BREAKING: Former CBN Deputy Governor Obadiah Mailafia Dies At 64

Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, died at the age of 64.

Mailafia, a columnist for The PUNCH, died after midnight following a brief illness, according to reports.

The former deputy governor, who was the African Democratic Congress’s presidential candidate in the 2019 election, was a well-known government critic who called for public-sector and exchange-rate changes.

Mailafia was born on December 24, 1956, in Kaduna State’s Sanga Local Government Area.

In 1978, he received a B.Sc. from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, graduating first in his class.

Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences with Honors (Politics, Economics, and Sociology). He also holds a master’s degree from the same university.

He was awarded a French Government Scholarship and returned to France in 1985, earning a Certificate in French Language and Civilization from the University of Clermont-Ferrand.

Mailafia went on to Oriel College in the United Kingdom as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholar, getting a DPhil in 1995 from the University of Oxford.

In 2018, he entered partisan politics in response to the escalating number of killings in Southern Kaduna.

Despite his defeat, he remained a vocal government critic and was in hot water with President Muhammadu Buhari’s (retd.) regime when he claimed that a northern governor was a Boko Haram commander.

The Nigeria Police Force issued him repeated invitations, forcing him to retract his statement.

Mailafia claimed in a recent interview with The PUNCH that the CBN’s refusal to supply foreign exchange to bureau de change operators may not produce the desired results because corrupt bankers would delay the process while the BDC operators would be protected by a “Jigawa cabal.”

He also bemoaned Nigeria’s “dollarized” economy, which he claimed was impeding economic growth.