By Adagbo Onoja
Yesterday, July 10th, 2025 was the 44th anniversary of the murder of Dr Bala Mohammed. It happened at a time he was the Political Adviser to the then governor of the old Kano State, Mohammed Abubakar Rimi.
But it is not because he was Political Adviser to an uncommon governor that he is remembered. He is remembered for the ideals he brought to political office and had the fortune of working under someone who had the personality to operationalise those ideals. Remember Rimi’s memorable speech at Obafemi Awolowo University in 198, for example, where he declared the death of the North- South dictionary in Nigerian politics. Look again at the empirical evidence he developed to support that thesis. That speech bore the marks of the Bala Mohammeds in the Rimi cabinet.
The late Bala Mohammed
The point about Bala Mohammed is not to write history in this manner but to remind all of us conveniently invoking democracy today to remember that we are standing on the bones and souls of people who put their lives on the line for us to have it. They might no longer be here physically to compel us to behave in elevated ways but there is something called differance (not the same as difference) which we should be mindful of in our own interest. Let’s exemplify rather than try to explain what it means.
It must be Prof Moses Ochonu who was pontificating on Facebook that General Sani Abacha can no longer be what the world has been told he was – the mindless looter, dictator, etc because the people who came after him have not been as patriotic as he was. Ochonu and his ilk are not absolving Abacha of blames here and there but are simply indicating that meaning is comparative or different and differed. You said Abacha did this and that but you have done 50 times worse than he did, all through 1999 to 2025. How do you want anybody who is not in a mental prison to buy that?
The late Muhammed Abubakar Rimi
Differance is the reason people should be careful because, no matter how smart they are, differance can and will catch up and discipline them. In Bala Mohammed’s case, history will give him a great mention. Nigeria is bleeding from failure to learn any lessons from the experiments in the management of human diversity that he and his boss pioneered.
As an appointee himself, he cannot be given the credit for Rimi bringing people of different ethnic, religious and ideological persuasion into the government under him. But Rimi has once told this reporter during a one-on-one interview that Bala was an exceptional appointee. He said if he gave Bala an assignment by midnight, he woke up to see Bala with not only the answer but options on how it should be implemented. What this means is that Bala was part and parcel of the making of the Rimi exercise of power and is entitled to share in the credits of the administration. It was not that he was powerful in the mechanical and coercive sense in which many of us look at power but in the coincidence of perspective between him and the governor. And both were authentic and true to each other. No guinea-pigging, no pulling the rugs from under the feet, no backstabbing, no hidden calculus, etc as are so common today in Nigerian politics.
The late Gen Chris Alli, the theorist of the unravelling of Nigeria in terms of “anything goes” all over the system
So, there is something sad and saddening that there is a higher level of North-South ditchomy in Nigeria today, higher level of inter-religious mistrust, higher level of ethnic chauvinism, higher level of chuwa-chuwa in everything we do, highest level of ‘anything goes’, the very ideals that Bala Mohammed used his privileged proximity to Abubakar Rimi to fight through his teachings on Radio Kano, in the Department of Political Science at Bayero University, Kano, in his contributions to articulation of democracy in the speeches of his governor and in his ultimate sacrifice.
It is unfortunate that his death is not a closed case. It ought to be closed, not necessarily to punish anybody (God is already doing that in His mighty own way) but so that protagonists and antagonists in that sad saga can embrace. Failure to conclude a fight without an embrace is what is the real tragedy in any human affair, an area animals have made more progress than human beings.
Let us conclude this by borrowing what our Pentecostal friends say. Thought some of us are not sure of the meaning, it invites usage in moments like this. They say ‘it is well’
There are no signs that the Bala Mohammed Memorial Committee (BMMC) is still alive. In that case, could Comrade Sale Mari of the Department of Political Science in Bayero University, Kano and Aminu Aliyu, also of the same university, lead a process of reconstructing the Bala Mohammed signifier? It is not clear if Aminu Aliyu had been born by the time Bala was unfolding but he is equipped to deconstruct history and keep the project from being infected by the common temptation to radical deodorising. Sale Mari would provide the raw materials as a student of Bala. They would be providing a vital element of the agency factor in the building blocks for the project of remaking Nigeria. Again, it is well!
