Technocrat and a former presidential candidate of the defunct All Nigeria’s People’s Party of Nigeria, Gamaliel Onosode, is dead.
Onosode died at the age of 82.
Known to be a disciplined civil servant and corporate administrator man, the Delata steate born has chaired several private and public sector businesses and initiatives.
He was the Chairman of Dunlop Nigeria Plc (1984–2007), a former chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc (1977–93), the Presidential Commission on Parastatals (1981), Nigeria LNG Working Committee and Nigeria LNG Limited (1985–90) and the Niger Delta Environmental Survey (since 1995). He is also the Chairman of ZAIN Nigeria now Airtel.
Towards the end of 1983, when public confidence in the economic direction of the country was eroded and accountability was lacking in government subsidies to public enterprises, he was brought in to find solutions to the lackluster performance of public enterprises, as the head of a Nigerian Commission on public parastatals and to bring in a disciplined approach to government subsidies. The offshoot of his honest and disciplined approach earned him respect from subsequent administrations. A report which was later tagged the Onosode report, an outgrowth of his role as the chairman of the commission to review Nigerian parastatals was the first in the nation to tackle comprehensively, the industrialisation drive and capital spending which dominated the oil boom of the 1970s and the early 1980s.