A former Minister of Petroleum Resources and erstwhile Secretary General of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, Rilwanu Lukman, is dead.<\/p>\n
Born on August 26, 1938, he died about a month to his 76th birthday.<\/p>\n
Family sources said he died early Monday in Vienna, Austria.<\/p>\n
Also, a source at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria, confirmed that Mr. Lukman died at about 1 a.m on Monday in an undisclosed hospital in Austria.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, it\u2019s true that Dr. Lukman passed on last night in a hospital in Vienna,\u201d the source told Premium Times.<\/p>\n
The source asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media on the matter.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lukman was said to have, for a long time, suffered from a yet to be disclosed illness.<\/p>\n
Details of his burial plans are yet to be announced.<\/p>\n
However, the source at OPEC said Mr. Lukman remains would have to undergo a formal documentation by the hospital in line with the Austrian law before being released \u00a0and brought back to Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lukman, was also the Chairman of the defunct Petroleum Industry Law Reform Committee, which later metamorphosed into the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, currently before the National Assembly.<\/p>\n
He was a petroleum engineer who held several ministerial positions in both civilian and military administrations in the country.<\/p>\n
He was Secretary General of OPEC between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2000.<\/p>\n
In his last tour of duty as minister, Mr. Lukman was, on December 18, 2008, appointed Minister of Petroleum Resources by the late President Umaru Yar\u2019Adua, a position he held until March 2010.<\/p>\n
He was born in Zaria, Kaduna State on August 26, 1938. He trained as a mining engineer at the College of Arts, Science, and Technology, Zaria (now Ahmadu Bello University), and then at Imperial College, London.<\/p>\n
He earned a higher degree in mining engineering from the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Leoben, Austria (1967\u20131968); a degree in Mineral Economics from McGill University, Montreal in 1978, and an honorary doctorate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University\u00a0of Bologna in Italy.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lukman was appointed Minister of Mines, Power and Steel (1984-1985) by the Muhammadu Buhari administration.<\/p>\n
In 1986, he was appointed Minister of Petroleum Resources and Chairman\u00a0of the Board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation till\u00a0February 1990.<\/p>\n
He was Minister of Foreign Affairs between January and September 1990\u00a0and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Electric Power\u00a0Authority (1993\u20131994).<\/p>\n
From 1986, he served eight consecutive terms as OPEC president and was\u00a0elected OPEC secretary general on November 22, 1994.<\/p>\n
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A former Minister of Petroleum Resources and erstwhile Secretary General of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, Rilwanu Lukman, is dead. Born on August 26, 1938, he died about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n