Abdullahi Bolaji; Member of cabinet under President Jonathan. Bolaji was among the youngest, first holding the portfolio for Youth Development before taking over at the Sports ministry. He was born in 1969 in Kwara to parents who were peasants. In his bid to change the fussy education he understood that he was getting, Bolaji started off in life as a bus conductor at the age of 14, raising money to assess a better education. He chose to become a journalist since his teenage and he was the editor of the Press Club when in secondary school. Mates called him Dele Giwa and his heroes were the Newswatch trio of Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed.
Bolaji won a nomination for the Nigerian Media Merit Award for the Best Newspaper Feature of the Year in his first year as a journalist. He was a Deputy Editor at the Thisday Newspaper before he served as a special assistant to Kwara State governor, Bukola Saraki. He was later appointed a Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology in 2007.
