President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign group, Hadiza Bala-Usman, as Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).
Ms. Bala-Usman takes over from Habib Abdullahi who was reappointed to the position in August 2015 after he was earlier removed in April of the same year.
News of the new appointment is contained in a statement signed by the Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Transportation, Yetunde Sonaike, in Abuja.
Ms. Sonaike stated that others appointed were Mohammed Bello-Koko as Executive Director, Finance; Prof. Idris Abubakar, Executive Director Engineering; Dr Sekonte Davies as Executive Director, Marine Operations.
She noted that Usman was born on January 2, 1976 in Zaria, Kaduna State and has a B.Sc. Business Administration from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria and a Post Graduate in Development Studies from University of Leeds, UK in 2009.
She worked at Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) from July 2000 to August 2004 as Enterprise Officer and hired by the UNDP for the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) from October 2004 to January 2008 as Special Assistant to the Minister on Project Implementation.
The new NPA boss, Ms. Sonaike added, worked, between 2011 and 2015) as Director of Strategy of the Good Governance Group, a non-governmental organisation founded by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, and his friends.
When Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok 2014, Bala-Usman and others came together to start the BBOG campaign group.
They chose the colour red for the campaign because it is a sign of “alarm, danger, a warning.”
Bala-Usman has featured in Financial Times and at CNN for her work with BBOG.
She was, in 2015, appointed Chief of Staff to Governor El-Rufai, a position she held until her present appointment.
Bala-Usman is also member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Anti-Corruption and an active member of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
