Professor Mohammed Kabir was a commissioner in Kano State during the administration of the late Abubakar Rimi. He was nicknamed “Father of Public Health” as the first professor of public health (community medicine) in the core North. In this interview, he shared some of his memories, including how General Muhammadu Buhari jailed him, along with Rimi and several others.
Having celebrated your 73rd birthday recently, how would you say life has treated you?
I really thank my creator and my parents, friends and all my schoolmates at various levels, as well as those I have worked with and I am still working with. I have worked at two levels, mainly government at Kano State level, right from when I graduated from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1974. I had to do housemanship in the Kano City Hospital (now called Murtala Muhammad Hospital), after which I went for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, where I was posted to the Armed Forces Medical Services. I had to report to the headquarters in Lagos. The way they operated at that time was that as a graduate-doctor they would check for the hospital that needed people at your level. It was discovered that only Kaduna sent a signal on that day that they needed an NYSC doctor; that was how I ended up in Kaduna State for my service.
I came back to Kano in 1975, where I was a medical officer in the same Kano City Hospital. And by 1978, I was in London – University of London’s School of Tropical Medicine, where I did my masters and came back. I happened to be the second medical doctor in Kano State who obtained a postgraduate qualification. The first was the late Dr Imam, a gynaecologist. As soon as I came back, there were three people who were my seniors – Dr Yahaya, Dr Kura and Dr Garba – but I was appointed the executive secretary of the state’s Health Services Management Board. That was the style of the late Abubakar Rimi. All his commissioners were graduates with additional qualifications.
Your wife was the first female commissioner in Kano State, how did she achieve that feat?
In the core North. There were two of them, but she was the first to take the oath of office. When I was in London, Rimi called me and said he wished to appoint a woman commissioner and he was thinking of appointing my wife. She had been in the university, in fact, earlier than me. I said, “Sir, it is alright if she wants.” She already had her master’s degree in Sociology, so she was qualified enough. She was the first woman to be appointed as a commissioner in the core North because I don’t know about Kwara and Benue, but certainly, in the North-West.
She served for about three years in the Ministry of Information and Home Affairs, and a year before the end of that government, she resigned and went back to the university. You know that university is such a place that you leave and always want to return.
After she went back to the university, Rimi approached me and said, “I am thinking of replacing your wife and I am thinking of making you a commissioner.” Of course, I said, “Sir, is this an inherited thing?” But he told me there is a little bit of political game going on and he wanted to put people he trusted. I accepted and served for one year in the Ministry of Land and Regional Planning.
What happened afterwards?
When we finished, Buhari’s coup happened and all of us, from Shehu Shagari to every governor and commissioner, were detained.
What was the experience like?
First, so many of us were kept in a house at Kundila Housing Estate and after investigations some were found guilty and taken to Kaduna to face the tribunal. I was lucky because I did not face any tribunal.
After 11 months in detention at Kundila, those of us not taken to Kaduna were taken to Kano State Central Prison.
But you were not found guilty of any offence.
The reason they gave was that the detention was to protect us. Twenty-one people from Kano State were found guilty and jailed 21 years and above, including Rimi and the late Sabo Bakin Zuwo. I noticed that Kano had the highest number.
After one month in prison, I complained that I was not feeling well, so I spent the rest of my incarceration time in the same hospital where I was doing my practice. I was there when I got information that I was going to be released because no offence was found against me.
When I was discharged, I started working in my hospital. I did not know there was more money in private practice until that time. Within two years I had N500,000 in my account, which was a huge money. For example, I bought this house in the GRA at N230,000 in 1989. Sometime ago, someone offered over N200million for it.
Looking back at that harrowing experience, do you harbour any ill feeling towards President Buhari?
Honestly, I don’t because everybody was affected, whether guilty or not. Fortunately, at the end of it I was found not guilty. We are talking of over 37 years ago. It has come and gone and I can’t keep holding a grudge.
When and how did you start your journey as an academic?
In 1986, I joined Bayero University, Kano (BUK) as a temporary staff through a friend, Professor Lawan Bichi. I felt I loved teaching, and nine years later, I became a fulltime staff as a senior lecturer. By 2002, I put in for my professorial programme after my publications and became a professor in 2003.
