Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo, former governor of Kwara State and one-time minister of communications, has died at the age of 84.
Family sources confirmed to TheCable that Adebayo passed away in the early hours of Wednesday in Abuja.
Born on February 24, 1941, in Igbaja, Kwara State, Adebayo began his political journey in the Second Republic, winning a Senate seat in 1979 under the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).
He was elected governor of Kwara State in 1983, before the military coup later that year truncated the civilian government.
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From 2003 to 2006, he served as Nigeria’s minister of communications under President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Adebayo was a prominent voice in the pro-democracy movement and a key member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which opposed the military regime following the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election believed to have been won by MKO Abiola.
He famously turned down an offer to serve in General Sani Abacha’s cabinet.
In 1995, following a bomb explosion in Ilorin, Adebayo and several NADECO members were arrested and interrogated by security agencies. As pressure from the regime intensified, he fled into exile in Canada in 1996.
Before his rise in politics, Adebayo served as Kwara State’s commissioner for education from 1975 to 1978, during which he introduced a series of impactful reforms that expanded access to quality education across the state.
