Kabir Dangogo: The Man Who Threw Me A Lifeline

By Bola BOLAWOLE

News of the transition of Malam Kabir Dangogo hit me like a thunderbolt. Kabir was the man God used to throw me a lifeline when I was unceremoniously shown the door at the PUNCH newspapers on Christmas eve in 1998.

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My only baby at the time was just one year old and I had less than N500.00 (Five Hundred Naira) in my bank account. And that was because, like Yemi Olowolabi, Chief Press Secretary to the then Ondo State Gov. Olusegun Agagu, told me years after, I was a “Thank you” editor and not a “Ghana-Must-Go” editor! What Yemi meant was that all I savoured from the favours I dispensed during my tenure as editor was the “thank you” people said to me! Of course, he was correct! Did I, then, regret the unsavoury turn of events when they came? I did not! God – and Kabir – did not let me!

Kabir told me to put forward a proposal for the consultancy job of printing Union Bank’s newsletter – The Stallion. He came down from his highbrow Ikoyi residence to my Ogba popular side with his entire family, bringing with him gifts that my family treasured for many, many years. 

My wife cooked, we all ate, and felt at home together. You would think we were members of the same family. For years, I handled the editing, production, and printing of Union Bank magazines and newsletters and lived comfortably on the proceeds. Kabir fought tooth-and-nail to keep the job for me, and the moment he left, I lost it!

Kabir retired over irreconcilable differences between him and the management (G.A.T Oboh was GMD at the time) over the policy of making everyone a banker. A consummate Public Relations professional, Kabir never wanted to be anything else. 

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When he retired, he relocated from Lagos to Abuja, then Kaduna, and later to his home state of Katsina, living close to the perimetres of the Government House. We regularly rubbed minds on the country’s volatile security situation. At a point we lost touch and when we got back talking again, I was sad to hear that he had suffered a stroke; but the cherry news was that he was recovering very well.

The last time we spoke, he needed help for his son who was seeking employment with the NDLEA. After that, his lines went dead again. The next news was that of his demise, which I find too sad to describe; the same feelings I had when Mr. Kayode Awosanya of Mobil Producing Limited was killed by armed robbers/assassins during those giddy days of the June 12, 1993 crisis when the PUNCH newspapers were closed and proscribed again and again. 

During one of those closures, many staff members were taken off the payroll. For reasons I could not fathom, I was one of those affected. So, each day I stayed indoors devouring books, until one day when Moses Ebong, our Head of Cartoons, came with an artist’s impression of myself that he said Mobil Producing said he should deliver to me. 

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In addition, he said Mr. Awosanya asked that I see him without delay. I went the next day and that was how this “Thank you” editor was handed the consultancy job of editing, producing, and printing Mobil Producing’s newsletter; which I did for many years! Sweet repose, continue to grant the soul of Mr. Kayode Awosanya, O Lord!      

While I was still ruminating on how to pen a tribute to Kabir, I stumbled on one written by Akaninyene Esiere and chose to adopt it because it captured the very essence of who Kabir was.  Excerpts:  

“When he first proposed the idea of forming the Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB), he ensured that I was included as a founding member. Mallam would not have thrived as a politician because he always called a spade a spade and never sugarcoated issues… Our paths crossed in the mid-1990s when I was a business reporter at The week magazine. 

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He was the Principal Manager and Head of the Public Relations Department at Union Bank. I was one of the reporters whose business and finance articles he enjoyed reading. Dangogo came over to Union Bank from the Bank of the North, headquartered in Kano, where he was the Assistant General Manager in the same PR Department…

“Not long after he joined the bank, he became aware that the majority of the personnel in the department were not professional public relations practitioners. Apart from Gabriel Edem and Femi Akinmoladun, who was based in Abuja, others had backgrounds in different fields, including core banking. Dayo Sobowale, who had spent many years in the department, had been transferred to head the Ibadan Area Office before Dangogo assumed office. 

If you knew Kabir Dangogo a little, you would know that he was a thoroughbred public relations professional and wasn’t going to be able to speak the same language with those who were not familiar with the profession!

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“Dangogo then obtained the approval of his bosses to recruit professionals into the department. I happened to be one of those people whose curriculum vitae he asked for. I cannot remember how many of us wrote the employment examination but I was surprised I was subsequently invited for interview… I knew I didn’t do well in the exams because the bank got the West African Examination Council to set it. And WAEC being WAEC decided to punish me for failing mathematics in my WAEC and brought so much mathematics again into this exam… I failed the exam but I still got the job. 

After I got the job, which I started on December 1, 1998, I asked Mallam Kabir Dangogo if I passed the exam. He told me I did not but that he asked the Human Resources Department to still invite me to the interview, believing that I would do well.

“I got the job because Kabir Dangogo believed in me and gave me a chance. In this same Nigeria where ethnicity and religion are the pillars and ladders of progress in life, a Fulani (was he Hausa?) Muslim from Katsina State saw competence in a person from a different religion, ethnicity, and state. 

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Let me even shock you: three people were eventually recruited into the department through that exercise: Francis Barde, Cecile Agwu, and yours truly. That was Kabir Dangogo for you!

“To say that Kabir was a highly detribalized Nigerian is an understatement. Because he was a stickler for excellence, he was always looking for where to get the best quality service from. 

Most of the professionals or companies who rendered services to the department were not from the north. Here are some: Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi (of the Daily Times fame); Bola Bolawole (previously with The PUNCH); SO&U; Engr. Nsikak Essien; Dawn Functions; May Nzeribe, Taiwo Ola, to mention but a few. And most of his mentees were from the southern states; some of whom have written tributes in honour of their mentor.

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“Kabir was a very well organized and meticulous person. He was principled; yes, annoyingly principled. He would hate to cut corners; to see people do so or behave anyhow. He had strong opinions about many things and how people and organizations behaved. He was not a tongue-in-cheek public relations expert and would call a spade by its name without thinking how you would feel. For him, being politically correct was politically incorrect. 

His dressings were top-notch; his office very inviting. His meals were special: he lectured us on why it was unhealthy to drink water while eating; he was a stickler for timeliness and very impatient with the notion of “African time”. He lived in an ideal state! All of this made Francis Barde to nickname him “Bature”, the Hausa word for an Englishman.

“Kabir Dangogo was a consummate and thoroughbred professional known across the length and breadth of the African continent as far as public relations was concerned… The Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB) was his brainchild; and he was its founding President. 

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He brought life to the Lagos State Chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR). He was regular at its monthly meetings and ensured that those of us in the department attended meetings on rota. He was the General Secretary of the Federation of African Public Relations Association (FAPRA).

“Kabir liked to holiday in London, print beautiful diaries in London, order for expensive (he called them top quality!) corporate gifts from London! Occasionally, he would invite us to his official residence on Thompson Street, Ikoyi. Union Bank had the third largest number of properties in Nigeria after the federal government and UACN!

“When he retired from the bank in 2005, Dangogo moved to Abuja and then Kaduna where he set up a school for the teaching of public relations… For whatever reasons, he left Kaduna for Katsina, his homestead, and started to fall ill. The sickness saw him in and out of hospital. 

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By September last year, he had gone into a coma and needed to be moved back to Kaduna for better treatment. When in October 2024 Mr. Barde visited him, Mallam Kabir Dangogo could not recognize his right hand man of nearly three decades! He breathed his last on March 6, 2025 at the age of 76 years. He will be sorely missed!”

May Allah forgive Kabir his shortcomings and admit his soul into Jannatul Firdaus!

*Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in the New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays.  He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.

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