A personal tribute to the man who called me his son — By Ahmad Sajoh

There are men you work for, and there are men who adopt you. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Tafidan Adamawa, was the latter.

I came into his orbit as a young man, appointed his Chief Press Secretary during his presidential campaign in the aborted Third Republic.

It was a demanding assignment and a formative one. I watched, at close quarters, how a man of enormous stature carried himself under pressure — the long days, the difficult rooms, the disappointments that eventually came when the transition itself was cut short.

In all of it, I never once saw him humiliate a subordinate or repay a slight with malice. He had a way of absorbing provocation and returning courtesy.

For a young press officer still learning the trade, that was an education no classroom could offer. Much of what I now teach about message, poise and public conduct, I first learned standing behind Baba Bamanga Tukur.

But it is not the campaign that I will carry to my own grave. It is something that happened years afterwards.
Long after that chapter had closed, I wrote a piece that did not sit well with his political base.

Some of them took the matter to him, expecting him to be angry, expecting perhaps that he would disown me. His response, when it was reported back to me, undid me completely.

He told them that I could not possibly have set out to offend him — that whatever I had written must contain some measure of truth rather than any adverse intent — because I am a son to him.

A son to him.
I have received many commendations in my professional life. None of them has ever weighed as much as that sentence.

In one stroke, he did three things that only truly great men manage: he defended the right of a younger man to think for himself, he chose truth over flattery from his own camp, and he claimed me as family in the very moment it would have been easier to distance himself.

That is the measure of Bamanga Tukur. Greatness that does not need to crush anyone to prove itself.

I have tried, ever since, to be worthy of that verdict — to write in a way that a father who trusted me would recognise as honest.

That generosity of spirit runs in the household. My brother, Alhaji Awwal Tukur, the Secretary to the Government of Adamawa State, has never related to me as anything other than family, and has consistently accorded me the regard and affection due an elder brother.

In our part of the world, such consistency across decades is not a small thing. It tells you what kind of home these children were raised in, and what kind of man raised them.

So today I do not mourn as a former aide. I mourn as a son who has lost a father. I stand with Alhaji Awwal and all his brothers and sisters, with the entire Tukur family, with the Adamawa Emirate Council, and with the people of Adamawa State, in grief and in prayer.

May Almighty Allah forgive his shortcomings, accept his lifetime of service, and grant him Jannatul Firdaus.

May He grant us all the fortitude to bear this loss.
Baba, you called me your son. I hope I have not disappointed you.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un.

Ahmad I. Sajoh, fnipr