Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr Obadiah Mailafia has died.
He died aged 64 at the National Hospital Abuja at midnight, The Herald learned.
A critic of the present government, Mailafia was the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2019 election.
He was born on December 24, 1956, in Randa village, Sanga Local Government Area of Kaduna state.
He graduated from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1978 with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences (Politics, Economics and Sociology) and was top of his class.
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He proceeded to bag an M.Sc. from the same institution.
He subsequently won a French Government Scholarship to France, where he earned a Certificate in French Language and Civilization from the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1985.
Mailafia later proceeded to the United Kingdom as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Scholar at Oriel College, earning a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1995.
From 1990 to 1995, Mailafia was resident tutor and lecturer in the economics and politics of developing areas at Plater College Oxford at the time an associate college of the University of Oxford.
During 1995–1996 he was an assistant professor at New England College, Arundel, the foreign academic program of New England College.
He was subsequently a lecturer in international finance at Richmond Business School, the American International University in London (1997–1998).
From 2001 to 2005, Mailafia served as a chief economist in the Strategic Planning and Budgeting Department of the African Development Bank Group.
Between 2005 and 2007, he was Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He was a principal actor in the banking consolidation exercise of 2005–2006 that led to the reform of the Nigerian banking sector.
He oversaw the reduction of the number of commercial banks, through mergers and acquisitions, from 89 to 25 consolidated banks; an exercise that was widely regarded as one of the most successful such efforts anywhere in the developing world in recent times.
He was also an active participant in the negotiations that led to Nigeria negotiating its way out of the Paris Club group of indebted nations.
From 2010 to 2015, Mailafia was the chief of staff (Chef de Cabinet) to the 79-member nation African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States based in Brussels, Belgium. In this capacity he was the most senior adviser to the secretary-general, overseeing the strategic management function; liaising with external partners such as the European Commission, European Parliament, European Investment Bank (EIB).