Bashir Dalhatu
Bashir Dalhatu is a Nigerian lawyer, civil servant and politician who served in the Interim National Government as Minister of Transport and Aviation in 1993; in General Sani Abacha's government as Minister of Power and Steel from 1993 to 1997 and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1997 to 1998.Life
Bashir Dalhatu was born in Dutse on November 12, 1949. He attended Rumfa College in Kano. In 1972, he received a bachelor's degree in law from the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, and was subsequently called to the Nigerian Bar in 1973.
Dalhatu joined the civil service, serving in the Kano State Ministry of Works and Survey and Ministry of Agriculture, before later moving to the Ministry of Justice as state counsel. He later founded a private practice B. M. Dalhatu & Co. in Kano.
In 1978, he was elected into the Constituent Assembly that produced the 1979 Constitution. At the conclusion of the assembly, he became one of the founding members of the National Party of Nigeria where, between 1979 and 1983, he was the Kano State assistant secretary, state secretary and later, assistant national legal advisor.
In 1993, Dalhatu served in the Interim National Government as Minister of Transport and Aviation. He was also a government minister in General Sani Abacha's government as Minister of Power and Steel from 1993 to 1997; and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1997 to 1998, and later married Abacha's daughter.
He later became a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party, before leaving to contest for Governor of Jigawa State under the All Nigeria Peoples Party. In 2006, in opposition to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Dalhatu founded the Advanced Congress of Democrats, before later merging the party with the Action Congress of Nigeria, where he was the national secretary until resigning in 2007, after the party refused to join the President Umaru Yar'Adua's national government. Dalhatu was a member of the 2014 National Conference. In 2015, he became the chairman of the New Nigeria Development Corporation. In 2018, he became the Waziri of the Dutse Emirate.
