Another brilliant Nigerian mind is gone. Professor Abubakar Roko has died, not by bullets or bandits, but at the hands of a system that failed him. A government that neglects its intellectuals, treating them as expendable, has once again turned a blind eye. He needed ₦13 million for treatment abroad, but after over two decades of service to this nation, he couldn’t raise the sum. Left bedridden, helpless, and abandoned, he has now passed away.
We must stop calling this “natural death.” This was murder by government negligence.
In a country that throws billions at political cronies, gives lawmakers millions in wardrobe allowances, funds endless pilgrimages and jamborees, a professor had to be paraded online like a beggar, with students scrambling to raise funds just so their teacher might live. And even that wasn’t enough. The system choked him to death slowly just like it’s doing to thousands of others right now.
Where Are the Salaries?
As of this writing, tertiary institution workers are celebrating Sallah without salaries. Go and verify. Civil servants in other sectors have been paid weeks ago. But those who teach your children, those who write your policies, those who keep the soul of the country alive—are being starved like prisoners of war. And when it was reported that over 1,000 lecturers have died under this current administration, bootlickers and sycophants ask, “What killed them?” What killed them? What didn’t?
Sickness, hunger, depression, suicide, systemic poverty, lack of medical care all wrapped in the evil legacy of Buhari’s betrayal and now Tinubu’s reign of economic terrorism killed them and still counting.
Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” is Academic Genocide
Let’s not sugarcoat it. What’s happening in Nigeria’s higher education system today is academic genocide. The federal government has effectively declared war on the ivory tower. Salaries are frozen. Promotions are denied. Research is dead. Morale is nonexistent. Students are turning to fraud and crime. Lecturers are dying in silence, many too ashamed to beg for help. But yes, the president has just approved ₦90 billion for Hajj. Where is the justice in this madness?
A Rotten Elite and a Silent Society
The ruling class in Nigeria treats lecturers like slaves while flying abroad for their own checkups, educating their children overseas, and stealing public funds to build mansions in Dubai. Meanwhile, professors die waiting for ₦13 million. We are ruled by demons in agbadas, celebrated by cowards, and enabled by silence.
What’s worse is that many Nigerians have been so brutalized, they now laugh off their own destruction. “Lecturers are always complaining.” Yes, because they are being slowly buried alive.
We Will Not Forgive
To those in power your days of immunity from truth are over. You will be remembered not as leaders, but as executioners. We will not forgive you for the lives you’ve ruined. Not in death. Not in history. Not in the court of God.
You have destroyed one of the few remaining sectors that held any credibility in this country. And for what? Your greed? Your power games? Your bottomless stomachs?
Prof. Roko is dead and I pray for Allah to accept his good innocent soul into the highest level in paradise amin. But this article is not about him alone. It is about every Nigerian academic suffering right now in silence. It is about every student being denied a future. It is about a nation killing its own brain and expecting to survive.
Enough is enough. Let this death be a curse on the conscience of every politician who has contributed to this decay.
Let this be a rallying cry for every Nigerian who still has a soul left.
Muhammad Lawal Ibrahim, PhD. CLN
ABU, Zaria
