The family of late Mrs Iliya Mairo Zabadi has announced September 17th, 2026, as when she would be buried. Mrs Zabadi died in her sleep on September 3rd, 2026 in Abuja, Nigeria.
The late wife of Prof Istifanus Zabadi, a Nigerian political scientist, will be buried in Abuja, where she has lived and interacted widely for over 25 years. Both in her own right and through association, her interactive circuit is a crisscrossing one, spanning family, cultural, religious, civil society and academic ties.
Intervention understood tributes have been pouring in from people who knew her very well, many of such genuinely flowing tributes couched in a language of her as the ultimate Jewel.
Mrs Zabadi’s death came in a most shocking manner. Because she died in her sleep, there are no traces of her last wishes. It was not as if she had the opportunity of a last minute conversation with anyone as would have been the case if she were in the hospital or something like that.
Secondly, September 14th, 2026 was to be the day marking the 70th birthday of the husband, a process she is understood to have started taking charge of regarding how a lot of it would have gone. No one else could do it better than a wife who accompanied the husband to his PhD struggles, was there when the husband became a commissioner and has been the ever present factor in his academic journey.
Now, it is her burial that is on the card. That is almost always the way of death. The good news, Intervention has been told, is that everyone – husband, children, family members and circuit companions of travel – is determined to partake in giving her a remarkably decent burial.
