14th September, 2013
Dr. Olusegun Kokumo Agagu, a former Governor of Ondo State, in western Nigeria has died. He was aged 65.
Agagu, who returned from the US on Thursday, reportedly slumped in Ikoyi, Lagos, where he was having a meeting with Ondo indigenes, on Friday evening.
It was gathered that he ate lunch at home in Ikoyi before heading for a meeting on Lagos mainland, where he slumped.
Subsequently, he was rushed to a private hospital in Yaba but he was transferred to Military Hospital, Ikoyi, where he was pronounced dead.
His corpse was still at the military hospital as at the time of filing this report.
Agagu’s former Chief Press Secretary, Yemi Olowolabi, said the former governor was not sick and had just returned from a 20-day trip abroad.
Olowolabi, who worked with him for more than four years, described his former boss as “a great man, a first-class intellectual and an astute administrator.”
Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, described the death of his predecessor as shocking, adding that Ondo has lost a colossus, whose vacuum would be difficult to fill.
Mimiko said, “He would be remembered as a consummate politician and lecturer, who imparted knowledge to many people across the world.”
Agagu’s schoolmate at the University of Ibadan, Senator Olu Alabi, who is a former Governing Board Chairman, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, said, “We were together in UI. We co-funded United Nigerian Congress Party and the Peoples Democratic Party. I don’t know what to tell his wife, Funke.”
Member, PDP Board of Trustees, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, said: “This is tragic news. I’m shattered. He never held grudges.”
Agagu was Governor of Ondo State in Nigeria from 29 May 2003 until February 2009, when a court voided his re-election as governor on account of electoral irregularities. He was also a former aviation minister under former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
.Abridged from The Punch