The death of Professor Sule Bello on 3rd October 2021 is a huge loss to the cultural sector and academic community in particular and the nation in general. For me personally, I have lost a mentor, a leader and a confidante.
Professor Sule Bello was an erudite scholar and cultural icon who lived a life of consistent hard work, devotion to the production of knowledge and commitment to social engineering. He was a pro-poor academic who emphasized the welfare, needs and interests of the people through his persistent efforts at bringing them to address common challenges.
He tried to achieve this by promoting regular engagement with local craftsmen and women for the promotion of innovation, invention and inventiveness. Professor Bello’s scholarship cannot be separated from his personal commitment to the promotion of our traditional norms and values; local skills, techniques and technology.
Although Malam Abba Dabo, an accomplished journalist, former Secretary to Kano State Government and Senior Special Assistant to Vice President Alhaji Abubakar Namadi Sambo gave me my first job in 1984 as a Reporter at Triumph Publishing Company (TPCL) Kano, publishers of Triumph newspapers and mentored me on the path of journalism, it was Professor Sule Bello who actually charted my career path in Cultural Resource Management and Administration when he employed me at Kano State History and Culture Bureau (HCB) as Principal Information officer in 1988. He was then the Executive Director of the Bureau.
Although Kwalli or Unguwar Gara/Gini where Bello grew up was just across the street from our house in Wudilawa quarters in Kano Municipality, I never got to know him until 1983 at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria during the Centenary of Karl Marx conference at the university’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Indeed, no one who attended that conference will fail to notice Bello. He was a member of the classical Marxist group who posited that the Bolshevik Revolution was Pseudo-Socialist. They insisted that it was immature and was destined to fail because it jumped a whole historical epoch. This group saw no wisdom in joining party politics in Nigeria and considered the parties not sufficiently organized to bring about effective social transformation.
However, it was my coverage for Triumph newspaper of a conference on Traditional Hausa Architecture his Bureau organized in 1987 that actually brought us close. From then on, we maintained close relations enjoying his meticulous and generous professional guidance and support.
At the HCB, Professor Sule Bello set up a team of young men and women he recruited from across the Kano State Public Service including my humble self and went about transforming the HCB from a “singing and dancing club” to a vibrant organization for the promotion of our history and culture. By changing the legal and administrative framework of the organization, Professor Bello was able to establish new departments and units as well as to introduce new programs and activities. A research and documentation department was established to create and develop a viable public record system which was entrusted in the capable hands of an intellectual, Professor Mansur Ibrahim Mukhtar, leading to the establishment of a Library, a State Archives and a Museum of industrial and natural history. Creative Arts Department was also set up to promote literary tradition, performing arts, design and crafts, with a domestic unit to promote our culinary traditions, fashion, interior designs and decorations.
In a clear appreciation of the role of Public Relations as a management function, he renamed the information unit which I headed as Public Affairs Unit and placed it directly under his office. He saddled me and my colleagues in this unit with the responsibility of bringing all the activities of the bureau to the notice of government and various segments of the public.
Accordingly, he supported the setting up of various public articulation platforms and programs to carry out this mandate. These included a monthly newsletter, a weekly radio and television program tagged ALLURA DA ZARE, a periodic journal, TASKIRA, for the publication of papers from conferences and workshops organized by the bureau; pamphlets, booklets and books developed by the Research Department as well as advocacy visits to various public influencers.
Professor Sule Bello left the bureau when he was appointed Executive Director National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) in 1989. As the longest serving chief executive having been in office for 12 years, from 1989 to 2001, Professor Bello is credited with the most far-reaching initiatives in the organization, which were geared towards redirecting Nigeria’s cultural achievement and manifestation a way from a few exotic dances, music and crafts that were abstracted from their actual social and historical contexts.
While serving as the Chief Executive of NCAC, he recruited new hands with different talents and from across the country in order to inject these new perspectives to the implementation of the core mandate of the organization. Each geo-cultural zone was empowered through the establishment of zonal offices to carry out the documentation, study, protection and promotion of a major manifestation of their culture.
The annual National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) was reinvigorated to bring Nigerians together in celebration of their existence as a nation and the unity in their diversity.
