President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made his first set of appointments.
Veteran journalist Dele Alake is new presidential spokesman.
The other new appointees are Ambassador Kunle Adeleke as the State Chief of Protocol to the President and Olusegun Dada as Special Assistant on Digital Media.
Ambassador Adeleke, Oyo-born career diplomat, is an accomplished diplomat and lawyer. He joined the Nigerian Foreign Service in 1993 and rose through the ranks, serving in various missions abroad and at the Headquarters, including the State House.
The new SCOP comes to the job with a huge pedigree as a career Foreign Service Officer and it’s expected that he will change the face of diplomatic protocol in the Villa.
His last appointed was as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the African Union and Ambassador to Ethiopia, where he served with distinction and represented the country creditably and honourably.
Born in 1967 in Ibadan, Oyo State, Ambassador Adeleke graduated from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University, lle-Ife with a Bachelor of Laws degree (with Honours) in June 1990. He then proceeded to the Nigerian Law School, Victoria Island, Lagos for his professional training to become a Barrister and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1991.
He was called to the Nigerian Bar by the Body of Benchers on December 10, 1991. He attended the prestigious Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, for his secondary education.
After his diplomatic training at the Nigerian Foreign Service Academy, Lagos in 1994, he served in various capacities at home and abroad, including, Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Office of the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Office of the Permanent Secretary, Administration Department, Legal & Treaties Division, Physical Planning Division, Global Institutions Division, Overseas Communications & ICT Division as well as in the Protocol Department, as Deputy Chief of Protocol/Acting Chief of Protocol.
He also served as an Assistant Director of Protocol to three of Nigeria’s former Presidents, viz: President Olusegun Obasanjo (2007), President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (2007-2010), and President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (2010) at the State House Protocol, Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.
While at Headquarters, he served as an active member of various Special Committees as well as Top Management and Policy-making Committees in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Before his appointment to the AU and Ethiopia, Ambassador Adeleke had served in many of Nigeria’s diplomatic missions notably Beijing, (China), Brasilia (Brazil), Warsaw (Poland), London (United Kingdom), and Dublin (Ireland), where he was Deputy Head of Mission.
He was part of Nigeria’s delegation for the legal review of the Constitutive Act of the African Union in 2002 and to several Summits and International Conferences of ECOWAS, the African Union, the Commonwealth, the Community of Democracies, the Group of Seven (7) and the United Nations High-Level meetings (both in Geneva and New York) at different times in his career.
