News Analysis – By Abdul Lauya
The recent death of Professor Abubakar Roko of Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS), is not just a personal tragedy, it is a scathing indictment of Nigeria’s callous disregard for its intellectual class and the irredeemable rot in the country’s education sector.
Prof. Roko, a respected scholar in Mathematics and Computer Science, dedicated his life to the pursuit of knowledge and the education of Nigeria’s youth. From a B.Sc graduate in Mathematics at UDUS in 1991 to becoming a full professor in 2021, his career was marked by academic excellence, humility, and service. Yet, in his final days, his country failed him.
He battled a serious illness requiring urgent treatment abroad, for which N15 million was needed. Despite a public crowdfunding appeal, the money did not arrive on time. He died on June 6, 2025, ten days before he was scheduled to fly to Egypt for treatment. This is a disgraceful end for a man who gave his all to a country that gave so little back.
The Shame of Priorities
In a country where a federal senator earns over N30 million monthly, excluding their multimillion-naira annual wardrobe allowances—Prof. Roko’s entire treatment cost was less than a month’s income of one lawmaker. Meanwhile, professors, the engine of any nation’s intellectual and developmental progress, earn less than N600,000 a month. This is the value Nigeria places on its educators. This is the cost of national indifference.
A Culture of Abandonment
The most damning part of this tragedy is not just that the state failed him, but that the institution he helped build for over three decades turned a blind eye as he withered in sickness. UDUS, a federal institution supposedly run by academics who should understand the weight of intellectual sacrifice, did not rally enough institutional will to secure his treatment. The university management’s belated eulogies are cold comfort in the face of their silence when it mattered most.
We have seen this pattern before: the brilliant minds of Tanko and Ilu Ismaila of ABU gone too soon, without national mourning, without intervention, and without reform. Instead of preventive structures like health insurance and dignified pensions, our best minds are left to depend on GoFundMe campaigns and Facebook appeals to stay alive.
A Rotten System
The Nigerian education sector is broken beyond repair. When the educators who produce engineers, doctors, and policymakers die because the system cannot raise a fraction of a politician’s wardrobe allowance, we are looking at institutional rot, not just financial scarcity. This is not just about Professor Roko, it is about every silent academic currently dying slowly, unnoticed in the corners of Nigeria’s public universities.
A Call to Realism
This is not a call to martyrdom. Nigerians, especially its intellectuals and workers, must come to terms with a bitter truth: the country will not save you. You must save yourself. This system does not reward sacrifice—it punishes it. It does not honour dedication, it forgets it.
Final Word
Professor Roko died waiting, not for a miracle, but for a basic right. And in his death, he has exposed the soul of a nation that claps for its oppressors while burying its heroes in silence.
May Allah shower His infinite mercy upon his soul. And may the living wake up before they too are eulogized with 30 seconds of silence from a system that never heard their cries.
