By His Younger Brother
Ottawa, January 16, 2026
A pen that never bowed to gold,
A voice that named the truth, then held it,
A laugh that warmed the hardest room,
A mind that saw the game and told it.
He wrote for those with open eyes,
He stood where principled men stand
And when the noise became a flood,
He kept his honour in his hand.
Eight years today, my elder brother, Aliyu Babatunde Ahmed, known to many simply as AB Ahmed, passed on in Ilorin on January 16, 2018, aged 74. He lived most of his adult life outside Ilorin, moving with the demands of work and the pull of Nigeria’s big national conversations. Yet Ilorin was always home, the place his heart returned to, the place his name remained rooted, and the place where he finally rested.
To write this remembrance as his younger brother is to write from two angles at once, the public record of a veteran journalist and editor, and the private memories of a man whose laughter was easy, whose convictions were hard, and whose pen could be both a mirror and a whip.
*ABU and the discipline of ideas*
Before the newsroom, there was Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he studied Economics. In his ABU days, the university was a furnace for ambition and argument, serious lectures, serious reading, and a campus culture where young Nigerians debated the future as if they had personal stakes in it, because they did. It was a time when students wrestled openly with questions of development, leadership, accountability, and what kind of country Nigeria ought to become.
That training showed up later in his journalism. A.B. could explain political economy without hiding behind jargon. He respected the reader enough to be clear, and respected the truth enough to be precise.
*Kaduna, the New Nigerian years and a rising voice*
A.B. became prominent in the 1970s at the *New Nigerian Newspapers* in Kaduna, as a journalist, columnist, and prolific writer. Those were politically charged years, Nigeria edging toward the Second Republic, public expectations rising, and political language becoming both louder and more deceptive.
A.B. did not join the chorus. He built influence by doing what the best columnists do, he helped people understand how power works, not merely who holds it. He wrote with wit, but his wit had purpose. He could be sharp without being cheap. He could be funny without being unserious. He was, in the truest sense, a master satirist, and satire, when done well, is a form of public service.
He later rose to become Editor of Sunday New Nigerian, and edited other newspaper titles in Kaduna, Lagos and Abuja over a long career. He also spent years on the Daily Trust Editorial Board in Abuja before returning home to Ilorin in the later chapter of his life.
*Concord, and the journalist who could not be managed*
He also had a stint at Concord, adding another chapter to a career that moved across newsrooms and eras. But wherever he worked, his professional identity remained consistent, A.B. was not easily managed. He could be persuaded by reason, not by pressure.
That was part of what made him valuable, and sometimes vulnerable, in a country where inconvenient truth is treated as provocation.
*The 1980s, KiriKiri, Ilorin, and the price of speaking plainly*
There is an episode from the 1980s that I cannot omit, because it captures the kind of journalist my brother was, and the kind of consequences that often follow honest criticism.
A.B. once criticized the Kwara State Government for a spectacle in Ilorin, trees being painted because Gen. Tunde Idiagbon was visiting. My brother happened to be visiting Ilorin around the same time. He saw it not as beautification but as waste, especially when ordinary citizens were struggling in visible poverty. His point was simple, governance is not decoration, governance is dignity.
That criticism had a cost. He ended up spending time in KiriKiri Maximum Security Prison. My brother did not romanticize it. He did not turn it into a badge for drama. But the lesson remained, in Nigeria, sometimes the price of telling the truth is paid not with rebuttals, but with punishment.
Yet even that did not silence him. If anything, it reinforced his assignment, to speak plainly when the public interest demanded it.
*A journalist who embodied the craft*
My brother embodied what people say they want in journalism, *curiosity, clarity, courage, humour, and principle*.
His pen was a mighty weapon, not because it was loud, but because it was accurate. He could puncture hypocrisy in a paragraph. He could make public officials look at their own contradictions without raising his voice. And he understood something many forget, satire is not merely entertainment, it is accountability, served with a smile that still lands like a verdict.
*A dinner table debate that became tomorrow’s headline*
One personal memory still makes me smile, because it shows how A.B.’s mind worked, how quickly he could turn a conversation into a public question.
This relates to when consultants were on strike when I was in medical school. The issue, as I understood it, was not even remuneration, it was poor infrastructure. I travelled from Barau Dikko, Zaria to Kaduna, for a brief visit home. At dinner, the doctors’ strike came up, and A.B. took a hard position, doctors, he argued, had no business going on strike given their oath.
I tried to explain it differently. I used a hypothetical example, what if, because of broken systems, doctors could only save one or two patients out of ten, not due to lack of skill, but due to poor infrastructure? A.B. listened, paused, and rephrased it in the way only a columnist can:
“So, ten deaths, government is responsible for eight or nine, and doctors responsible for one or two, right?”
That was classic A.B., he could compress a messy national argument into a single sentence that demanded accountability from the right place. The next day, New Nigerian carried a story on the doctors’ strike with a similar framing. It was not that he stole our dinner conversation, he refined it into public language. That was his gift, to turn private clarity into public debate.
*Sibling jabs: ‘writers, scientists, and semovita’*
And then there was the A.B. we knew at home, the brother who teased as naturally as he breathed.
A.B. believed writers had brains, while scientists, including me, had balls of “semovita” between their ears. That was his kind of insult, mischievous, exaggerated, and strangely affectionate. He enjoyed the rivalry between arts and science not as hostility, but as family sport. Even his jokes had structure, he argued, even when he teased.
*Ilorin, the home he never outgrew*
A.B. spent most of his life outside Ilorin, but Ilorin remained his point of return. Some people leave home and become strangers to it. My brother left, but he remained owned by home, by its people, its memories, its moral claim. And in the end, it was Ilorin that held him, the city where he rested on January 16, 2018, and the city that gathers our remembrance today, January 16, 2026.
*What remains*
Eight years on, I remember a man who lived with standards and died with his name intact. A journalist who practiced the craft as a responsibility, not a hustle. A satirist whose pen could wound hypocrisy and heal public thinking at the same time. A brother who could laugh loudly, but would not compromise quietly.
Rest well, A.B.
Your words still walk. Your laughter still echoes. Your principles still challenge us.
Garbs
Jan 16, 2026.