BREAKING: Aisha Alhassan, Mama Taraba, Dies At 61

Aisha Alhassan, former Minister of Women Affairs, popularly known as Mama Taraba, is dead.

Details of are death are sketchy but Daily Trust gathered that she died at a hospital overseas.

Alhassan contested the Taraba 2015 governorship election under the Platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) but lost to incumbent Governor Darius Ishaku, who ran under the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Shortly after her loss, President Muhammadu Buhari named her Minister of Women Affairs.

However, she left under controversial circumstances as the APC failed to clear her for the 2019 gubernatorial election.

She had resigned her appointment and defected to the United Democratic Party (UDP).

Alhassan travails in the APC under the chairmanship of Adams Oshiomhole began when she endorsed ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar ahead of the 2019 elections.

Her statement had caused a huge embarrassment to the APC leadership as a cabinet member was not expected to endorse Atiku who had not clinched the PDP presidential ticket at the time.

Ishaku Mourns

Governor of Taraba State, Arc Darius Dickson Ishaku reacted to Alhassan’s death on Friday.

He said he received the news with deep shock.

Gov Ishaku described Aisha Alhassan as a woman of great courage, noting that her death was a personal loss for him.

He said he and Alhassan had enjoyed a robust political relationship and had kept in touch even while both of them contested for the same seat of Governor of Taraba State from different political platforms in 2015 and 2019.

A press statement by the Governor’s media aide Bala Dan-Abu described Alhassan as an asset, one which death has robbed Taraba State and Nigeria of.

He added that as minister of Women Affairs, Alhassan contributed immensely towards social and political emancipation of women.

He urged her family to take solace in the fact that Alhassan lived a life of service to humanity and prayed God to grant her soul eternal rest.