I have got to do this tribute, difficult as it may be. And it will be a long one. If you follow Apostle Joshua Selman’s teachings closely, you will be familiar with the statement that this world is a world of men (human beings); that without the gift of men, you will not go far in life. In my short life on earth, I have had some destiny helpers…angels in human form that God places in the way to help me.
One of such people happened to be Mallam Kabir Dangogo. Our paths crossed in the mid 1990s when I was a business reporter at Theweek magazine. He was the Principal Manager and Head of Public Relations Department at Union Bank. I was one of the reporters whose business and finance articles he enjoyed reading. Unless it’s a feature article in a daily, a weekly gives you an added advantage of in depth news analysis over a daily news report. I will recall a day I went to his office to source for a story or to obtain his perspective on a story I was working on and he gave me a five hundred Naira note. I was hesitant but he said ‘no, you didn’t ask for it; this is a gift from me to you’. In the mid 1990s, N500 was good money.
Dangogo came over to Union Bank from Bank of the North, headquartered in Kano, where he was the Assistant General Manager in the same Department. He was headhunted by M. (Mohammed) I. Yahaya, who had been appointed Group Managing Director of the bank.
Not long after he joined the bank, he became aware that 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 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!
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 interviews. I will explain.
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. Long before I wrote my WAEC in 1984, Mathematics and I had had irreconcilable and unforgivable quarrels! Till date, there is no love lost between us! During the Union Bank examination, I remember wondering if they knew we were not applying to be bankers but public relations practitioners in the bank. I failed the exam. But I still got the job. How did I know? After I got the job which I started 1 December 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.
During the two staged interviews, I was in my element because I was asked questions about my professions (journalism and public relations). When the interviewers delved into my turf, current affairs, I did even better. I remember one of the interviewers feeling surprised that I was more current about the bank’s performance in the capital market than him! I got the job!
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. Let me even shock you: three people were eventually recruited into the department through that exercise: Francis Barde (who later became a brother), Cecile Agwu (who was a year my senior in the university) 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 anywhere. 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 (a special engineer madly in love with journalism!); 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. I can capture an excerpt from one here:
‘A Legacy of Integrity: Remembering a Forthright Mentor, Mallam Kabir Dagogo’
Today, we mourn the loss of a distinguished, impartial, extraordinary gentleman, forthright and detribalized Nigerian, Mallam Kabir Dagogo. He was a consummate Public Relations professional and a mentor I am proud to have had. As the head of Public Relations at the Union Bank, he ran a seamless office that became the benchmark for his peers.
Mallam always had an open door for me, guiding me through the fundamentals of Public Relations when I single-handedly established the Public Relations Department at the Nigerian Export-Import Bank.
Unlike his contemporaries, Mallam provided me access to information, PR courses, and connections that would help shape me into a proficient Public Relations Professional. He was the one who introduced me to Federation of African Public Relations Association, (FAPRA) (now APRA) and even recommended me as his successor for the General Secretary position.
Mallam was pivotal in my becoming the first female Chairperson of the Lagos Chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations. Mallam Kabir Dagogo believed in me.
While the late Gbade Sanda introduced me to the NIPR, it was Mallam Kabir who nurtured me personally.
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; black was black, and his yes was yes. His forthrightness often led to misunderstandings, and he was sometimes labeled as proud for not condoning inappropriate behaviors. I will deeply miss him, and the Public Relations community in Nigeria and indeed Africa has lost an icon.
Adieu and fare thee well.
Nkechi Ali-Balogun, Ph.D. fnipr
He 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 nickname him Bature, 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. A former Kaduna Polytechnic lecturer, Kabir often turned our Monday meetings to a mentorship session lecturing, teaching, advising, criticizing, and showing us what to do and how to do things. Preparing for functions was thorough and he ensured things were done seamlessly.
The highpoint of my professional experience with Kabir was the commissioning of the bank’s headquarter building on 36 Marina in 1999, till today the tallest building in West Africa. The commissioning ceremony was undertaken by General Abdulsalami Abubakar on 18 May 1999, eleven days to his handover of power as the head of state to President-elect Olusegun Obasanjo. Already, there were rumours that the military would not hand over power given the earlier dribbling by the former head of state Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Then came the information that the tension in the country would not allow the head of state to come to Lagos for such an event just under two weeks to transition to civilian rule. But M. I. Yahaya, the GMD/CEO pressed many buttons and obtained assurances that Abdulsalami would come in person.
He did come; and my department under Mallam Kabir Dangogo put up a spectacular performance. As the head of the media relations unit in the department, I played a key role in that effort. We received strong commendation from the GMD.
As far as public relations goes, Kabir was an icon on the African continent. The Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB) was his brainchild; and he was its founding President. 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 we in the department attended meetings on rota. He was the General Secretary of the Federation of African Public Relations Association (FAPRA).
He was a dignified gentleman. A Bature indeed, 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. Then, 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. Even though I had left the bank in 2001, I stayed in touch. That staying in touch became infrequent because by 2003 I had moved out of Lagos! His relocation to the north further reduced our interactions.
For whatever reasons, Kabir left Kaduna for Katsina, his homestead, and started to fall ill. The sickness saw him in and out of hospital. By September last year, he had gone into 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 6 March 2025 at the age of 76 years. He will be sorely missed by his wife, three children and an army of professionals he mentored. Adieu, KB!
Esiere is a former journalist
