He underwent a surgical operation about three weeks ago but he himself described it as a minor surgery. In any case, it was after the surgery that he addressed the Fanon Centenary held at the University of Jos from November 27th to 28th, 2025. So, from the perspective of non-medical eyes, he was as fit as a fiddle.
This background is the element of surprise in the news of his death yesterday (December 11th, 2025). Dr. Abubakar Sokoto Mohammed secured his place in the history of radical activism in Nigeria by being the trainer’s trainer. That was his specialty at the Department of Sociology at Ahmadu Bello University from where he graduated and was retained as an academic.
According to Comrade Sanusi Maikudi, an ex-ABU, Zaria contemporary activist voice in Nigeria, Abubakar Sokoto Mohammed was the chair of the Nigerian anti-Apartheid platform – Youth Solidarity on South Africa (YUSSAN) when he (Maikudi) entered the university in 1983.
It was from ABU, Zaria Comrade Sokoto moved to head the Publications section of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) at Kuru in Jos, Plateau State of Nigeria. He took over from the equally now late Rufai Ibrahim whose solidaristic ties with Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa got him detained by the Buhari led military regime in 1984. From Kuru, Sokoto went back ‘home’ to Sokoto State but only to continue as a resource person by teaching at Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto.
If Comrade Abubakar Sokoto Mohammed were reading this, he would object to reference to Sokoto as home. For him and majority of the activists in his generation, the world was the homeland. In other words, he subscribed to and lived by the logic of proletarian internationalism.
The tragic dimension of his rich life must be that, in his life time, activists who passed through him and/or who claimed to also believe in proletarian internationalism have turned round to be defenders of ethnic and religious essentialism, fatally unable to explain the violent and criminal turn in global capitalism that seeks to make an ethno-regional and religious fanatic of every Nigerian.
May Cde Abubakar Sokoto Mohammed find peace with God!
