“My elder brother was a true patriot and principled person and that is why we and many politicians in the north  revered him as true father and leader”.He said  arrangement is being made to convey the  corpse from London to Kaduna tomorrow.

“So, we  are expecting his corpse to  arrive Kaduna Wednesday for burial  immediately.”

He left behind two wives,eleven children and many grand children .

The late Umaru  Dikko was  born in 1936 at  Wamba, Nasarawa State . The Zaria indigene  was  a  politician and one time special   adviser to President Shehu Shagari.

He later became  Minister for Transportation between  1979 and 1983 and was reputed to be the most powerful man in government, offering ‘import licences’ to party loyalists. He was also linked with a political group with base in Kaduna, known as the Kaduna Mafia.

He joined active politics   in 1967, when he was appointed a commissioner in the then North Central State of Nigeria ,now Kaduna State.

He played prominent roles as transport minister and head of the presidential task force on rice  during the nation’s Second Republic.

After a  military coup on December 31, 1983 that led to the  overthrew of the government of Shagari. Dikko , Dikko fled into exile in London.

The military government, after kidnapping him through some foreign agents,   attempted to crate him back home to face charges, but the kidnapping was foiled by British intelligence.

The aborted kidnap strained relations between Nigeria and Britain.

In death, Dikko will now be crated back to Nigeria for burial.