Kyuka Lilymjok

Kyuka Lilymjok was born into poverty in rural Nigeria.[4] He started primary school in 1973 and then attended Government Secondary School, Katagum, Bauchi State, where he obtained the General Certificate in Education (GCE) and proceeded to Bayero University Kano where he graduated with an LL.B. Second Class Honours (Upper Division) in 1990. He graduated from the Nigerian Law School, Victoria Island, Lagos in 1991 with a BL Honours degree,[5] and was called to the Nigerian Bar the same year and proceeded to private legal practice. In 1994, he was appointed assistant lecturer in the faculty of law Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and enrolled for a master's degree programme in the same university graduating in 1998.[6] In 2005, he obtained a doctorate degree in law and became a law professor in 2012.[7]

As at May 2016, he was the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on legal matters, research and documentation. He reportedly spoke as a keynote speaker on 16 May 2016, at the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) Kaduna Branch Law Week at the canopies, U/Rimi, Kaduna, Kaduna State on the present administration's fight against corruption.[8]

In June 2016, Kyuka was appointed as Secretary of a technical committee on fuel price hike inaugurated by the Nigerian Federal government, representing the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.[9][10]

In May 2020, Kyuka was appointed appointed Chair of the Governing Board of the Universal Basic Education Commission.[11] Prior to this, he had been serving in the department of Commercial Law, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.[11]

kyuka Lilymjok and his student (Usman Yakub) at his UBEC office, International Conference Center, Abuja in 2023.

In 2002, Lilymjok published a book on the former Nigerian military Head-of-State, Muhammadu Buhari, titled Muhammadu Buhari: The Spirit of a Man.[12]

After the 2003 Nigerian presidential election, he was also part of the legal team which stood by Buhari to challenge the result of the election in the Supreme Court, said to have been won by the incumbent president of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR. After the final judgement was passed in favour of the incumbent president and the PDP, he published a critique to show his displeasure in the ruling, titled: Buhari Vs Obasanjo: Law and Justice on the Cross.

When Buhari moved to the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC) in which he was to contest for the fifth consecutive time against the incumbent president, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, Lilymjok's alliance followed suit and was a core member of the new party and supporter of the man he so admired.

He served as Deputy Director of the Policy, Research and Strategy Committee of the council in the 2019 presidential polls in which now President Buhari was contesting for a second term in office, and served also as the APC Returning Officer for Kaduna State in the 2019 gubernatorial elections in which Nasir Elrufai ran for re-election[13] and was reported to have won, even though the issue was strongly contested in court by the PDP candidate, just as in the case of the presidential election.

Adamu Kyuka Usman has many works of fiction in his name and he was one of the two Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA)/Jacaranda literary prize award winners for Prose through his book Sieged, in the year 2011.[14]

Lilymjok is married with three children.[15] He lived with them in Canada from 2014 to 2015 before returning alone to Nigeria in 2015.

Kyuka Lilymjok, wife (Maria) and children