By Rita Chioma,

Nigeria has lost one of its best, Babatunde Osotimehin, who was Nigeria’s minister of health from December 2008 to March 2010, is dead.

Up until his death, the 68-year-old was the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

According to sources at the UNFPA, his death was announced at the Nigerian office of the UN body on Monday morning.

During his lifetime, Osotimehin was dedicated to gender, youth and maternal health issues.

His last personal tweet alive was for “protecting the health and rights of women and their babies”, which he said “is vital to protecting our shared future”.

Prior to his appointment as the minister, Osotimehin was the director-general, Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), and project manager for the World-Bank assisted HIV/AIDS programme development project.

He intended before his death to start an Husbands’ school in Nigeria, after the model seen in Niger Republic.

Osotimehin, who hails from Ijebu Igbo, Ogun state, was born in February 1949. He attended Igbobi College in Lagos in the late 1960s, before moving on to the United Kingdom, where he had his university education.