Senator Olabiyi Durojaye Dies At 88
Senator Olabiyi Durojaiye, a Fourth Republic federal lawmaker, and former chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), is dead aged 88.
The late Senator Durojaiye, born in 1933, was elected senator, representing Ogun East Senatorial District of Ogun State at the start of the Nigerian Fourth Republic, running on the Alliance for Democracy (AD) platform.
Senator Olabiyi Durojaiye, a former chairman, Board of Commissioners of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), earned a BSc (Economics) London, and an LLB, London.
As obtained from Wikipedia, he was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1979, and was a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and also graduated from the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru.
He worked for 35 years in the Nigerian public sector, including 28 years as a Director of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the National Mint.
He worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Federal Reserve System in the USA and the City University London between 1964 and 1982.
The late Senator Durojaiye was an elected member of the 1988/89 Constituent Assembly and was a presidential aspirant, in 1992, on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), evetually losing to the late Chief MKO Abiola.
He was arrested in December, 1996 and incarcerated for 560 days by the military junta led by the late General Sani Abacha.
A June, 1997 report stated the 63-year-old lawyer was reportedly in poor health and suffering from high blood pressure caused by his incarceration and Amnesty International designated him a prisoner of conscience and campaigned for his release.
As a senator from 1999 to 2003, he was appointed to as chairman of the committees on Judiciary and Establishment and also a member of the Senate on Special Projects.
In December 2002,the late Senator Durojaye recommended a life jail-term for anyone found guilty of perpetratonh electoral fraud.
The late Senator Durojaiye’s wife, Florence Olufunso Adejoke, died on 6 June 2009, aged 72, two months after she and her husband had marked their 50th wedding anniversary.
The deceased couple were survived by six children and many grandchildren.
