Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihir raji'un!
One of my referees, Professor Haruna Wakili, is dead!
The least I can do is to pay my last tribute to this humble and honest academic.
I came to know him when he was assigned as one of our lecturers when I enrolled for Masters in Development Studies (MDS), at Bayero University (BUK), Kano, in 2004. I imagined he didn't know me because I was one of those unobtrusive, lackluster introverts in the class you never take notice of without making conscious effort. I deliberately avoided teachers so much so that I never even volunteered answering questions in the class even if I knew the answer, until I was directly asked. Even then, I answered without fanfare in order to avoid attracting attention.
I just didn't know that Dr. Haruna Wakili, had actually noted me until one day when we met at a hotel in Abuja. I was attending a function in Abuja and I lodged at a hotel, not noticing that he was at the reception at the time of my arrival. It was after I had relaxed in my room that a call came through the intercom and I answered. He was at the other end of the receiver. He said he was Haruna Wakili and that he had seen me register in his hotel. You can imagine my surprise... After pleasantries, I offered to go and greet him in his room, but he said I needn't bother as he was together with his wife. We never met, as he left the following day.
Later, he was assigned as my Supervisor. He never gave me the usual headache supervisors usually gave their students. As a matter of fact, he made it clear that we needn't meet physically all the time. All we had to do was to submit our materials with the departmental secretary and inform him so that he could collect them, do the necessary corrections and again deposit them with the faculty secretary for us to collect.
When I applied for Ph.D in 2009, he was one of my referees. When I called and asked whether he would be my referee, he said, "Why not?". He told me to deposit my referee form with his secretary at Mambayya House, Kano, where he was then the Director, Aminu Kano Center for Democratic Research and Training. I believe his recommendation made it possible for me to gain admission for the program, which I never completed. Since then, I made him a permanent referee in my Curriculum Vitae (CV).
Although we couldn't be said to be close, he often joked with me as I was from Katsina and he was from Hadejia: there's a cultural joke between the two inhabitants, which I have never found the reason for. We exchanged a few telephone calls when he later became the commissioner of education in Jigawa State. Since then, we lost contact until when I just read a facebook post and learned that he had passed on.
May Allah have mercy on him.