The death has been announced of former governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, CON. He was 85.
Ezeife, born at Igbo-Ukwu in Anambra State on 20 November 1937, died at about 6.00pm Thursday 15 December at the Federal Medical Centre, Abuja, according to family sources.
He is popularly called Okwadike, and was elected the first executive governor of Anambra State on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) on 2 January 1992 before his sacking by the military coup of General Sani Abacha on 17 November 1993.
The late ex-governor was a renowned economist from the University College Ibadan, and later obtained a PhD in 1972 from Harvard University in the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship.
Ezeife joined the Nigeria civil service as an Administrative Officer and rose to the position of Permanent Secretary. At other times he was a political adviser to President Olu Obasanjo and a presidential aspirant under the Alliance of Democracy (AD) in 1999.
He was also the Chairman of Igbo Elders Council and a stabilizing force in Southeast Nigeria, a strong advocate for restructuring and true federalism and a voice for equity and rotational presidency which was supposed to have favored his region in 2023.
The family’s statement signed by his son Chief Rob Nwakaire Ezeife says “More details about the deceased and the arrangements for his State Burial will be announced later”.
Anambra state has been in mourning having lost only in April another former governor of the state, Chiwoke Mbadinuju who died at the National Hospital, Abuja at the age of 77.
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