Draft:Aiyub Omar

Aiyub Omar is a Malaysian diplomat who is currently appointed as the Malaysian High Commissioner to Nigeria. He began his career as an Administrative and Diplomatic Officer in 2001 at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Malaysia. After completing a Diploma in Public Management course in 2002, he was accepted into the foreign service and began his diplomatic career as an Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2003, he served at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, in New York, USA for 4 months which gave him his first exposure into multilateral negotiations on international issues. From 2004 to 2008, he served at the Malaysian Embassy in Spain as Second Secretary.

Upon his return to Malaysia in 2008, he was offered a scholarship by the United Kingdom Government under Foreign Service Program (FSP) of Diplomatic Study course at Oxford University, United Kingdom for 9 months. After graduating, he returned to the Foreign Ministry and served Malaysian Technical Cooperation Program (MTCP) Secretariat until 2012 where he was responsible for coordinating the international development aid, which was just transferred from the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), Prime Minister's Department then. Under the MTCP, he coordinated with various Malaysian training institutions in formulating short-term courses for recipient countries under the South-South cooperation framework by assisting them in the fields of education, ICT, taxation and rural development among others. In collaboration with Australian Aid, he was assigned to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012 to develop an education curriculum in Afghanistan according to the education model in Malaysia. He, together with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), also went to South Sudan to develop a special course on rural development for South Sudanese officers which then had only achieved its independence a month earlier. He was also heavily involved in developing several special courses for other countries such as Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. In 2012, he was posted to Islamabad, Pakistan until 2016 as Counsellor at the Malaysian High Commission. Later, he returned to Malaysia and was tasked as Director at the Policy Planning and Coordination Department for 2 years and then subsequently as Director at the Centre for Leadership, Negotiation and Public Diplomacy, at the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR) for almost 2 years.

On 1 November 2019, Aiyub was appointed as the Consul General of Malaysia in Medan, Indonesia until 21 January 2024. He received his first ambassadorial assignment from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Ibrahim on 20 March 2024 as the 13th Malaysian High Commissioner to Nigeria following in the footsteps of his paternal family line, the late Tan Sri Zain Azraai Zainal Abidin who once held important positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.