A former Kwara State Governor, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo, has died. He was 84 years old last 24 February.
Adebayo was a Senator in the Second Republic, serving from 1979 to 1983 on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria, the same platform he used to contest — and win — election as governorship candidate in 1983. He governed for only three months as the military plotted a coup against that Republic.
Adebayo was also Minister of Communications between July 2003 and August 2006 in the second term of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency.
Family sources told TheCable that Adebayo died on Wednesday morning in Abuja.
Born on 24 February 1941, in Igbaja community of Kwara State, was a member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) as pro-democracy activists sought to reclaim the mandate handed to Chief Moshood Abiola in the 12 June 1993 presidential election.
In 1993, Adebayo was offered a ministerial position in the General Sani Abacha junta but declined.
On May 31, 1995, a bomb exploded in Ilorin, the Kwara capital. The police arrested and grilled Adebayo and other members of NADECO over the incident.
He fled the country in 1996 for a brief exile in Canada as the junta reportedly closed in on him for a second time.
Adebayo is credited with a slew of education reforms in his home state as the Education Commissioner from 1975 to 1978.
