ADAMU CIROMA: STUDIED HISTORY ; APPOINTED CBN GOVERNOR, LATER FINANCE MINISTER

Was it fate? Was it competence? Whatever it was, Adamu Ciroma, a Historian, was the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from September 24, 1975 till June 28, 1977.

Here's the story according TheCable:

In 1975, the military government of Murtala Muhammed appointed Ciroma as the CBN governor. Kole Omotosho, in his book, Just Before Dawn, wrote that Ciroma, who was managing director of New Nigerian, was to be appointed the managing director of Daily Times, while Aliko Mohammed, an accountant, was to be made CBN governor.

Omotosho said at the swearing-in, Murtala Muhammed mistakenly gave Ciroma the papers assigning him the governorship of CBN and Mohammed the papers as MD of Daily Times. After the ceremony, the story goes, the attention of the head of state was drawn to the error, but he said “a general does not change his mind” and that the duo should go and learn on the job.

Ciroma’s account was completely different.

In an interview with Daily Trust in April 2016, Ciroma recounted the circumstances surrounding his appointment.

He said: “Shortly after I was appointed editor of the New Nigerian, I was also appointed a director of the CBN. From that point, I got involved in knowing how the CBN operated, how they worked, what they were doing and so on. So I was quite familiar with the operations of the CBN. When the coup that ousted Gowon and brought in Murtala Mohammed took place, I was in Lagos and was staying at a CBN apartment where we normally stayed.

“On the morning of the coup, I heard the sound of a stone someone had thrown at my window. I opened the window to ask who it was that threw the stone and it was Shehu Yar’Adua. I opened the door and he said to me, ‘There has been a coup and the military leadership has appointed you governor of the Central Bank.’ He said something like there were some forex transactions which were not done right and they needed somebody to put them right. So they decided to put me there.

“I told you in the beginning that our quality of education then enabled me to be a historian, to head a steel mill, to edit a newspaper, to manage any organization. In the same line of thought I could head the Central Bank. And I did. I actually did a lot of good work for the bank.”

It is interesting to know that Ciroma had also been appointed editor of New Nigerian newspaper without journalism experience. The only experience he had was editing a school magazine at the University of Ibadan, where he graduated in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in history. But reports say he did a good job at the newspaper.

He said the kind of education at that time would make a graduate excel in any capacity. "Then, the University of Ibadan, Makerere University in Uganda, Fourah Bay University in Sierra Leone, Legon University in Ghana and a few other universities like them in Africa were like the University of London,” Ciroma said in an interview.

He later went on to be the minister of trade and industry, and later agriculture, under Shagari, from 1979 to 1983; the minister of agriculture under Sani Abacha in 1993 and the minister of finance under President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

Nigerians will not forget in a hurry how Ciroma held the Goodluck Jonathan administration by the jugular after the demise of Umaru Yar'Adua in 2010. Ciroma was at the forefront of the campaign for power to remain in the North with the belief that Jonathan was not expected to contest in 2011, but to only complete Yar'Adua's tenure.

Born on November 20, 1934 in Potiskum, Ciroma passed away on July 5, 2018.