Sometimes in life, one comes across people who are at a loss for words on how to present to the public. This is not because there are no words, or that you lack them. No—it is mainly because you know them closely enough that you do not want it to look like you are sugar-coating your words. After all, you know them.
Take the case of Bala Ciroma, who recently retired as a Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG). When he was a newly minted police officer in the early 1990s, his house in Suleja was my transit “camp” on my way to Lagos and back—until he tied the nuptial knot with his first wife.
And it was a little before that period that I came across two first-class print journalists who mentored me: the late Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf and Alhaji Dahiru Coomasie, who also passed on last week. Bilkisu Yusuf, whose death I still mourn, died in a stampede during Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, on 24 September 2015.
Back to Bala Ciroma, who retired as one of the finest and most respectable officers ever to wear the uniform of the Nigerian Police. In a nation that seeks truth and desires to fight corruption, Ciroma would have long headed its anti-graft agencies. A nation that desires a serious, dignified, above-board, effective, and responsive police force would have placed Bala Ciroma in the position to reform it.
Even as a fresher in Suleja in the early ’90s, he had shown glimpses of what he could do. I recall a night we went to a hangout for the young and the young at heart. We were served plates of pepper soup and bottles of Maltex (is it still in the market?), and we sat down to relax while some hot-blooded night crawlers were busy gyrating to music played by a live band.
I did not see anything amiss, in my civilian naïveté, but he, being a trained policeman, told me to stay quiet while he rushed back to the station and shortly returned.
“There are some guys I am suspecting,” he told me discreetly, nodding towards some ‘gung-ho’-looking youths about our age, in their 30s. There was no communication sophistication like we have now, so he rushed out and returned with some mufti-wearing policemen, rounded up those suspects, and took them back to the station for interrogation.
It’s no wonder he turned into a shrewd, crack detective, becoming Deputy Commissioner of Police in the Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department (CIID) of the FCT Police Command. Earlier, he was Assistant Commissioner of Police, CID, Kano State Command, and Head of Operations at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Among many, he investigated high-profile cases like when seven policemen were killed on Monday, 2 July 2018, at the Galadimawa Roundabout in Abuja. He also investigated the case of Maryam Sanda (the girl who killed her husband) and her mother, Maimuna Aliyu.
As earlier said, a little before this time, I came into contact with two great journalistic minds, Dahiru Coomasie and Bilkisu Yusuf. I came to know them because, then, I was based in Zaria, publishing a newspaper, The Pointer. I used to take complimentary copies to them and some other people, including Dr. Bala Usman in FASS, ABU, Zaria.
Through my visits to Bilkisu Yusuf at her Citizen magazine office close to NDA in Kaduna, I came into contact with other journalists working under her, including Mahmud Jega, Tawey Zakka, Adamu Adamu, Mohammed Haruna, and Mohammed Bomoi. She facilitated my invitation to the 7th Islamic Summit hosted by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), now Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), held in Abuja in 1991, where I met with the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and the late Sheikh Mahmud Gumi—two soft-spoken gentlemen.
With Yar’Adua, we discussed the issue of printing newspapers in his publishing company, while with Gumi, it was like a “question and answer” session.
Dahiru Coomasie, whom Today staff happily addressed as “Editor,” was then editor at Today newspaper, with its office at No. 1, Liberia Road, Malali, Kaduna. We became friends too, and I made sure I always took complimentary copies to him.
Dahiru was a good man with a strong spirit. In infancy, an injection went wrong and left him lame in one leg. He graduated with a degree in Sociology from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1977. After his NYSC, he joined the university as a researcher at the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies. He was also the treasurer of the ABU branch of ASUU. Ever the compassionate intellectual, he resigned his appointment in 1985 and moved back to Katsina to take care of their aged father. After their father died in 1989, he took up an appointment with Today Communications Ltd, publishers of Today, Abuja Mirror and A Yau newspapers. He was editor of Today from 1990 to 2000, after which he became the company’s MD and Editor-in-Chief. He was also the general secretary of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
In mid-1991, I decided to return home (Borno), as publishing had become difficult to sustain. Even in that era of copy-and-paste, where newspaper columns, in between “gutters”, were measured on the strength of “over matter” and “under matter” (unlike now, when everything is done on a computer screen), newspaper publishing was capital-intensive.
The first edition of my newspaper, published in 1990 by the Nation House publishing company, belonging to the late General Musa Yar’Adua, cost about ₦3,300 for 1,000 copies. Bilkisu Yusuf facilitated that seed money when she gave me a note to Alhaji Bashir Tofa. You will understand the value of ₦3,000 when considering that a brand-new Peugeot 504 was ₦7,000 and a new Mercedes-Benz 200 was ₦24,000 a few years earlier.
After publishing a few editions—sometimes travelling as far as Lagos in search of cheaper printers—I called it quits and turned my attention towards home. The question of surviving at home came up, and Malam Dahiru Coomasie gave me an appointment as a Today newspaper reporter for Borno State on a salary of ₦750 per month. Yes, it’s not a mistake: ₦750 per month or ₦9,000 per annum. With this money, I started thinking of marriage, and a few months later, when Yobe was created, I came down to Yobe as Today’s reporter, and the woman I eventually married caught my attention.
Last week, the Fika Emirate turbaned Bala Ciroma as Talban Fika—a well-deserved title for arguably one of the best, incorruptible police officers Nigeria has ever produced. As we celebrate a life well spent, our prayers to him are that his remaining life be long, and that one day he narrates his story to his great-grandchildren under the shade of trees in his garden. May the future be more blessed for him than the past.
And in faraway Katsina, Dahiru Coomasie, from one of Katsina’s most prestigious families, was interred. He has joined his father, Ahmadu Coomasie, after whom First Bank named its headquarters in Abuja. He has also joined his senior brothers—Abidina Coomasie, publisher of Today, Ayau (Hausa) and Abuja Mirror newspapers; Ibrahim Coomasie, former Inspector General of Police; and SaifulLahi Muntaka Coomasie, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. While we thank God for the life of Editor, Malam Dahiru, we pray that the souls of all our departed rest in perfect peace.
Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.
