So, it is so easy to die? I keep asking myself this question following the passing of Mohammed Mouktar Adamu, former Deputy Editor-in-Chief, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), member Nigerian Guild of Editors and until his death, External Communications Manager, Nigeria Digital ID4D (a Population Sector project jointly funded by the World Bank, European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency) in Abuja.
I was with Mouktar about 12 hours before his shocking death. I declined the chair the son Mubarak gave me in their “Amenity Ward 1” of the State House Medical Centre to sit beside him on the hospital bed. We heartily chatted about just everything under the sun in high spirits with laughter, happiness amidst handshakes and backslapping. We started with his health, about which he said had significantly improved. “For five days, I could not eat, walk or even answer the phone. Now, all that is gone. I walk, I eat and feel very fine.”
He said the attention he got at the State House Medical Centre was incomparable to any that he got in the past. “They have a full grasp of what is wrong with me.”
He said each and every medical staff was supportive and keen to help. “They are all saying ‘this is the PS’s (Permanent Secretary’s) patient ‘“and I cut in to say that they will care for you because Tijjani Umar is an extraordinary gentleman. He treats everyone well and staff will be happy paying him back for always being nice.
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Mouktar said he felt good and ready to go home at any moment.
In his words, “this is the first time that anyone got to understand what is wrong with me. They have done 12 tests and more are still being done. They (doctors) come here with results, sit down with you and tell you in great detail what is wrong with you, and what is to be done. Can you believe, Malam, that they said my body is acidic?” I said I didn’t know what that meant, but suggested that maybe it came from the accumulation of wrong prescriptions from the past wrong diagnoses. He said the acid is being removed with repeated kidney flushing.
Mouktar and I discussed our families and the children and twice he said he would like to see my wife after a long time. I promised him that she would visit either at home or in hospital if he still remained there as soon as she returned from a trip.
Not for a moment did it occur to both of us that I was there to say goodbye to him for the last time.
Now, in my six decades of existence, I have witnessed many deaths, including those from road accidents or air plane crashes. In most of those cases, you either have a build up of illness or one form of explanation or another, no matter how contorted.
Never had I experienced one in which the one who claimed to have emerged from the proverbial valley of death, dies 12 hours later. His death reminds us of the power of Allah over all creatures.
I recall my various interactions with him which actually began after we left the Bayero University Kano, and this was when we both began as reporters in Sokoto. He was working for NAN and I, the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA.
His selflessness showed when he roved around town looking for news, his eyes were not only focused on national news, which mattered most to his organization but also on other things that he would gather and later share with those of us who could use as local news stories.
At a point, he gave up his rented accommodation to share my apartment that the NTA gave me.
The relationship became even closer when we both got admission to the University of Nigeria Nsukka to read higher degree in mass communication.
Emmanuel Shehu, now Dr Shehu, suggested to both of us to seek the admission into the initial MA program of the university following the invitation he got from the then Dean of the School of graduate studies.
Professor Obiechina was Shehu’s external examiner in the MA English class of the Bayero University, Kano and found him to be extraordinarily good.
The examiner was so impressed at the end of the exercise that he requested the student to help him identify some northern candidates who he knows to be good for admission into the new communications program of the university. Shehu invited the two of us and thankfully, we met all requirements.
At the graduate Hall – Kwame Nkrumah, Shehu acting the older brother put us up in his room before we fully registered and got one that Mouktar and I shared.
What was never in question was that the deceased was among the best in class. He was a true bookworm. He knew he had a gift and didn’t hoard it. When he looked in the library for stuff he could use, he never was there for himself alone. Anything he saw that could be useful to you, he used his money to photocopy and bring it with him.
“Malam,” you would hear him say, “this journal can help you.”
An important example was my search for a theory on which to peg my difficult research project. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find one until one day, Mouktar dropped on my laps, the Anthonio Gramschi theory on social hegemony.
It ended this long and tortuous search that had delayed my project and had taken me to the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs library in Lagos, very far from Nsukka without success.
On his posting to the United Kingdom as NAN Correspondent, Mouktar mounted an MSc program at Leicester University and grabbed the second degree in a record time. His professor at Nsukka, the formidably cerebral Charles Okigbo, intervened in the matter of his dispute with the department to save his hard work of three years but the deceased never looked back. He declined to take the UNN degree.
On the social level, Mouktar’s goodness was beyond comparison. Before you rise from your sleep, he would have bought the usual breakfast staple for students, bread and bean cake (Akara) from the hawkers and boiled the tea. If you are not watchful, he will pay for the meal again and again at the Refectory or “Ref” as the students called it. He failed to do this only when he was broke.
Any day you travel to Bauchi—his hometown, Mouktar ensured that you ate home food from his mother’s kitchen, usually MASA -for which Bauchi is well known, and he didn’t have to be in town for this to be arranged.
At the office, his dazzling brilliance brought him closer to his successive bosses until it got to a time he told me he was leaving to go use his knowledge and skills in trying other things. I thought it was premature to do so but unbeknown to me, he had fully made up his mind on taking the early retirement option.
Shortly after he left NAN, I convinced my partners on the Board at the commencement of the Peoples Daily newspaper to hire him as Editor-in-Chief. He accepted to serve but the journey was cut short by policy differences.
His contributions to me and our many friends is immense, and cannot be described in a few words.
In Mouktar’s death, the nation has just lost one of its most valuable assets. He was an extraordinary, warm, compassionate person.
As his friends, we have lost a selfless and dedicated companion who devoted his life to serving others -not himself- and worked towards the progress of the country. He touched our lives with grace, decorum and dignity.
My thoughts are with his wife, Halima, his aged mother, the rest of the family and his numerous friends in this sorrowful hour.
May his soul rest in peace.
Garba Shehu OON, is former Presidential Spokesperson
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