Tribute to a medical doctor who was killed Potiskum

Since graduating from medical school in 2008, our class had experienced its share of death-Ahmad  Yaqub and Ibrahim Ajiya Waziri. I am not ashamed (and I’m sure many will agree) to say that these two people were the best in our class. Not in terms of academics (even though they were quite brainy), but more […]

Since graduating from medical school in 2008, our class had experienced its share of death-Ahmad  Yaqub and Ibrahim Ajiya Waziri. I am not ashamed (and I’m sure many will agree) to say that these two people were the best in our class. Not in terms of academics (even though they were quite brainy), but more importantly, in terms of character. They were good, morally upright, well-grounded, serious-minded, ambitious young men that any mothers would be proud to call their sons. Ibrahim was the amir of REMSA (Remedial Muslim Students Association) and Ahmad was amir of both POMSSA (part one Muslim Science Students Association) and NAMHS (National Muslim Health Students Association). Both Amirs had gone.

I know its customary to start singing praises of people after their death when in real life their faults were all people could see, but wallahi in the case of Ibrahim Waziri, it’s the golden truth; to put it plainly-he was a rare gem.

When  I moved  to Maiduguri after secondary school, I was opportuned to be his neighbour on our street behind School of Nursing, Damboa Road; and after we both gained admission to study Medicine in the same university, we quickly became friends. He was smart, cool hearted and honest. But the best quality about him was how well he got on with everybody. He loved his mother dearly and doted on her. He was a bookworm and we used to tease him about being a suffer-head, but he didn’t mind, his nose was too grinded in his books to care. He would come over to our house and gist with me, my mum and my sisters and even after I got married and left, he would still go and keep my mother company. He was the brother I never had.

During our last year at school, we were required to pick a group with which we were going to spend eight weeks in a village, while we carried out  our final year project. Because the male folks in our class outnumbered us, the female two to one, the group was to comprise of two maidens and four young men. I immediately picked IBBI.  The reason being simple – I felt safe with him. He was that sort of person. I could go on and on about his virtues but that would only make me more miserable.

How many guys do you know who sleep and tend to their mothers while on admission in a hospital? He would go to classes during the day and sleep at night in her room in the hospital whenever his mother (who was a diabetic) was admitted. He changed her and tended to her every need. She once said to me, that with him she didn’t miss not having a daughter.

Meanwhile, on our street, he became everyone’s family physician. I lost track of the number of times my mother called him to attend to my sisters’ many ailments (and one of them is a hypochondriac so you can imagine), and he would come without any fuss or excuses. How many times did he give me a ride to school and back home? How many times did my friends and I pile into his then Toyota starlet in the early days of school when we went to the lab for Gross Anatomy or Biochemistry practicals? How many messages I had him drive for me while I was staying in the hostel? He even gave me my first driving lesson! He was there when I got married and I recall vividly he was present during the birth of my son.

I received news of Ibrahim Waziri’s demise on Saturday, October  20, 2012 and my whole world was shattered. A couple of months ago he had called and happily told me that he had got an appointment with the Federal Ministry of Health and I was pleased for him. After the customary orientation procedure in Abuja, however, he was posted to Potiskum, Yobe State, to work in the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) as he was an indigene of the state. He sent me a text to that effect. I was appalled at first, but immediately called and reassured him that maybe it was for the best, and wished him well. Over the past few months, he would post pictures of the sorry state of some local government hospitals on facebook and my classmates and I would discuss at length and lament the decline of healthcare in the rural communities.  He and his father had been murdered, and their bodies dumped carelessly somewhere on the outskirts of Potiskum like animal carcass. Death from natural causeses, illness or accident I can understand but to die this way? Why? Innalillahi wai ina ilayhi raji’un. Unfortunately for me I was on call that day and had to go to work- so I tried to put on a bold face but ina…! I was a bundle of nerves, crying on the phone and messing up prescriptions and diagnosis.

Sometimes when I remember him, I shed silent tears of hurt, other times, my body is seized by racking loud sobs of frustration and anger. Nobody deserves to die this way. I can only imagine what was going through their minds from the time they were seized to the time of their death and what horror they endured. Allah ya isa! Ibrahim Waziri and Ahmad Yaqub, may Allah grant you both aljanna firdaus, amin.

Fatima Damagun can be reached at [email protected]