They don’t make them like Adamu Ciroma anymore

As the Nigeria Airways F27 aircraft landed and began taxing to a stop at Kaduna airport, an announcement came that in obedience to new protocol order, passengers would have to wait for a senior military officer in the plane to disembark before they could do so.
Malam Adamu Ciroma, managing director of the New Nigerian, wasn’t sure he had heard correctly and turned to another passenger who confirmed the announcement.
The plane had barely stopped before Malam Adamu shot up, grabbed his briefcase and and as he walked down towards the door kept muttering to everyone’s hearing” nonsense! nonsense! nonsense!” He came out and descended the gangway before anybody else.
This story is in no way apocryphal.
It was told by Mr Rasak Aremu (of blessed memory) then associate editor of the New Nigerian to us young Turks (among whom numbered Clem Baiye, Abba Kyari and Mohammed Haruna) who wet behind the ears could do with the kind of mentorship that few are privileged to have and which Malam Adamu Ciroma, supported by Malam Mamman Daura, as editor, provided.
I first met Malam Adamu when he came to Federal Government College, Sokoto in 1971 (I think) to deliver a lecture on the press and society under the auspices of the Press Club whose editor I was.
The New Nigerian had by then acquired a reputation for the exemplary quality of its production and particularly its editorials and I counted myself lucky when in the interval before pursuing a university education my desire to work there was granted.
Malam Adamu had simply asked me “when do you want to start?” Malam Adamu often told us: “nobody gives you freedom, you take it”.
His courage resonated from his commitment to principle.
Thus anyone who thought that the New Nigerian could take its fearless positions, lucidly argued and majestically delivered, only because it was based in the north or enjoyed the protection of some godfather or a mythical caliphate was sadly mistaken.
Institutions are built – or destroyed – by men.
Malam Adamu set the standard for the New Nigerian and by his example influenced a generation of journalists.
It is therefore a thousand pities (one of his common expressions) that neither the New Nigerian or the institution of governance where he served in many roles has lived up to the high standards he set.
If anything, the nation is in the very nadir of fortunes.
To talk to politicians or people in positions of authority about principle or commitment to the public good is to be laughed out of court.
But see where we are as a nation.
Now it has been determined that in term of poverty, our people are the most wretched of the earth.
Where else in the world are people perpetually saying that their yesterday is better than their today? As for tomorrow the picture, on present evidence, is best not contemplated.
Given the privations people face, it is no wonder that bitterness and unreason define the landscape.
But we must halt the decades of drift which given the bloodfest and medieval beastialities on the Plateau, Zamfara and elsewhere is fast becoming an unthinking gallop to a collective doom.
Who is to tell the small minds orchestrating all the violence that they can’t win? Where are the voices of reason, local and community leaders to put the hot heads and blood hounds on a leash? Pity that Malam Adamu had been incapacitated in recent years by ill health and was therefore in no position to exert his influence on matters of state.
While he never downplayed his commitment to the north he was always capable of seeing the big picture and making the appropriate intervention that accommodated other interests.
The times are truly desperate for leadership, not the ones currently on offer by the straw men and small men that dominate the landscape.
The country urgently needs to rekindle the fire of hope and regrettable as Malam Adamu Ciroma’s passing is, he reminds us that there is a better way to live.
Sully Abu, [email protected]