Veteran Journalist, Agaka, is Dead

A veteran journalist, Alhaji Abdulhamid Babtunde Agaka, Thursday died at his residence along Mali Crescent, Malali, Kaduna.

Born on February 26, 1956, Agaka attended Kano Capital School and the Capital School Kaduna in the 1960s before proceeding to Barewa College, Zaria and Government Secondary School, Ilorin.

With passion for journalism, he joined the service of the New Nigerian Newspaper based in Kaduna, in 1974.

He was a Correspondent (State Editor) of the New Nigerian Newspaper in Kano State from 1980 to 1984. The vibrant journalist effectively covered the socio-economic and political developments of the cosmopolitan, commercial, cultural and religious state of Kano at the time.

Agaka was transferred back to Kaduna in late 1984 and became the News Editor and later Associate Editor (News) of the New Nigerian before joining the Democrat Newspaper as an Editor in 1988 and later the Editor in Chief.

When the newspaper ceased publication in the 1996, he went into Media Consultancy and established Slim Jenkins Media Services, a professional consultancy firm, offering qualitative media, editorial, publicity, training, advertisement and related communication services for print, electronic, web and public enlightenment formats to corporate and individual clients.

Agaka, who attended several media trainings, workshops and conferences at home and abroad, was an alumnus of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NUJ), Lagos which he attended between 1976 and 1978.

An active member of the NUJ in Kano (1980 to 1984), the late Editor was later inducted into the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), where he was once the Vice President (North) of the Guild. He was awarded a Fellow of the NGE.

Agaka, who was once the Secretary of the Jokolo Committee set up by then President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, is survived by four children – Ahmad, Maryam, Halima and Abdulhamid (Jnr).

He is also survived by other siblings including Malam Ismail Ila Agaka, a former Managing Director Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) and Ilyasu Baba Agaka, a Director at the Presidency, among others.

He has since been buried according to Islamic rites at a public cemetery in Kaduna.