by Abubakar Bello Bada
I received the news of Professor Abubakar Roko’s passing with a heavy heart and a sense of helpless sorrow. His death, like that of many others before him, is not just a personal loss to those of us who knew him; it is a damning indictment of the state of our society and more specifically,the condition of our universities and the intellectuals who serve them.
Professor Roko was the man who first introduced me to programming. He taught me BASIC programming and Algorithm twenty-five years ago at now defunct NETCOM Computer Academy, Sokoto. That encounter with him made me like computer not just as a device but also as a specialty. When years later, fate made me to choose a course in the faculty of science, I already knew my choice. We met again as a student and teacher, and he was always saying to me “Abubakar, don’t worry yourself, everything will be fine in the end”, and yes, everything became fine in the end. He was compassionate and humane.
Years later, our paths crossed again in a more profound way. He became a visiting lecturer in my department at Federal University Birnin-Kebbi, and for the duration of a semester, we traveled
together in my car between Birnin-Kebbi and Sokoto every week. Those long drives became treasured moments of reflection and camaraderie. We reminisced about our experiences in universities abroad: the structure, the support, the dignity accorded to academics, and inevitably contrasted them with the crumbling conditions back home. There was always a tinge of sadness in those conversations. He knew, as I did, that things were broken, and that change was not coming fast enough.
Yet, despite all his dedication to nation building through education, Professor Roko died not because his illness was untreatable, but because he could not afford the treatment. The cost was a relatively modest 13 million naira.
A figure that should not be insurmountable for someone who served the country through academia. However, such is the tragedy of Nigeria, where the very minds tasked with shaping the future are left to fend for themselves when misfortune strikes.
There is no meaningful health insurance provision for university lecturers in Nigeria. No safety net. No real support. Like most civil servants, they are cast aside by the system after being squeezed for decades. The monthly salaries they receive are so dismal, so detached from the realities of life that they can hardly survive, let alone save or plan for emergencies.
The state of civil service in Nigeria is not just shameful: it is dehumanizing. Professors like Roko give their lives to scholarship, to nurturing the next generation of thinkers and professionals, only to die begging the public for financial help when illness strikes.
His story is not unique, but that makes it even more damning. It is the norm, not the exception.
Nigerian universities are populated with lecturers who walk to classes hungry, carry the burden of multiple unpaid months of salaries, and face retirement with uncertainty and fear. They teach under dilapidated roofs, using their own funds to support students, and retire without dignity.
And when the inevitable medical crisis comes, as it does to all, they are met not with a comprehensive healthcare system or the security of insurance, but with silence, neglect, and the humiliation of public fundraising appeals. Professor Roko’s death, after weeks of waiting for financial help that never fully came, is a national shame. A brilliant mind silenced, not by disease, but by poverty.
Let us mourn him, but let us also speak the truth his death represents. Let us demand a future where no Nigerian academic or any other civil servant has to die for lack of 13 million naira. Let us fight for a Nigeria where those who teach, guide, and uplift are themselves supported and protected.
Where a professor’s last days are filled with care and dignity not desperation.
May Professor Roko rest in peace and may we find the courage to fight for a country where no professor has to die waiting for help that should never have been out of reach.
Abubakar Bello Bada
Computer Science Department, Federal University Birnin-Kebbi.
X Handle: @BADA_ab
