Kabir Dangogo, unarguably was Nigeria’s PR guru. Besides, he was a truly professional news media man, one who left an un-erasable mark on electronic (TV) and print journalism. It was in the latter that our paths first crossed, as they say.
In 1987, I was transferred from the Kaduna head office of the New Nigerian Newspapers Limited to Lagos to head the news desk of the southern edition. That was six years after I was employed as reporter. I joined Mr. Ndanusa Alao, who had moved to Lagos as managing editor two years earlier. Few months after my arrival, we were joined by Mallam Kabir Dangogo, who came as associate editor (south) – from NTA, I was told. He took an office space on the same ground floor as was the news desk. Ndanusa’s office was upstairs as if to confirm that he was the oga kpata kpata. We called the daily editorial meetings in his spacious office. He seemed to like it that way because it was the strongest affirmation yet that he was the one in charge.
It continued this way until Kabir arrived on the scene. He refused to go upstairs for the editorial meeting, insisting that he, not Ndanusa, was head of the editorial department and he it was who should call and preside over the meeting. His defiance of the managing editor created uneasiness in the Lagos office. The tension was felt even within the walls of the buildings. One day, matters came to a head when Kabir insisted that we run a story that Ndanusa had ordered to be spiked because he feared it cast the military government at the time in bad light. He had a good number of military friends, so his position was understandable. But political correctness wasn’t something Kabir welcomed. He saw a good story from a professional’s point of view and he would run it and let the heavens come down. We ran the story and, of course, Ndanusa was incensed. Who wouldn’t be seeing his authority being challenged so brazenly? He went on to do the unimaginable. He told his military friends about the “offensive” story and one Friday morning some armed soldiers showed up in our Ijora office and took Kabir away. He was taken to the military base at Park Lane and detained until the evening of Monday. I went to see him in his cell where he told me whose handiwork his arrest was and that he didn’t regret what he did. The power tussle between the two “brothers from Kaduna” had clearly degenerated to a battle to the death. I found myself in a messy position. I knew Ndanusa very well, having worked with him in Kaduna. Kabir, I didn’t know that well but then he was now my immediate boss. We worked under this poisoned canvass for months. It was made worse by Kaduna’s failure to clarify the responsibilities of those two most senior officers.
A way of escape opened, however, when Kaduna sent me to newly independent Zimbabwe on a journalism exchange programme. I returned to Nigeria after three months, only to be posted to Abuja, Nigeria’s new capital city as bureau chief. I didn’t get to see those two gladiators again.
However, I would run into Kabir again several years later in 2012 or thereabout. It was in Kaduna where he had returned and built a palatial journalism and PR training school. It was a state of the art structure that only a man with a delicately high taste could put up. He patiently explained to me why he set up the school. He had one over arching fear though. He had hoped that the 19 state governments would send their information officers to be trained in the facility but they were not doing so. Clearly their priorities were elsewhere. One day I had the privilege of attending a public lecture Kabir put together for local government information officers. He had sliced the fee considerably and had free breakfast and lunch thrown in to encourage higher participation but that didn’t happen. I could sense Kabir’s deep disappointment even though he didn’t state it openly. He kept the school running though patronage was running alarmingly low. I had hoped to join his teaching staff some day but I never quite made it. While I was in Kaduna on leave from my editor’s desk at Peoples Media Limited in Abuja, I frequented Kabir’s training facility almost daily. When the leave was over I returned to Abuja. It meant I never saw Kabir again and did not hear from or about him until late last month. And what I heard was NOT good. Kabir had DIED since March 6 in Katsina, his home state. A tribute on him which an admirer of his penned on ACF platform said Kabir suffered a stroke and had had to return home for treatment but never recovered. The news of him having had a stroke surprised me because the man had appeared to me as someone who prioritized his health; he was deliberate about his diet. Exercise was his second nature. I never for once saw a frown on his face as sign of stress or anciety. Always smiling he was. A happy man truly he was. But now he is gone and with that infectious smile of contentment.
