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Nigeria’s foremost economist, Prof. Sam Aluko is dead, aged 83. He died Tuesday, February 7, 2012 in a London hospital, United Kingdom.
His views on the nation’s economy are internationally respected.
Although he was criticised for serving in the late Gen. Sani Abacha as Chairman, National Economic Intelligence, but Aluko in a recent interview before his death, said he had no regrets in serving the late General Sani Abacha as economic adviser.
The late Aluko who hailed from Ekiti state, graduated with a distinction from the London School of Economics. Whilst a student there in the 1950s, he criticised the budget of the government of Obafemi Awolowo so often, that to shut him up, the Western Region withdrew his scholarship and requested that he return to Nigeria.
The school authorities however replied that if the scholarship were to be withdrawn, the school would take over and foot the bill. He was thereafter sent a letter of congratulations signed by Chief Awolowo himself.
By the time Nigeria’s Constitutional Conference was held in 1957, Awolowo invited the young Aluko for dinner, and thereafter began to seek his council on economic policies. When Nigeria attained independence in 1960, Aluko entered politics as the Secretary General of the Ekiti Peoples Party from where he was elected Chairman of the Ado District Council.
Many notable economists passed through him in his days in the University of Ife where he was the first Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences