako, Rabiu Kwankwaso and Nyako of Rivers, Kwara, Sokoto, Kano and Adamawa states respectively later joined the All Progressives Congress (APC), alongside former President Atiku Abubakar and Senator Bukola Saraki, among others.
In the aftermath of the defection, calls for the former Gongola governor to quit as PDP governor grew louder. Nonetheless, after a meeting with President Jonathan on June 18, 2013, Tukur dismissed speculations that he would resign as PDP National Chairman. He reportedly told reporters at the Presidential Villa that “It is not true that I am resigning. Resign for what? It is not true at all. We are here to run the PDP and we have done so and we will continue to run the PDP.”
After months of turmoil, President Jonathan, at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), in Abuja, announced Tukur’s resignation, stating that “he is not guilty of any offence and I am going to give him an assignment that is tougher than PDP chairman.”
On September 15, 2015, Tukur, while commemorating his 80th birthday, announced his retirement from partisan politics, saying he was quitting the stage for the younger politicians and would from thence prefer to “be a statesman and an adviser.”
