IN CELEBRATION OF DR. MAGAJI DAMBATTA

O’ Allah, let me live as long and still be as agile and sharp sighted and focused and calm and collected and distinguished and humble and frugal as Alhaji (Dr.) Magaji Dambatta, OFR, Northern Nigeria’s most decorated, most celebrated and most honoured veteran journalist. (To wit, come this Monday, President Goodluck Jonathan is going to […]

O’ Allah, let me live as long and still be as agile and sharp sighted and focused and calm and collected and distinguished and humble and frugal as Alhaji (Dr.) Magaji Dambatta, OFR, Northern Nigeria’s most decorated, most celebrated and most honoured veteran journalist. (To wit, come this Monday, President Goodluck Jonathan is going to add another honour to this illustrious son of Kano, the award of Commander of the Order of the Niger, CON, in addition to the Officer of the Federal Republic, OFR, awarded him 30 years ago by President Shehu Shagari.)

In the 30 years between the two events, Alhaji Magaji has continued to be engaged in the service of Nigeria diligently, honourably and selflessly. In all the areas he has served, his trademark can be encapsulated in one word: integrity. He is indeed an honour to the concept of national honours. In the list published in the newspapers recently on the 2011 honours roll, most awardees were given descriptions of their callings or statuses: Minister, Senator, Traditional Ruler, Army General, Governor, Economist. In the case of Alhaji Magaji, he was cited with the singular honour of being a Statesman, in addition to being called First Generation Journalist and Public Servant. No citation can ever beat that.

As an academic and journalist, I have always been sceptical of the very idea of awards and honours, much like Malcolm X who reprimanded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for receiving honours and awards from the ‘enemy’, ‘before the struggle was won’. But I make an exception here: an honour for Dr. Dambatta, I must admit, is more than well deserved. He would never solicit or lobby for one (as we know our so-called leaders of today would and do). In fact, if honours are bought and sold (as sadly they are in Nigeria’s reality), Alhaji Magaji cannot even afford to buy one for himself. He has so much of what the Hausa call ‘mutunci’, or self dignity. He is a dattijo, in the real meaning of the Fulfulde and Hausa word.

Alhaji Magaji is 80 years old this year, but remains (to our great delight as young journalists), so attached to his profession of journalism. He reads and comments on everything current and historical. In journalism, he had began his career as a reporter with the first newspaper in Kano, the Daily Comet, a paper owned by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe whose publishing base was transferred from Lagos to Kano in order to provide a political platform for the struggle against British colonial rule. He was later to edit the Hausa section of the paper from 1950 to 1953. Journalism led him to politics.

Sixty one years ago, a group of Eight Young Men met on the Eighth Day of the Eighth Month (08/08/50 as they say in radical Kano mythology) to form the first political party in Northern Nigeria, the leftist Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU. Magaji was then a 19-year old youngster, but he took the minutes of that meeting as Assistant General Secretary. That meeting became seminal in the future of politics not only in Kano or the North, but in Nigeria as a whole. It was that momentous meeting that made Kano what it became in the potpourri of Nigeria’s politics as the centre of radical politics. Malam Aminu Kano was to later join that Group of Eight and later lead NEPU.

His journalistic career took Magaji Dambatta to the Nigerian Citizen, a biweekly newspaper in Zaria, and later the newsroom of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC, first as a Senior Reporter and later as Regional Editor. While serving with the NBC, he was awarded a scholarship to study journalism in the United Kingdom for two years where he further honed his skills as a news writer and broadcaster at a major British newspaper house in Fleet Street as well as the BBC Overseas Service. Magaji was to later become the Chief Information Officer of the then Northern Nigeria. Though Magaji has worked in the Foreign Service and in the Civil Service, it was his journalism calling that continued to define him.

In a citation read back in 2003 when Bayero University, Kano, honoured Alhaji Magaji with a degree of Doctor of Letters, he was described further as “a God-fearing man; an honourable man; a man who, despite the brilliance of his intellect, and his mastery of the political process in Nigeria, yet remains a simple [I add ‘frugal’ here] and great servant of the people; a great benefactor of mankind; an erudite scholar and man of the people, respected and recognised by his people and the nation…” Today, among other things, Dr. Dambatta is Chairman of Inuwar Jama’ar Kano (known as Kano Forum), a community-centred voluntary organisation which he, along with some other reputable citizens of Kano, founded in 1997 to address the various problems that militate against meaningful progress, especially in education.

But perhaps the best tribute to this great man comes from another elder statesman and technocrat, Chief Philip Asiodu, CON, the Izoma of Asaba. In a personal letter to Alhaji Magaji this September, after reading the latter’s autobiography, PULL OF FATE, Chief Asiodu said, among other things: “I have…read your autobiography carefully from cover to cover and I write to congratulate you very warmly on giving to posterity a very worthwhile book…Particularly informative for me is the account of the origins of NEPU, its early history, the challenges it faced…It is very good that in commenting admiringly on your very significant contributions in public life, His Royal Highness, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, CFR, emphasised your enduring devotion to the great values of ‘patriotism, hard work and selfless service to the people and commitment to any activity that would advance the well-being of the people.’

At 80, Alhaji Magaji continues to baffle us with his clear-headedness, much like his friend and age-mate the Emir of Kano. Not too long ago, Alhaji Magaji’s own mother died. Many people had wondrously asked: so his own mother was alive all this while too? May Allah give us this long and useful longevity. Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to present to you Alhaji (Dr.) Magaji Dambatta, OFR and, from Monday, CON. May he live longer to continue his service to humanity.