Set aside January 11th, 2024 for Salihu Muhammad Bappa, the late Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria academic. Friends, colleagues and associates have democratically decoded to memorialise the intellectual and practitioner of drama as an instrument of popular resistance on the day in question.
To do this, they have scheduled a memorial lecture at which a senior colleague of Dr. Bappa will be the keynote speaker. He is Prof Steve Abah, a veteran of Development Communication who recently retired from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
A former governor of Bauchi State as well as former Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) will be chairing the session, meaning that no shades of opinion – radical, conservative, gender and class – have been left out of the assemblage.
The day, therefore, promises to be a bout with the knowledge/power entanglement, something that the late Bappa, a humanist, would have found very fascinating if he could attend his own funeral. Alas, he cannot but his spirit would be there.