During the administration of the youthful Yakubu Gowon, he was considered to be among a group known as super Permanent Secretaries.

[6] Ahmed Joda was born in Yola to a Fulani family in 1930, his great-great-grandfather was Modibbo Raji, a 19th-century Islamic scholar and contemporary of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio.

He worked briefly at Moor Plantation in Ibadan, and later as an agricultural officer in Yola before entering the field of journalism at Gaskiya Corporation in Zaria.

[6] He then joined the Northern regional government as a Chief Information Officer then later Permanent Secretary from 1962 to 1967.

In 1999, he was appointed a member of the Committee to Advise the Presidency on Poverty Alleviation and in 2015, headed the Muhammadu Buhari presidential transition.