An Ex- Presidential Candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) in the 1993 aborted third republic, Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa is dead.
It was reported that Tofa died in the early hours of Monday after a protracted illness at the age of 74 years.
Tofa was born in Kano to a Kanuri family on June 20, 1947.
He had his primary education at Shahuci Junior Primary, Kano, continued studies at City Senior Primary School in Kano and from 1962 to 1966, he attended Provincial College, Kano.
After completing his studies at the Provincial school, he worked for the Royal Exchange Insurance company from 1967 to 1968. From 1970 to 1973, he attended City of London College.
Tofa’s sojourn into politics started in 1976 when he was a councillor of Dawakin Tofa Local Government Council, in 1977, he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly.
During the Nigerian Second Republic, Tofa was at various times the secretary of the Kano branch of NPN, he later became the party’s national financial secretary and was a national member of the Green Revolution National Committee.
Tofa was MKO Abiola’s major challenger in the controversial June 12, 1993, presidential election, annulled by the military junta of Ibrahim Babangida.
Abiola, the Social Democratic Party candidate, was leading Tofa by a wide margin but the exercise was stopped ahead of the final announcement of results.
The annulment of the election threw the country into chaos as protesters hit the streets, calling on Babangida to step down.
Abiola was later arrested by the regime of Abacha and he died in detention.
During the Third Republic, Tofa was part of the Liberal Movement which metamorphosed into the Liberal Convention when it was not registered as a political party, Tofa joined the NRC in 1990.
In 1993, when the Babangida administration introduced the Option A4 system, Tofa was elected the presidential candidate representing Kano.
During the party primaries, he defeated Pere Ajunwa, Joe Nwodo and Dalhatu Tafida to clinch the NRC ticket. At the time, he was an ally of Halilu Akilu, the security chief at the time.
His running mate in the election was Sylvester Ugoh, an Igbo and a former governor of the now-defunct central bank of Biafra. Both were members of the defunct National Party of Nigeria.
Tofa was apparently defeated in the Presidential election by his rival, MKO Abiola, but the official results were never released by Babangida’s government.
Babangida was forced to step down in August 1993 after protests calling for the results of the election.
Tofa was also a businessman, an oil trader and an industrialist.
