The painful demise of Professor Abdullahi Mahadi is a significant deprivation of the university administration/management profile, academia and history scholarship.
Professor Mahadi had the rare distinction of being one of the very few to have been a Vice-Chancellor to three Nigerian universities where he brought remarkable reforms in physical and academic content parameters. His capacity and propensity to remould the physical environment of every university where he has led is second to none, comparable, perhaps, to Professor Oluwasanmi’ s work at the University of Ife.
A friend since our undergraduate days as classmates in the early ’70s, a colleague Chairman of ASUU (he of ABU and I of Unilorin) and thus members of the NEC of ASUU, Professor Mahadi exemplified industry, commitment and was compulsive in raising the standard/quality of university education in Nigeria.
He was a committed member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and gave one of the earlier Convocation Lectures of the academy.
Professor Abdullahi Mahadi will be painfully missed. I shall miss his friendship, banters and anecdotes whenever we met on the campuses where we schooled and where he had managed so effectively and efficiently.
May the gentle and humble soul of this great frontline historian, educationist, administrator and amiable friend rest in perfect peace.
* Olufemi Obafemi, a poet, playwright, author and Professor of English and Dramatic Literature at the University of Ilorin since October 1990, was the President of the Nigerian Academy of Letters between 2016 and 2018.
