A former senator and ex-governor of Kwara State, Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo, has died at age 84.
Family sources who confirmed Adebayo’s death to the Cable said the ex-governor died early on Wednesday morning in Abuja.
The deceased was born on February 24, 1941, in Igbaja community of Kwara and became the governor of the state in 1983.
He served as Minister of Communications from 2003 to 2006 and was elected a senator on the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) platform in 1979.
Adebayo was a member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) as pro-democracy activists sought to reclaim the mandate handed to MKO Abiola in the June 12, 1993, presidential election.
In 1993, Adebayo was offered a ministerial position in the Sani Abacha junta but declined.
On May 31, 1995, the police arrested and grilled Adebayo and other members of NADECO over a bomb that exploded in Ilorin, the Kwara capital.
He fled the country in 1996 for a brief exile in Canada as the junta reportedly closed in on him for a second time.
Adebayo is credited with a slew of education reforms in Kwara as the state’s education commissioner from 1975 to 1978.
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