On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, the performing FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, approved the appointment of Hajiya Jamilah Tangaza as the Director of Abuja Information Management Systems (AGIS).

The minister said the appointment is aimed at placing the right people “in positions where their optimum contributions will impact positively to the overall performance of the FCT administration.”

Jamilah Tangaza, born in the Northern Nigerian city of Kano, where she had her early education, attending attended St Louis Primary School and St Louis Secondary School.

Hajiya Jamila Tangaza is a Fellow of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She attended the prestigious Media Executive Programme of the Harvard Business School.

The new AGIS Director holds a Master of Science degree in Management, Organisations and Governance from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Bayero University Kano (BUK), Nigeria. Tangaza has had extensive training in numerous Information Technology applications. She was formerly the Senior Special Assistant to the Minister on Information Management Systems.

This particular job will utilise Hajia Jamilah’s people skills, her education, her managerial as well as leadership training and experience. For her, AGIS will certainly be a new, fresh vista that will be challenging. Challenging, because there will be elements in AGIS and beyond who will resist any effort to clean up the place because it will be against their interest. But Hajia Jamilah is no push over.

It is on record that when she was with BBC in London, she reformed the then highly reactionary and conservative BBC Hausa Service and turned it into a modern technology-driven multi-platform content provider. She used Information Technology and technology innovations andapplied them in content generation and production for a complex market such as Nigeria.

Above all, however, what will make Hajia Jamilah succeed in this new job is not just her technocratic pedigree but her pro-good governance, transparency and social justice stance as had been demonstrated over the 20 years of her career as a grassroots-oriented media practitioner. While I pray for Hajia Jamilah’s success to clean up a place that has been riddled with allegations of corruption, we hope that the FCT leadership will support her to achieve just what the Hon. Minister has assigned her to do which in his words are creating “optimum contributions that will impact positively on overall performance of FCT” – and, of course, its residents.

Once again, I congratulate you, Ma, and wish you a very successful tenure.

*Adegbenga is an Auja-based Public Affairs Analyst. He can be reached via kelvinadegbenga@yahoo.com
•Photo:New AGIS Director, Hajiya Jamila Tangaza.