Aisha Alhassan

With the nullification of the election of Governor Darius Ishaku of Taraba State (PDP) by the Taraba State Governorship Election Tribunal sitting in Abuja, Hajia Aisha Jummai Alhassan of All Progressives Congress (APC) is now the first substantive female governor in Nigeria. The one who would have achieved that earlier was not a governor in a permanent capacity. Dame Virginia Ngozi Etiaba was the acting governor of Anambra State, from November 2006 to February 2007. She became governor when Peter Obi, was impeached by the state legislature for alleged gross misconduct. However, when an appeal court cancelled the impeachment three months later, she transferred her powers back to Obi.

Aisha Jummai Al-Hassan, a Fulani, has many feats of firsts. As a trained lawyer she was the first female to be appointed Taraba State Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice. Also, she was the first woman to be appointed as Secretary FCT judicial council and later appointed the Chief Registrar of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory on 17 December 2003. According to Wikipedia, after she retired from service she went into business-and politics.

She was a Senator representing Taraba North constituency of the state on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Her trip to the Senate began in the January 2011 PDP primaries, when she defeated the incumbent Senator, former Ambassador Manzo Anthony. Despite being a Muslim, she was able to gather the support of Christians, a process that threw her up as the first elected female senator from Taraba State.

In the 9 April 2011 national assembly election, she won 114,131 votes, followed by Jolly Nyame of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) with 92,004 votes. That year, as Wikipedia puts it, she was one of four women elected with the PDP ticket, the others being Nkechi Nwaogu (Abia Central), Helen Esuene (Akwa Ibom South) and Nenadi Usman (Kaduna South).

However, she later dumped the party and moved to the All Progressive Congress (APC). She contested on the parform of the party to be governor in April 2015 but failed both on April 11 and the rerun of 25th of April 2015. Between 11th and 25th April of the year, expectations were high beyond Taraba that Nigeria was about to produce its first female governor. But that hope was dashed when she lost the rerun.

Not a woman to relent, she made a beeline for the tribunal. See our story on the case, entitled, “Taraba governorship tussle: Witnesses reveal widespread fraud” here: https://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2015/08/taraba-governorship-tussle-witnesses-reveal-widespread-fraud/

However, her own hope was alive, despite her being appointed a ministerial nominee first, and now designate. During the screening, she reacted point blank that she would nor drop her tribunal case. In her words: “In any case, ministerial appointment has nothing to do with my case in the court. I am in the court to reclaim the mandate given to me by the people of Taraba.”

That she kept that hope alive has paid off!