Professor Ango Abdullahi and his friends -By Gimba Kakanda

Professor Ango Abdullahi

Professor Ango Abdullahi and his friends are in the news, and trending, because we do not have respect for the old in this part of the world. If we have, he and other senior citizens who parade themselves as “Northern Elders Forum” would’ve long been lounging or convalescing in government-owned old people’s homes, receiving first-class medical treatment, with access to mental health professionals.

My friend’s father is one of the arrowheads of the Forum, and most of the times the old man fumbled in the fashion of the Forum’s perpetual disregard for commonsense he called to tease, “Let me apologize on Malam’s behalf.” And then we laughed over their senior moments, calling it what it is: sign of the time.

The problem isn’t Ango Abdullah and his friends, the problem is the media that wouldn’t let the old men live their senior moments in peace, off record. I’ve met my friend’s father. He’s a beautiful man, wise and cerebral. And bruised by decades of existing in this purgatorial space. But like the son I know there’s something mentally deficient about his ways of remembering, and thinking.

Old age is not always wisdom, old age is also decline of wisdom, and my friend’s good ol’ father is in the latter phase of his journey to becoming an ancestor.