Nasarawa State has lost one of its elder statesmen, Senator Solomon Ewuga, who was also a former Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Sources close to the family in Akwanga and Nasarawa-Eggon confirmed his passing on Wednesday to Daily Trust.
He studied Political Science at the University of Ibadan between 1974 and 1977, before moving abroad for further studies in Mass Communication at Stockholm University, Sweden.
Ewuga’s political career was defined by resilience and ambition.
He first rose to prominence in 1999 when he challenged Abdullahi Adamu, who would later become the National Chairman of the APC, for the governorship ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Though Adamu emerged victorious, Ewuga was selected as his deputy, and together they won the state’s governorship election.
Barely months into that new era of democracy, Governor Adamu nominated him as minister from Nasarawa, and in June 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory.
His stint in the federal cabinet lasted two years before he was removed in a reshuffle.
He made fresh bids for the Nasarawa Governorship in 2003 and 2007, eventually defecting from the PDP to the ANPP and later to the CPC.
In 2011, he joined forces with Tanko Al-Makura to unseat then-Governor Aliyu Akwe Doma. That year, while Al-Makura was swept into power as governor, Ewuga secured a Senate seat to represent Nasarawa North in the 7th Assembly.
A veteran journalist, he once served as managing director of the Nigerian Standard Newspaper.
He also suffered tragedies that left indelible marks: his daughter, a pilot, was killed in a plane crash in Cameroon, and he himself endured a brutal kidnapping that left him nearly immobile for years.