The passing of Hajiya Ramatu Ali Ohioma on August 26 was a cruel blow that brought back memories of our long years of association at New Nigerian Newspapers and Daily Trust, with many other assignments in between. When I went to work in New Nigerian in the 1990s, Ramatu Ali was the Associate Editor of Sunday New Nigerian. I already knew her by reputation, as the paper’s long serving correspondent in Jos. Although I was Deputy Editor of the Daily and she was Associate Editor of the Sunday title, I was also the Chairman of the Editorial Board, of which she was a member. That soon brought us together in an endless sparring match.
New Nigerian was a very vibrant place in those days. No place was more vibrant than the Board Room, venue of Monday morning’s Editorial Board meetings. Though only five editorial topics were needed for the week, the meeting often lasted for several hours, mostly because of the jokes and banters. Although Hajiya Ramatu, as everyone called her, was self-effacing at the Board meetings, she will often storm my office after the meeting was over and accuse me of bringing mischievous or unprintable jokes into the meeting. “You are a useless Chairman!”, she will say, “with your useless stories!”
In the late 1990s, the managing director Prof Abubakar Rasheed was looking to make changes in the company’s business sections. He consulted me, and I recommended that he appoint Ramatu as Adverts Manager because she was too proud to fiddle with the company’s money. Prof Rasheed readily agreed and he reassigned her from editorial to head Adverts. When the new managing director Dr. Omar Faruk Ibrahim arrived in 1999, he reassigned her, with two others, as permanent members of the Editorial Board. As Editor of New Nigerian, my office was right next door to the Editorial Board office. Whenever I saw my office door swing open rudely, I knew it was Hajiya Ramatu, coming to throw an oral jab at me. I was always prepared with jabs of my own which I threw back at her. On one occasion, she swung the door open and said, “You, you are worse than Yakubu [my predecessor as Editor]! You are always eating alone!”
We later both relocated to Abuja and soon came together again in the Editorial Board of Daily Trust. In Abuja, Hajiya Ramatu had a large circle of friends, many of them dating back to her secondary school days at Queens College, Ilorin. One by one she brought me into contact with them. One day in 2010, I think, when I was Editor of Daily Trust, she burst into my office and scolded me because the paper carried a story of some people saying that Hajiya Amina Zakari should not be appointed an INEC National Commissioner because she served in Nasiru el-Rufa’i’s FCT cabinet. It turned out that Hajiya Amina is Ramatu’s close friend [who, incidentally, was the one who sent me a text message at 3am to inform me of Ramatu’s passing.]
Ramatu was involved in many book projects and despite my outwardly combative relations with her, she dragged me into every book project that came her way. In 2016 she convinced her friend Hajiya Zainab Ahmed to make me the guest speaker at the launching of the book in Kaduna on the minister’s late father, Malam Yahaya Hamza. I readily agreed because I had tremendous respect for the elder statesman. The event brought me close to the future Finance Minister. Next, Ramatu convinced her uncle, former PDP National Chairman Dr. Ahmadu Ali, to invite me as guest speaker to the launching of his biography. I was amazed; both Generals Gowon and Obasanjo attended the launch, and there I was, who as a student leader once chanted “Ali Must Go,” standing up to review the book.
Ramatu then published her own book, Issues and People, which was a collection of her weekly essays at New Nigerian. How very prescient, as if she knew time was elapsing. Again, I was the guest speaker at the book launch. I used the opportunity to tell the story that in 2000AD, New Nigerian’s MD Dr. Faruk Ibrahim accosted me on the stairs leading to his office and said the senior editors should all write columns. Many of them didn’t want to, but Ramatu readily agreed, and five of us each chose a date to write columns. I chose Monday and she chose Wednesday. While I failed on occasions to write my column [hiding behind my “being busy” as editor], Ramatu almost never failed to write hers. In 2001 AD when I accompanied the MD to visit the Emir of Kazaure, he mentioned Ramatu’s column as one of his favourite reads in New Nigerian.
Ramatu also took me to see Barrister Sharon Ikeazor, former executive secretary of PTAD and later minister in the Buhari regime. And then, in 2020, she got me involved in writing the biography of her late uncle Brigadier Musa Usman, former Military Governor of the North Eastern State, with whom she lived in Maiduguri in her formative years. That which brought me in close contact with his family. The book was delayed and Ramatu was still working on it as chief coordinator when she passed away.
Her passing was very shocking because it was quick and very sudden. I never knew her to suffer from any serious ailment and as her husband testified, it all happened like a flash. Her loss added to all the other very close friends and colleagues that we lost over the years, including Tukur Abdurrahman, Zakari Adamu, Ibrahim Auduson [all from NNN days], then Ujudud Sheriff, Sulaiman Mohammed, Sanusi Abubakar and Prof Okello Oculli from our Daily Trust days.
I have lost my top professional sparring partner. I have nobody to drag me into book reviews again. Above all, we have lost a very decent and cheerful human being and a very dedicated professional colleague. May Allah grant Hajiya Ramatu eternal rest in Aljannat and may he grant her husband, immediate and extended family, professional colleagues and her very wide circle of friends the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss.
