Minister of Transportation, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi, has
submitted Ms. Hadiza Bala Usman’s name to President Muhammadu Buhari to take
over as the new managing director of NPA.
Should
Buhari approve the recommendation, Ms. Bala Usman, 40, will become the first
female chief executive of a top tier federal government agency and of the NPA.
She
shall take over from Alhaji Habib Abdullahi, who was reinstated by Buhari in
August 2015 as the managing director of NPA, after he had been shown the exit
by former President Goodluck Jonathan in April 2015.
Sources
in the presidency, who confirmed that Ms. Bala Usman’s name had been sent to
the president, said Amaechi had decided to make the changes in order to
overhaul the NPA.
Amaechi,
it was gathered, is not particularly impressed with the way the NPA was being
run and has decided to effect a change of the executive team as soon as
possible.
A
presidency source said that the minute Ms. Bala Usman’s name was submitted to
the president, Buhari was happy to consider the recommendation, given the past
relationship he had with her father, the late Prof. Yusufu Bala Usman, who was
a renowned Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) academic, historian and activist
before his death some years ago.
Amaechi
was also believed to have recommended Ms. Bala Usman, on the grounds that two
chief executives of the foremost parastatals under his ministry – Nigerian
Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Nigerian Railway
Corporation (NRC) – are from the south, and he would rather have an equitable
distribution of appointments into the agencies under his ministry.
Ms.
Bala Usman, who is currently the chief of staff to the Kaduna State Governor,
Nasir el-Rufai, and a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was born
in Zaria, Kaduna State, on January 2, 1976.
She
grew up close to the ABU campus where her father worked and obtained her
Bachelor’s degree in 2000 from the same university and her Master’s degree from
the University of Leeds in 2009.
She
worked for a non-governmental organisation, the Centre for Democratic
Development and Research Training (CEDDERT) in Zaria, as a research assistant
for a year starting in 1999.
She
also worked for the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) when el-Rufai was the
director-general of the privatisation agency and moved with him to work as his
Special Assistant on Project Implementation.
In
2011, she worked as Director of Strategy for the Good Governance Group (3G). In
2015, she was appointed Chief of Staff to the Kaduna State governor.
She
shot to national prominence in 2014 when Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped 276
girls from their secondary school in Chibok, Borno State.
Following
in her father’s footsteps, Ms. Bala Usman, in conjunction with the former
Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls
(BBOG), which brought global attention to the plight of the kidnapped
schoolgirls.
She
is married to Dr. Tanimu Yakubu, former Chief Economic Adviser to the late
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and they have two sons.