In tribute to a dedicated technocrat

We had open space for outdoor activities mainly football. Opportunities were there for one to also watch the town’s prominent football players practicing every evening. I still have fond memories of Isa Tata playing along; Very tall lanky and good player. I later came to realize that he was a prominent track and field athlete and even a gold medalist in relay in the defunct North-East Secondary School Games.
After he passed his W.A.S.C in Bauchi Secondary School in 1967, he proceeded to Maiduguri Secondary School for H.S.C (Advance Level), after which he attended the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. At ABU he read Agricultural Science specializing in Agronomy, an area he has lived and made contributions both in public and private sectors all his life to his last breath. While most of his colleagues/classmates have retired with some of them only active on consultancy basis, Isa Tata worked from morning till sunset, every day in some cases even on weekends. He still came to office-exhausted though whenever he returned from a long journey.
In fact with the advent of Dangote Sugar Master Plan, which was intended to make Nigeria a net exporter of sugar (just like cement) in few years to come, Tata had in the last two years traveled from Sokoto to Kebbi, Jigawa to Kano, Benin to Ilorin, Taraba to Kogi all in an effort to secure suitable land for sugar cane and rice for mass cultivation. This effort was by the Grace of God and with the cooperation of all the state governors resulted in huge success. As excited as the various governors have been to have these projects sited in their states, Tata would rather have a thorough examination of the vast land before recommending them to Dangote for Investment.
Tata once told me about, his affinity with sugar cane cultivation as the sugar industry started at an early stage when in the sixties the defunct Northern Nigerian Ministry of Information sponsored film shows for public enlightenment. It was then he was opportune to watch a documentary on Bacita Sugar Company (NISUCO) and became fascinated by the sugar estate. So opportunity came during the National Youth Service Corps and he got posted to Kwara State. His primary assignment was at the Sugar Company.
He then started his career as Agricultural Officer in Bauchi State, which took him to the old Gombe Agriculture Development Programme. Around 1980, Bauchi State under the regime of Tatari Ali in its wisdom secured a World Bank loan and expanded the agric project into four zones covering Eastern, Western, Central and Northern zones with the headquarters at Bauchi. Tata was assigned as Project Manager of the Central Zone with headquarters at Miya. Those were the days when Bauchi State was rightfully put on the world map of agricultural development, the era when the state witnessed agricultural revolution. At that time, draught-resistant crop varieties of maize were developed and the state participation at national agric shows was superb.
It was at the peak of that project in the early 80s that Isa Tata found time to pursue a postgraduate programme at the Reading University in the U.K. Years after he joined the Savannah Sugar Company Numan as Agricultural Manager for several years. By 1987, when the Babangida administration established the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Isa Tata was deployed to give the Agric Programme Department a boost. He was at the Headquarters of the NDE in Lagos up and until 1993 when the same Babangida regime in its wisdom appointed Aminu Saleh as Secretary of Industry who in turn saw to the implementation of the new Sugar Policy and that paved way for the establishment of the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC).
That opportunity was seized by prominent investor Aliko Dangote to establish sugar industries in the country. In the year 2000, Tata left the Sugar Council on sound footing and later became Chairman of the Board of Nigerian Agriculture and Cooperation Bank. Subsequently the Dangote Group engaged him on account of his sound reputation in Agricultural and specifically Sugar Development in Nigeria. For the years he spent at Dangote, apart from coordinating the sugar projects, he was also representative of the group in Abuja and travelled, handled and executed specialized duties on behalf of the group and its president.
Very natural, organized, thorough and humble. He led an austere lifestyle, always living within his means, thereby showing good examples to others. Going by the testimonies of colleagues in Dangote and elsewhere, Tata was adjudged to have led a simple but purposeful life, devoid of rancor. He will be greatly missed as he left a vacuum that will be difficult to fill. He died on the 11th of March 2015 in Abuja after a brief illness at the age of 67. He left behind three wives, seven children, grandchildren and an aged mother. May his gentle soul rest in perfect peace, amen.
Ahmed wrote in from Abuja.