Bichi, who already had an appointment in the BUK, came to my hospital and told me that they were starting a medical school. We were together in London and he told me they did not have a lecturer in public health and asked me to join them, even if it was on a part-time basis. I agreed.
After a total of 32 years, I had to retire after reaching the age of 70 years as a professor.
Two months after I retired, the state university (Yusuf Maitama University) asked me to be the provost of the College of Medicine they were planning to start. I got the appointment on contract, which was renewed last year.
Has anything changed in medical education between then and now?
I came to the BUK as a senior lecturer and I told them that my qualification should be considered even though I did not have my fellowship at that time. For 19 years, I was the head of my department (Community Medicine) because there was nobody to appoint. It was a de facto appointment for me. Even on the 19th year, I had to plead with the vice chancellor to appoint one chap even though he was not a senior lecturer. I also served as the dean of my faculty for two years.
I feel my best days studying medicine was in the University of London. During my final papers, I was staying in a student hostel and we cornered a table in the dining room and shared it with an Indian, Sierra Leonean and one white chap. After my exam I came in and they were like, “Look at Mohammed,” and I gave them the V sign because sometimes in an exam, when you do good you would know.
I also like the Royal College of Physicians in London, where I got a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Health in 1981. It was just a one-year programme. There was a lady from Bulgaria who was serving in Nigeria and the year I attended the course was her third year of going and not succeeding. It was like our medicine in ABU.
Nigeria is currently battling with dearth of doctors as many of her medical practitioners are emigrating, what’s your take on this?
It takes a lot to train a doctor. We were 58 in our set in the ABU, but only 32 graduated. Some even had to repeat classes on several occasions. There was a chap who spent 12 years instead of six. He repeated virtually every class. Obviously, people put in so much, with the hope that after graduating as a doctor, life would get better. Any of those chaps who have managed to graduate as a doctor is looking for good things in life.
People will leave this country at the first available opportunity even without thinking twice about it. Two of my doctors at the Yusuf Maitama Sule University have left. One is a surgeon, and another that we earmarked for dean, Clinical Sciences, left about two months ago and is now in Saudi Arabia earning dollars. When I went for my second degree in 1978 in London, I went to Union Bank, or was it Barclays at that time and I gave N2,000; and do you know how much I received? $4,000. If I give N2,000 now, how much dollars will I get in return? So, things have changed and a lot is expected of you by families and so on.
The husband of my first daughter is a paediatrician in Memphis, Tennessee while the husband of the second one is an engineer working in Texas. Once people can’t put things together, they just leave. It’s a pity. The economy is the main factor, but the standard of learning is still top notch. A Nigerian doctor is always wanted. Students graduate elsewhere, and when they join their Nigerian counterparts, they are far below.
Of course, that young chap who spent almost 12 years, Dr Ashiru, is now the best VVF repairer among all the doctors in Kano. God is great.
How about the issue of Nigerian leaders and medical tourism when the health system in the country is suffering from neglect?
I am a community health physician, and I prefer emphasis on coverage rather than providing excellent services. I believe there should still be a place for referring cases outside the country because our economy cannot provide these excellent services all over. There should be certain centres of excellence like the Muhammadu Buhari Specialist Hospital in Kano here, which is very good at starting investigation. Other places are good at, say, cardiology, gastroenterology, etc. We have a facility at Kwanar Dawaki (Kano), when Pfizer was found guilty in Kano. A facility was built at Kwanar Dawaki, and that was envisaged to be the best diagnostic health institute in West Africa. There are so many facilities in the place, but it hasn’t taken up as a diagnostic institute. We should have centres like this in dignified places, but all these should not be at the expense of coverage of the 80 per cent who cannot be treated in the big centres.
Who are some of your students you are most fond of today?
You would find people like the Chief Medical Director of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Prof. Abdulrahman Abba Sheshe; the Director-General of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Muhammad Nasiru Sambo; the Head of the Renal Dialysis Unit in AKTH, Prof Aliyu Abdu; Prof. Muhammad Abba Suwaib, Head of Radiology Unit in AKTH and several others, some of who are not even from Nigeria.
I am glad they were always good to me while in school. We never had any misunderstanding, and there was so much respect.
