Atiku Loses Media Aide, Mourns

Atiku and Ifeanyi Izeze

A prominent media aide of former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr Ifeanyi Izeze, is dead.

His death was announced on Sunday by Atiku Media Office in a statement.

Ifeanyi Izeze joined the media team of the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar in 2006, from Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria, ALSCON, Ikot-Abasi as the Office Manager.

“He brought to bear on the work of the media team at that critical stage of Atiku’s political career, his wealth of experience in the media, Niger Delta and Nigeria’s oil and gas industry,” the statement reads in part.

Ifeanyi trained as a geologist at the University of Port Harcourt up to postgraduate level, but carved a niche in journalism where he reported and wrote extensively on oil and gas industry in Nigeria for many years in the defunct Sunray, Anchor, and NewAge newspapers among others, before joining ALSCON.

In the Atiku Media Office, Ifeanyi was a senior member of the team and its pioneer Office Manager who helped shape the campaign policies of the Atiku Presidential Campaigns in the Niger Delta, particularly in the oil and gas sectors.

Described as a man with a prodigious sense of humour and a born-again Christian of the Christ Embassy denomination, Ifeanyi was an ordained preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.

The statement reads further: “May God give his family, friends, and colleagues the fortitude to bear his demise. Further details about his burial will be made public by his family. He left behind children, grandchildren and an elder and only surviving brother, Pastor Emeka Izeze of the Guardian Newspapers fame.

“May God grant Ifeanyi’s soul an eternal rest and forgive him his sins.”