That was the late Alhaji Ismaila Isa Funtua who passed on yesterday after he reportedly suffered cardiac arrest.
Funtua 78, was a Founding Managing Director of Democrat Newspaper and former President of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN).
A national newspapers once tipped him among those penciled for the the job of Chief of Staff after the late Abba Kyari gave in to COVID-19.
This perhaps was as a result of his envied closeness to President Buhari.
But Funtua told Vanguard Newspapers that he never imagined he could be tipped for such job adding that he was unemployable and uninterested.
He said, “I am an employer of labour and, therefore, unemployable.
”I was a minister in 1983. What position will I be interested in now? I am embarrassed that a national newspaper could display such level of ignorance by connecting me with the Chief of Staff job.”
Funtua was an administrative officer of Katsina Native Authority for seven years, Minister of Water Resources in the defunct Second Republic, a member of the 1994-1995 Constitutional Conference, and founder of Bulet International Nigeria Limited (the largest wholly owned indigenous construction company), which built most of the iconic public buildings in Abuja.
If he had been picked for the job, Buhari and indeed Nigerians would have lost two Chief of Staff consecutively in a space of three months.
