Founding Managing Director of Democrat Newspaper and former President of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Mallam Ismaila Isa Funtua, is dead. He died of cardiac arrest Monday night.

He was life patron of Newspaper’s Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) and chairman of Bulet Construction company. He will be buried according to Islamic rites on Tuesday.

Funtua, an ally of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, was born in Funtua, Katsina State. He was a pioneer student of the Federal Training Centre Kaduna.

He trained as an administrative officer at the Institute of Administration, Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria and as an administrator at the Manchester University in the UK.

He was the Monitor General of the Course 9, the prestigious National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru. He served at the Katsina Native Authority for seven years as an Administrative Officer.

Mallam Ismaila Isa is a renowned Business Executive and public officer with over thirty years of management experience. He was Personnel Manager in United Textiles Limited (UNTL), responsible for over ten thousand staff and a one-time Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He is the founder of Bulet International Nigeria Limited which built many of the iconic public buildings in Abuja.

He is a philanthropist and a life patron of the NPAN, a staunch defender of a free press and free speech.
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