“Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move”
–Bamgambiki Habyanmana, Pearls of Eternity.
By CHIDI OBINECHE
Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Hajiya Amina Mohammed has come full circle. In a rare windswept news break last week, she is set to mount the dais as the new Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, UN. The announcement came against the stifling background of dour and lightless rattles that have defined the Nigerian frazzles of recent. She has earned a dazzling grace that flounces as it dazzles. She has not only broken out in her ranks in a flash, she, like diamond has glittered and twinkled in the dependable grayness of the sky. She has rooted out a cornerstone of cowering spirit of abasement that has muddled the Nigerian life.
Amina J. Mohammed. With the high altitude and air staying power of The Ruppell’s griffon vulture which flies at a dizzying height of 37, 000ft and stays on air for hours, her career has seen her working for three Nigerian presidents of diverse persuasions. And that perhaps, is a measure of her intrinsic value as a treasure.
Her career is a gradient of George Bernard Shaw’s eternal words that “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Pried loose, all the pulsations of blandishments of settled domino visage has dissembled in a luxuriant cavern of light. But she is not just arriving on the international stage now. She was a key player in the post 2015 development process serving as the Special Adviser to the immediate past UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on post 2015 development planning.
In this role, she acted as a link between the Secretary-General, his High Level Panel of Eminent Persons, (HLP) and the General Assembly’s Open Working Group, (OWG) among other stakeholders. Prior to this, she served as founder and Chief Executive Officer, of the Center for Development Policy Solutions and as an adjunct professor for the Masters in Development Practice Programme at Columbia University.
She was also Senior Special Assistant to the then president Goodluck Jonathan on the Millennium Development Goals, MDGS serving three presidents successively over a period of six years. In 2005, she was charged with the coordination of Nigeria’s debt relief funds towards the achievement of the MDGS. From 2002 to 2005, she coordinated the task force on Gender and Education for the UN Millennium Project.
Before then, she was founder and Executive Director of Afri- Projects Consortium, a multi- disciplinary firm of engineers and quantity surveyors. She also worked with the architectural engineering firm, ARCHCON Nigeria in association with Norman and Dawbarn, UK.
Born in 1961, she worked in the fields of development for more than 30 years both in the public and private sector. Her mother is British and she has six children. She hails from Gombe LGA, Gombe State. She bagged the Nigerian national award, OFR in 2006 and was inducted into Nigeria’s female hall of fame in 2007.