Former Minister of Women Affairs of Nigeria, Aisha Jummai Al-Hassan, popularly known as Mama Taraba is dead. Her media aide, Bala Maina, confirmed the incident to Journalists in a telephone chart on Friday evening.
This is just as the governor of Taraba state, Darius Dickson Ishaku said he received the news of the former minister’s demise with deep shock.
The ex-minister was said to have passed away at an undisclosed hospital in Cairo, Egypt. She was 61 years old. Al-Hassan was appointed the Minister of Women Affairs by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
She, however, resigned her position on July 27, 2018 and thereafter dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the United Democratic Party (UDP) where she emerged as the party’s governorship candidate in the 2019 general elections in Taraba State.
The ex-Minister however lost to the incumbent, Governor Darius Ishaku who ran for a second term in office under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Prior to her ministerial appointment, Al-Hassan was a former Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria representing the Taraba North Senatorial District under the PDP.
Meanwhile the Taraba State governor, Arc Darius Dickson Ishaku said he received with deep shock news of the death of Senator Alhassan, a former governorship candidate in the state and frontline member of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP.
Gov Ishaku described Hajiya Jumai as a woman of great courage and that her death is to him a personal loss.
He said he and the late Senator Jumai Alhassan had enjoyed a robust political relationship and had kept in touch even while both of them contested for the same seat of Governor of Taraba State from different political platforms in 2015 and 2019.
In a statement by his Special Adviser on media and publicity, Bala Dan Abu and made available to our correspondent, Ishaku described the Senator as an asset and that her death has robbed Taraba State and Nigeria of the benefits of her wealth of experience in politics.
Gov. Ishaku said that as minister of Women Affairs Senator Aisha contributed immensely towards social and political emancipation of women and that her death has left a vacuum that will be difficult to fill.
He urged her family to take solace in the fact that Senator Aisha Alhassan lived a life of service to humanity and prayed God to grant her soul eternal rest.