Tell us about your family
I am blessed with three children – two daughters that are married, and a son. One of my daughters is an accountant and her husband a doctor. They are both working in Memphis, Tennessee; they have two boys. The younger one is a lawyer with a master’s in International Law. She is also with her husband in Texas.
With a relatively stable source of income you seem to have a small family. Is there a reason behind this?
My father was survived by almost 21 of us. This house has many sections, but I can’t imagine another woman apart from my now 65-year-old wife. She will soon retire, of course as a senior lecturer. She is not a professor because she left the university several times to be a commissioner for three years and another time to work with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for another three years, and another year in another international organisation. At least, five of her students are now professors.
You started primary education at a time many people in the North were still averse to western education. What were the motivating factors?
My father was the ward head in Durmi and I was taken to elementary school with my elder brother, who was about six years older and the headmaster. I was too young, so I was told that I should be taken back home. I was happy that I didn’t have to go to school, at least until the following year. Unknowingly, my father went back to see the headmaster, and after about two months, he said, “Kabiru, you have to go to school.” I was in the same class with that my elder brother, who died few years ago.
There was a house close to ours, behind the central prison in Kano; now it has about three professors because their father was educated, but the house next to that one doesn’t believe in sending their children for western education.
The present Shekara Girls’ School used to be our boarding primary school for classes 5, 6 and 7. It was when we finished that it became a girls’ school. People think it has always been a girls’ school.
Are there things you wish you should have done differently?
Honestly, when I went to the ABU, I was given an admission to read Agriculture, which was my choice, but there was one student union leader who had just concluded his study, Prof. Aminu Dorayi, who met me and convinced me to read Medicine. “Only a few of you passed HSC, why don’t you want to become a medical doctor?” He asked. I replied that agriculture was also science. He said, “But you know that as soon as you finish (with medicine) you would be called a doctor, but you don’t become a doctor studying agriculture.” He was all out to convince me, and being my senior, I had to give up. I told him that my admission letter was carrying agriculture, but he told me not to worry, that they would fix it. Looking back now, I don’t regret changing from agriculture.
Would you then refer to yourself as ‘an accidental medical doctor’?
Really, for some reasons, I wanted to be among farm animals. I like poultry and so on, but then human medicine never really occurred to me. But Prof. Dorayi campaigned so much and told me all the good things I could achieve. I think my initial choice was because of the absence of guidance and counselling. When I got that from him, I accepted to be a medical doctor wholeheartedly, not regrettably. So I think it was not an accident. I wasn’t educated enough to know what career path I should follow until Dorayi came along.
What would you say was your best moment in life?
In government, we really achieved a lot during my tenure as the executive secretary of the Kano State Health Services Board.
My first few years of working in my private clinic and going over to the university were remarkable. I always started teaching at 4pm and never closed before 12 midnight. Security was good at that time. Ask Abdulrahman Sheshe (CMD of AKTH). I was teaching three subjects: Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Demography. In level three we would go on to teach Basic Medical Research. I was young and strong. I gave my salary of N1,000 per month to the Bayero University Medical Student Association because I was working and making good money from my private clinic. That was really a good time. Abubakar Labaran, commissioner for health during the Kwankwaso administration used to lead prayer sessions because we had to pray Magrib and Isha. He was an Ustaz.
Most recently, my happiest moment was when I was able to get the National Universities Commission (NUC) accreditation from the scratch for the College of Medicine at the Yusuf Maitama University. We had no hospital, no clinic, but I managed to get the Kano State Government to put four health centres at the disposal of the college. We got the NUC to give us the go-ahead to do the MBBS course. Frankly, this was my happiest moment, and it even came after I had retired.
It appears you had a good relationship with Rimi; what is the last thing you remember about him?
When I took him to a London hospital, before we entered, I saw that there were shops selling sweets, journals and magazines. The idea appealed to me and I now have 12 shops in front of my hospital.
Rimi was an excellent person who didn’t cut corners. He didn’t give a damn when he identified the way to achieve whatever he set out to achieve. That was why he didn’t care when politicians were not happy that he was picking highly learned people in his cabinet. He said he could not afford to have anybody without a postgraduate in his cabinet. He was a very sincere person. I pray that his soul rests in peace.
