Read Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan's Profile!

If the judgment and the declaration of the Taraba State governorship election tribunal which sat in Abuja would stand, Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan automatically becomes the first female elected governor, Another female who had occupied the status of female governor was Dame Virgy Etiaba of the Anambra State.

Etiaba, who was a Deputy Governor of Anambra State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance became the governor when the governor, Mr. Peter Obi was wrongfully impeached by the Anambra State House of Assembly.

Unlike Etiaba, Alhassan, who was a governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Taraba State, was declared winner of the April 11 governorship election after the Tribunal sacked Darius Ishaku of the Peoples Democratic Party as governor and stated in its judgment that the APC governorship candidate was the lawfully elected governor of the state.

Aisha Alhassan, a former senator, who represented the Taraba North constituency of Taraba State in 2011 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, was born in 1967. In 2014, she joined the then opposition APC and later clinched the governorship ticket of the party in Taraba State.

Alhassan, who is a minister- designate, is popularly known as Mama Taraba. She is a lawyer and was the the first female to be appointed Taraba State Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice. Also, she was the first woman to be appointed as Secretary FCT Judicial Council and later appointed the Chief Registrar of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on December 17, 2003.

Her political career which started after she retired as the Registrar of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory took her to the Senate in 2011 when she defeated an incumbent senator and former Ambassador Manzo Anthony at the PDP primaries. Subsequently, she won the election to the Senate as she defeated a former governor of Taraba State, Rev. Jolly Nyame, in the election proper.

She was among the four female PDP senators, which included Nkechi Nwaogu (Abia Central); Helen Esuene (Akwa Ibom South); and Nenadi Usman (Kaduna South) elected into the Senate in 2011. Alhassan is also a successful businesswoman who has many landed properties in Abuja.

She is the owner of one of the biggest gardens in Abuja, situated in Maitama. Alhassan is said to be one of the confidants of President Muhammadu Buhari and one of the sponsors of the All Progressives Congress.

For her primary education, she attended Muhammed Nya Primary School, Jalingo; LEA Primary School, Tundun Wada, Kaduna; and then School of Basic Studies, Samaru Zaria as a prelim Science student between July 1977 and July 1979. She switched from being a Science student to Arts and enrolled for Diploma In Law, proceeded with her bachelor’s in Law at the Ahmadu Bello University. She attended the Nigerian Law School, Lagos (1985- 1986)and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1986.

She started work as a magistrate grade II in April 1988 in the Kaduna State Judiciary. She was part of the Technical Aid Corps Programme of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs(on secondment) to Fiji Republic from 1990 to 1992 and was admitted to the Fijian Bar, enrolled as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Fiji in 1991. It was while she was in Fiji that she was transferred from Kaduna State Judiciary to the FCT in 1991 as Magistrate Grade I.

She assumed duty as the only female magistrate in the FCT in 1992 and rose through the ranks to become the first female Chief Magistrate in the FCT in 1996. Her interest in politics may have been inspired by her father who was an active member of NCNC when he was a student in Barewa College, Zaria. He later joined NPC in the First Republic.

Hajia Aisha Jummai Al- Hassan was married to Prof. Ango Abdullahi and in 2007, she got married to Engr. M.S. Alhassan, who retired as a director from the Federal Capital Development Authority.

Culled from New Telegraph