Reports just received say that Nigeria’s former Information Minister, Prince Tony Momoh is dead.
Tony Momoh died this evening in Abuja in what family and close friends describe as a peaceful transition. He was aged 81.
Information also has it that he was indeed hale and hearty prior to his. sudden death.
He was one of Nigeria’s most charismatic journalists and a former Editor and Managing Director of Daily Times, Nigeria’s erstwhile flagship newspaper.
A politician as well, he was the Chairman of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC which) later went on to become the All Progressives Congress (APC ) with the combination of other political parties.
The APC has also confirmed the sad event in a post this evening:
Prince Tony Momoh is renowned for his frankness. While recommending a remedy to Nigeria’s politics, in an interview with Vanguard, he said that “You must decongest the political space.
“When you decongest the political space, economic deregulation will be automatic.
“The constitution shares powers among all organs of governments – the legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary.
“We are running a centralised government in the name of a Federation in Nigeria, where you have regional governments as we had in the First Republic which had powers and part-time legislature.
“Now everything is full-time; it cannot work. We must look back, have one lawmaking arm at the Centre because that s what we need now; and lawmakers will be part-time.
Speaking about the powers of Nigeria’s governors, Prince Tony Momoh said that “for now, only the governor is elected, the deputy governor is a spare tyre.
“The governor has all the money coming to the state, he pockets it and decides what to do with it.
“But if we have a Parliamentary system in the states, for instance, the majority would form a government and execute the programmes of the zones.”
The APC has sent an official con