Former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Adamu Ciroma is dead. Family sources said the elder statesman died in a Turkish hospital, Abuja, on Thursday after a protracted illness. He was 84 years old.

The deceased, a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was Finance Minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo administration from 1999 to 2003.

In 1979, Ciroma was one of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) presidential aspirants who contested in the party’s presidential primary, in which he was supposedly sponsored by the faceless Kaduna Mafia, a rumored group of northern intellectuals, serving officers and bureaucrats stationed around Kaduna.

He came third in the primary, behind Shehu Shagari and Maitama Sule, his candidacy having been partly financed by Hamza Rafindadi Zayyad, the head of the New Nigeria Development Company.

Ciroma was briefly the secretary of the NPN and he later served at various times as Minister for Industries, Agriculture and Finance. As a senior cabinet minister in the Shagari administration, he played pivotal roles in the implementation of the president’s agenda especially in the areas of food production and working with international agencies to develop an Agricultural Development Project (ADP).

In September 1983, he was made the chairman of a presidential transition committee, which further demonstrated the trust the president had in his capabilities. The committee was mandated to make proposals on how to re-structure the federal government which was going through a crisis of confidence.

Ciroma was a founding member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He served as Minister of Finance in the government of Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2003.