Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, 72, Dies

By Adesina Soyooye

Dr Ogbonnaya Onu is dead.

Onu, the immediate past Minister for Science and Technology died on Thursday, April 11, at a yet to be disclosed hospital in Abuja, Nigeria, and of a yet to be disclosed illness.

A Chemical Engineer, Onu was a University Don turned- Politician. An accomplished academic, he was a Don at the University of Porthacourt from where he fully embraced politics and became the civilian Governor of the Old Abia State before Ebonyi State was carved out of the State. The brilliant academic  was a native of Ebonyi State.

He never quite won any other election again, but had tried a couple of times and unsuccessfully ran for the office of the President under, at a time, the All Peoples Party, APP, and later the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP.

It was from the ANPP, which leader he was,  that Dr Onu became a founding member of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

In 2015 when the APC won the election at the Federal level, not a few people thought he was going to be appointed the Secretary to the Federal Government, SGF. But he was, instead, given a not-too attractive position as the Minister for Science and Technology under the President Muhammadu Buhari Government.

During Buhari’s second term in office, Dr Onu was reappointed to the same Ministry, a position he held as the longest serving Minister in the Ministry until he decided to contest for the office of the President as Buhari’s successor. But it was an ambition sought in vain as he performed very poorly at the Party Primaries, won by now President Bola Tinubu.

On the loss of that bid, Onu quietly withdrew into his shell and avoided the limelight and politics like a plague. He neithe took part, publicly, in anything politics, nor did he make any public statement concerning governance or the APC Government.

The academic who was well-respected in academic circles died aged 72 years.