Like a hot knife piecing through the heart, such is the anguish, the excruciating pain that death causes in the heart of those whose member it takes away, so painfully, so abruptly, without a care in the world about how the families and friends and associates of the dead would feel. So the grim reaper, the one that reaps where it didn’t sow struck again last night at about 8:30pm and took away the award winning veteran thespian extraordinaire and seasoned broadcaster “Sadiq Abubakar Daba” aka Bitrus.
He had gallantly battled for many years now Leukemia and Prostate cancer that’s for about 4 years now, but the ravages of the twin enemy and more finally caught up with him and he lost the battle and succumbed.
The acting giant first came into the nation’s consciousness via his depiction of a character named Bitrus in the classic television series Cockcrow at dawn in the late 70s, early 80s. His character was one of the ones that kept viewers glued to the TV then.
Sometime in 2017 in a sad twist of fate he had announced his diagnosis and battle with Leukemia and prostate cancer which prompted Nigerians to support his fight to survive the twin attack with a fundraiser. Mr. Femi Otedola, the billionaire businessman was one of those extraordinary Nigerians that stood in the gap for him and helped to extend the life of the man many knew as Bitrus, the name of the character he played so prolifically in Cockcrow at dawn. As at 2019 one of the other issues that he had began to fight apart from Leukemia and Prostate cancer was called ‘Chronic Obstructive Venereal Disease’, which had to do with his lungs as the inside had perforated and made breathing and moving about without external aid (oxygen) difficult. One of the the things that Mr. Otedola had helped to facilitate without ever first meeting Sadiq Daba, was a mobile oxygen converter, which the ace broadcaster could carry around.
According to the news, he had been ill for about a week prior to his death. His wife Bolaji Daba nee Oluwa whom he first met when she was at the University of Jos is from a royal family in Lagos had just recently become a permanent secretary.
Sadiq Daba is actually from Kano state of Nigeria, but he grew up with his family in Sierra Leone and he came to Nigeria for the first time on June 28,1968 in his mid 20s aboard a boat MV Duruma in Apapa, Lagos. He is survived by his wife, 3 sons and a daughter and he died age 70.
May the soul of the dearly departed finally find rest.
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