Within the span of a little over two years, Bello’s sterling performance at the NCAC recommended him for the task of rescuing National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), a sister parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Culture which was then plagued by internal crises. In 1991, he was directed by the Federal Government to assume responsibility as Sole Administrator of the NCMM in order to save and revamp it. Bello’s reorganization efforts brought balance to the NCMM when he employed Dr Izuakor, from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Drs Yaro Gella and Kabiru Tsafe from ABU Zaria, Dr Charles Gonyok from the University of Jos, Mr Bala Achi from the Kaduna State Civil Service, Malam Ismaila Damisa from College of Arts and Science, Kano and yours sincerely into the organization at various levels. Bello did a good job of revamping the NCMM such that in 2007, he was made a member of an 8-Man Presidential Panel on the Implementation of Recommendations for the Rehabilitation of National Museums and Archives in Nigeria.
Many of us including his students, mentees and protégés looked up to Professor Bello as an accomplished academic, thorough bred cultural administrator and professional who had outstanding capability and an assertive latency in cultural management and administration circles. He was recognized nationally and internationally as a well-grounded historian whose delivery often elicited profound respect and admiration from colleagues both academic and professional. Bello’s meticulous and punctilious approach to scholarship was so impressive that his master’s thesis in political Economy/History was upgraded to Ph.D. by ABU in 1980. He did his Post Doctorate in European Development Studies at Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury, U.K in 1986.
In the cultural sphere, his mentees and protégés are many and are so successful that they bestride the cultural and tourism landscape with many reaching the pinnacle of their careers.
In the area of contemporary arts for instance, he raised Mr. M.M. Medugu who served as Executive Director of NCAC from 2007–2015; Mr J. B. Yusuff who served as Director General National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO) from 2001–2009 and Malam Ado Yahuza the current Chief Executive of NICO were all products of Bello’s nurturing and guidance. Dr Munzali Dantata is the tourism arm of Bello’s training. Dantata was Director General of National Institute for Tourism and Hospitality (NIHOTOURS) from 2005–2013, while my humble self as one of his mentees could be considered as the seed he planted in the area of antiquities, monuments, heritage and sites who rose to head the NCMM from 2009–2017 as its Director General.
As noted earlier, it is not only in academics and administration that Bello was accomplished. He was a community leader and mobilizer who enjoyed bringing people together for the purpose of achieving common goals. For example, he was the Patron of INDAKURMA, a community association comprising citizens of Indabawa, Kurmawa, Unguwar Gini and Kwalli quarters of Kano Municipal Local Government area. In fact, he was billed to address the youths of these areas on political participation a day before he died.
He was the chairman of Kwalli Association, the Advisory Board of Kano Civil Society Forum and the Round Table Discussion of the Network for Justice from 2007 until he died. Professor Sule Bello was chairman African Research and Development Agency Nigeria (ARADA); President Nigeria Crafts Council Kano; President Kano Heritage Society and member Kano State Stakeholders forum.
Bello also served as member of the 13 Member Presidential Implementation Committee on the Recommendations of the National Question Seminar in Nigeria from 1986 to 1987 as well as member of the Governing Council of the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs Lagos,1988–1993. He was also the first Chairman, Governing Board, Centre for Advanced Social Sciences, Port Harcourt from 1990 to 1994 and member International Executive Board of World Craft Council (WCC) Kyoto, Japan and the President of the Council’s Africa Regional Assembly from 1992–2001.
Professor Bello’s political activism crystallized when he became foundation member of Youth Solidarity On Southern Africa (YUSSA) A.B. U Zaria in 1976 and culminated in his appointment as Interim National Chairman of People’s Redemption Party(PRP) in 2020. In between he served as Member of Kano State Political Reform Committee for the Articulation of Kano State’s Position at the National Constitutional Reform Conference (CONFAB) in 2005,
When he returned to ABU in 2011, after his tenure at NCAC he was at various times Head of History Department, Director Institute for Development Research and Director Arewa House, Kaduna. Professor Bello has led and participated in various Nigerian scholarly, cultural or trade missions to a number of countries on behalf of Nigerian Government and Non-governmental organizations. He served as resource person in various capacities to numerous International, National, Regional and Local Organizations involved in the promotion of Culture, Tourism and Education. A recipient of many National and International Honours and Awards, Professor Bello has published many books and articles on history and culture in various papers and academic Journals.
He left behind two wives and four children. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends and colleagues. May Allah over look his shortcomings and admit him in Al–Jannah Firdaus. Amin summa Amin.
Yusuf Abdallah Usman sent in this tribute from Abuja
