President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Professor Antonia Taiye Simbine as the Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER).
The appointment takes effect from 1st June, 2022.
This was contained in a statement dated Friday, May 20, 2022 and signed by Sufuyan Ojeifo, Special Assistant, Media to the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning.
Prof Simbine will be succeeding the outgoing Director-General, Dr Folarin Gbadebo-Smith, whose tenure expires on May, 31, 2022.
She is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations and currently heads the Knowledge Management Development Department at NISER.
Following this appointment, Professor Simbine becomes the first woman to be appointed Director-General of the nation’s apex research institute.
Prof. Anthonia Okoosi Simbine was born a twin in Kaduna state, where she lived most of her early life and hails from Ayere in Ijumu Local Government Area of Kogi state.
She obtained her first degree in Public Administration from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1984 and her MSc and PhD degrees in Political Science from the University of Ibadan (UI).
She won the British Council Fellowship award to the University of Leeds, United Kingdom in 1993 as part of her PhD programme.
Simbine was a Consultant to the Presidency’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) in 2008 and also worked with the Sub-Committee on Electoral Systems. She was later appointed a Member, INEC Registration and Election Review Committee (IRERC) between August and November 2011.
In 2013, she was appointed a Faculty Member and Reviewer for the New York based Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council. Until recently, she was an INEC National Commissioner.
