Prof. Ahmed M. Falaki: a tragic loss

Ahmed and I were contemporaries in Keffi. Though we had not met since 1968 – except perhaps fleetingly in the hurly-burly of campus life in Ahmadu Bello University – I still have distinct memories of him.  He was a quiet, gentle person not given to “hayaniya.” That he was intelligent and hard-working is evident from […]

Ahmed and I were contemporaries in Keffi. Though we had not met since 1968 – except perhaps fleetingly in the hurly-burly of campus life in Ahmadu Bello University – I still have distinct memories of him.  He was a quiet, gentle person not given to “hayaniya.” That he was intelligent and hard-working is evident from the fact that he rose through the academia to the rank of professor and Director of the Institute of Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
One story about Ahmed Mustapha Falaki that has remained with me all these decades was told to me by Mai’eka Mohammed, who was his friend.  During his NYSC in 1974-1975, Ahmed was posted to Rivers State where he taught at a secondary school in Elelenwo, Port Harcourt. Come the period for students to sit the West African School Certificate examinations, Ahmed was assigned as an Invigilator.  The first time he was to supervise one of the classes, the students came prepared for “Expo” i.e. the students were ready to cheat during the exam, having brought into the class all manner of notes. Ahmed was determined to stop them, but the students would have none of it.  They bluntly told him they would do what they planned and that if he tried to stop them they would beat him up.  There was no higher authority to appeal to, so he left them to do as they pleased. Examination malpractice was rampant then, mostly in schools in the South before it assumed national character.  
Professor Ahmed Falaki’s gruesome death is just another sad example of how this country wastes its best. Nobody in his right senses could see a sixty-four year old man and adjudge him a Boko Haram insurgent. There is something unwholesome in all this and the police cannot exempt themselves from this tragic outcome. May Allah forgive him and pardon him and make Aljannah Firdaus his final abode.  

M T Usman, Kaduna <[email protected]>;