Senator Saidu Umar Kumo, a major leader of the All Progressives Congress in Gombe State, is dead.
He was 71 years old.
President Muhammadu Buhari made the death known in a statement by Garba Shehu, the SSA Media.
Buhari described the death of Senator Saidu Umar Kumo as “a major loss to the ruling APC”.
“He was our pillar of strength in Gombe State whose defection in 2019 had energized our supporters for change.”
Kumo died Sunday at the Gwagwalada Hospital in Abuja where he was receiving treatment.
He was formerly in PDP and headed Atiku Abubakar campaign in the Northeast in the 2019 presidential election.
But he dumped Atiku and joined the APC in January, just before the election, which Buhari won. Buhari’s APC also won Gombe from the PDP.
Kumo represented Gombe Central in the senate between 1999 to 2003, but failed in his governorship bid in 2011.
In the condolence message in Abuja on Sunday, the President said:
“I have received the news of the death of Senator Kumo with profound shock and sadness because his contributions to the growth of our party cannot be forgotten.
“Let me put it on record that the history of victory in 2019 cannot be written without reckoning with the significant contributions of the late Senator Saidu Umar Kumo who had brought his enormous political goodwill into our efforts to retain power.”
President Buhari also mourned the death of Madawakin Keffi, Abubakar Senior, a distinguished civil servant and the second in command in the Keffi Emirate Council.
The President prayed to Allah to forgive the souls of Kumo and Senior, reward their good deeds with aljanna, and grant fortitude to their families, friends, associates, the governments and people of Gombe and Nasarawa States to bear the losses.
