El-Rufai appoints Bring back our Girls Activist as Chief of Staff
Adetokunbo Fakeye
Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai has appointed a new Chief of Staff.
Similarly, the government has announced the appointments of Bashir Dabo as Special Assistant, New Media, and Mrs. Saude Amina Mohammed as Personal Secretary to the governor.
All the appointment were contained in a statement issued on Monday by the Special Assistant to the Governor on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan.
According to the statement, the Chief of Staff, Hadiza Bala Usman, a well-known figure in the APC was Administrative Secretary of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organization, Member Secretary APC Elections Planning Committee, Member APC Strategy Committee and Director of Finance in the Nasir El-Rufai Campaign Organization, which was later the Kaduna State APC Campaign Council.
The CoS was born in Zaria by the famous radical historian Yusufu Bala Usman, who was once Secretary to the Kaduna State government during the Balarabe Musa administration.
Hadiza Usman started her primary education at ABU Staff School, and attended ABU Demonstration Secondary School. She had her B.Sc. in Business Administration from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 2000 and MA in Development Studies from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, in 2009.
Hadiza worked at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) from 2000 until 2004 when she was hired by the UNDP for the Federal Capital Territory Administration [FCTA] from October 2004 – January 2008 as a Special Assistant to the FCT Minister on Project Implementation. Since 2011, she has been Director of Strategy for the Good Governance Group (3G).
In April 2014, she co-founded the global movement #BringBackOurGirls which has been demanding for the rescue of the 219 young girls abducted by Boko Haram from Chibok Secondary School in Borno State North East Nigeria.
Hadiza is an internationally recognized personality for her contributions. Financial Times [FT] named her amongst the most influential women of 2014, while CNN chose her as the most inspiring woman of 2014.
Ebony Magazine also named her amongst the 100 most influential black women in the world in 2014. In August 2014 she gave a touching speech on Chibok Girls at the United Nations Headquarters in New York during UN DPI conference as a guest speaker.
The new Personal Secretary to the Governor, Mohammed is a graduate of Economics from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Advertising and Marketing from Coventry University, UK. As a researcher with the Good Governance Group, she provided support for the work of Malam Nasir El-Rufai on the critically acclaimed budget series published in his weekly newspaper column.
She also featured as a guest writer during the young voices series published in Thisday and Peoples Daily. Most recently, she has served as Secretary to the finance sub-committee of the Kaduna State APC Transition Committee.
Saude is the grand-daughter of the Reverend Canon H.O Mohammed of Wusasa, Zaria, who was the former Chief Commissioner of the Public Complaints Commission and Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau.
Bashir Dabo, the Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Governor holds an M.Sc. in International Business Management from the University of Bedforshire, United Kingdom and a Master’s in International Affairs and Diplomacy from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He was assistant coordinator of the Kaduna State APC Situation Room for the 2015 elections.