BY FOLASHADE KEHINDE
FORMER Minister of Commerce and Industry, Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye, is dead.
The former minister was said to have passed on at his Victoria Garden City Lagos residence on Sunday morning.
He will be buried according to Islamic rites, in his hometown in Ijebu, at 4pm today.
The late Kuye was born on August 1942 in Ago Iwoye, Ijebu constituency of Ogun State. He studied sociology at the University of Ibadan (1965-1968) and then Economics at the Harvard University Business School, graduating in 1983.
He gained qualifications as a Chartered Accountant.
A senator in the Third Republic, Martins-Kuye became a member of the United Nigeria Congress Party towards the end of the Sani Abacha regime. He was a candidate on the Peoples Democratic Party platform for governor of Ogun State in 1999.
He was appointed Minister of State for Finance in June 1999 during the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo, serving until June 2003. In July 2002, as Minister of Finance, he announced that Nigeria’s GDP had grown by 4 per cent annually by the World Bank’s estimate, the highest rate for 10 years.
