It is not clear what is ailing Dr. John Owoicho Adole. Whatever it is, the former Permanent Secretary and an Associate Professor of History is in need of much more serious attention than the facilities available in Benue State might have made possible. Without the benefit of medical training, Intervention cannot be precise about his medical state but it is safe to say that Dr. Adole is not improving after nearly a year of being sick.
His ill-health presents an ethical challenge to everyone, from Governor Hyacinth Alia of Benue State down to all those he worked with as a Permanent Secretary in the Benue State bureaucracy and academia. Saving him is a challenge because Nigeria should not be a society where one dies just because, somehow, he did not amass wealth.
A person like this packs so much worth saving, no matter the cost. Dr Adole who must be close to 70 has the agility of a 50 year old, evidenced by his ability to escape from the kidnappers who captured him by accident in January 2022. He had to run like never before.
If he could run that race of his life, then he has more to contribute. After all, how many properly trained Historiographers can Nigeria boast of now? He ran what is generally considered an inclusive and stable Department as the HoD at Veritas University, Abuja, sending the entire community to great sympathy with the rhetorical proficiency of his story of privations in the hands of his January 2022 kidnappers. It is surprising how he suddenly progressed from a very active agency to being seriously sick today.
Dr Adole is a super technocrat. In a past mid life career shift, he became an academic. But he did not land in academia as just any available option. He was well prepared for it.
With an uncommon restlessness, he went to study History at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) at a time the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria was the destination from the Middle Belt part of the old Northern Nigeria. Then he went to the University of Jos (UNIJOS) to obtain a PhD in History. He didn’t just read History, he mastered Historiography which makes him a Historian as well as a Philosopher.
This must be the reason Veritas University, Abuja saw in him a HoD material for their Department of History and International Relations. His PhD was not a post-retirement, emergency type. It preceded his attainment of the status of a Permanent Secretary, Government House, Makurdi in his home state of Benue in central Nigeria.
