A Minister of Labour is dead.
NewsOne Nigeria reports that Niger’s minister of employment and labour, Mohamed Ben Omar, died on Sunday, May,3 his party said, without stating the cause of death.
This reliable online news platform understands that the Minister of Labour died Sunday afternoon at the main hospital of the capital Niamey, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) said on Whatsapp.
Niger President, Mahamadou Issoufou, who commented o the Minister of Labour death, said he learned the news with a “heavy heart”.
The late Minister of Labour, born January 1, 1965, as Ben Omar, in the south-central town of Tesker, had led the PSD, which is allied with Issoufou’s Party for Democracy and Socialism.
Ben Omar, who until his death, was Issoufou’s labour minister since 2017, began his political life in 1999 under president Mamadou Tandja, serving in parliament or in various ministerial roles in the poor Sahel nation.
The late Minister of Labour strongly supported a constitutional amendment that allowed Tandja to prolong his second term by three years in 2009, but a military junta overthrew Tandja the following February.
Before Ben Omar created the PSD, he was part of the Rally for Democracy and Progress, the party of Tandja’s predecessor Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, who was assassinated in 1999 by members of his own bodyguard.
