Early life
Tangau was born in 1958 in Kampung Lokos,Kiulu,Tuaran,Sabah,into a Kadazandusun family of peasants cum agrarian pastoralists whereby his parents,Peter Yanggau Gokis (born 26 March 1924) and Anna Bolugu Panod (11 August 1932 –19 January 2025) were cultivators of hill paddy. He is the fourth child of 14 siblings (two deceased). Upon completing his primary school education at SRK Lokos,Kiulu in 1970,he was determined to continue his education despite initial objections from his parents due to financial constraints.
With his own savings,he enrolled in SMK Kiulu (now known as SMK Tun Fuad Stephens) and attended from Bridge Class to Form Two. To support himself in school,he took up a manual job as a rubber tapper on weekends. He was also employed by a Chinese “towkay”,a term for business owners in Kiulu town,which at that time only had a row of shops. He then could save on his pocket money for food as well as lodging,since the school has a hostel for students from remote areas as well as those from the larger town of Tamparuli and far away areas such as Telipok,Inanam and Manggatal townships on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu,Kota Belud as well as Kundasang/Bundu Tuhan,Ranau.
He often speaks of his childhood fondly:
At the age of just 13, students from my village Lokos would walk to our secondary school in Kiulu every two weeks or so. We would depart at 6am from my village and arrive at our school at 6pm, carrying food supplies, mainly rice. As a young undergraduate from UPM, I would walk for four hours from Pekan Nabalu township in neighbouring Kota Belud to my village, Kampung Lokos. Generally the people from my village are from poor families without a regular source of income as they survived on subsistence farming.
At the end of Form Two he was awarded a Boarding Scholarship from the Sabah State Government to further his studies in SMK Ranau (now known as SMK Mat Salleh) in Form Three in 1974. With the good results he obtained in the Lower Certificate of Education (LCE), he was granted a Sabah State Government Scholarship to pursue his upper secondary education at Setapak High School, Kuala Lumpur.
Inspired by fellow schoolmates in this school, he initiated a student society in his village called KEPALOS, which formed several student study groups and fundraised to finance their programmes. In 1976, Tangau passed his Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) with Grade One. With this he earned the same scholarship to do his Form Six at Sekolah Menengah Sains Selangor (SMSS) Cheras, a governmental fully residential school. Whilst schooling there, he was an active student leader and a debater for his school. Prior to his tertiary education while waiting for the results of his Higher School Certificate examinations, he served as a temporary teacher at SMK Tamparuli, Tuaran, Sabah, for five months. He taught Integrated Science or Sains Paduan to Form One students.
In 1979, having successfully completed his Higher School Certificate, Tangau was accepted into University Pertanian Malaysia (UPM), Serdang Selangor, to do his bachelor's degree in Forestry Science. He was an active student leader at university and was the President of the Catholic Student Society for two terms from 1981 to 1982. He was also a keen observer of the political development of his birth state, Sabah as well as nationwide. He graduated in 1983 and soon after, he secured a job position at the Sabah Forestry Development Authority (SAFODA) as a research officer on silviculture. In 1985 he was accepted as an individual participant to study forest management in various institutions in Japan under the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for four months. He had the opportunity to travel and stay in Tokyo, Kumamoto, Numata, Hokkaido and Tsukuba. Subsequently, in 1990 he obtained a master's degree in Development Management from Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in the Philippines.
He is married to Datuk (Datin Seri Panglima) Dr. Jaina Sintian, a medical doctor from Bundu Tuhan village, Ranau, who is the founding Vice Chief of the UPKO Women Movement Chief (Wanita UPKO), later becoming its Chief in 2008 and only retired from the position in 2018 when her husband was elected officially as the President of UPKO and served in this position until 2023. Together they have five children; four daughters and a son.
Prior to politics
Shortly after graduating from UPM, Tangau was sent to Japan for a four-month training stint in various research institutions. Upon returning to Sabah in 1985 he assisted Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) as a backroom boy to form the new Sabah government. He joined the newly set up Institute for Development Studies (IDS) Sabah as a research associate, and served for nine years until 1994.
When BN toppled PBS in 1994, Tangau assisted leaders who left the party to form Parti Demokratik Sabah (PDS). For the next five years Tangau served as the Chief Executive Officer at the Institute for Indigenous Economic Progress (INDEP) Sabah, a think-tank set established by PDS. The objective of INDEP was to engage Pasokmomogun community groups in Sabah in policy-making and assist UPKO party leaders in decision-makings.
Tangau also served as chairman of several federal agencies and state linked companies such as the Sabah Cultural Board (LKNS), Forest Plantation Development Sdn. Bhd., Malaysian Timber Industrial Board (MTIB) and Asian Supply Base Sdn Bhd (ASB). In addition, Tangau once also sat on the boards of Suria Capital Berhad and Sabah Energy Corporation Sdn. Bhd.
Political career
During the 1999 state elections in Sabah, 10 of the 12 PDS candidates who contested were defeated. Due to this devastating defeat Tangau was requested by the party leadership to contest in the 1999 parliamentary general election, effectively thrusting him from backroom boy to mainstream politics.
Tangau was elected as the Member of Parliament for Tuaran for the first time in November 1999 and again in 2004. He did not contest in the 12th Malaysian Parliament to make way for then UPKO deputy president Datuk Wilfred Bumburing to contest.
In the 13th General Elections held in 2013 he was once again elected as the Member of Parliament for Tuaran and won by a majority of over 5,000 votes.
Tangau has been involved in UPKO since the party's early days. Shortly after he was first elected as an MP he became the Information Chief. He was then appointed the secretary general in 2002.
In 2012 the deputy president post fell vacant when Datuk Wilfred Bumburing quit UPKO to join the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition. Tangau was elected the deputy president in October 2013, beating Datuk Dr Ewon Ebin, UPKO vice-president, with a slim majority.
In March 2014 the founding president Tan Sri Bernard Dompok stepped down, nearly 10 months after he lost the Penampang parliamentary seat in the last general election. Since then Tangau has been serving as the Acting President of UPKO until he won the president post uncontested at the party triennial general meetings on 24 September 2018. [2]
Ministerial career
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced a new Cabinet line-up on 28 July 2015, involving the appointment of seven new ministers and nine deputy ministers. Tangau was appointed as the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation. He was sworn in by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on 4 August 2015. [3]
Tangau's vision for the Ministry has been for science, technology and innovation to be drivers of the “new economy”, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He actively promoted innovation as a way of life. Practical problems in life, especially those economic challenges should be properly identified and then innovate to resolved them using science and technologies. Innovators should be encouraged to secure Intellectual Property (IP) for their innovation and then the government should incentivised them to commercialised such that it will generate wealth and create jobs for the people. He started the National Innovation and Creative Economy (NICE) Expo in 2017. He blogs regularly and writes a weekly column every Sunday in the Daily Express, the largest daily newspaper in Sabah, expressing his thoughts about the advancement of science, technology and innovation in the country during his ministerial term.
