Father of Former AGF, Bello Adoke, Dies at 79

A former Rivers State Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr. Bello Abdullahi Adoke, who is also the father of a former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke is dead.

The Cable reported that he died yesterday night in Okene, Kogi State at the age of 79 years.

According to Bashir, one of the sons of the deceased, the 79-year-old retired policeman had fallen ill in August 2018 and was treated at a hospital in Abuja before he was discharged yesterday afternoon.

He travelled back to his home town, Okene, where he died shortly after arrival.

The elder Adoke, who attended Government College, Keffi, Plateau state, was born on June 11, 1939.

He was an information officer in the defunct Northern Region until 1963, when he won a scholarship to do further studies at the College of Journalism, Fleet Street, London, in the United Kingdom.

He joined the police on his return and retired on the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in 1975.

Adoke was a contemporary of former Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Coomassie, who died earlier this year.

While serving as police PRO in Rivers State in 1973, Adoke had the biggest challenge of his career when a journalist, Minere Amakiri, was arrested, tortured, lashed 33 times and had his head shaven with a broken bottle on the order of the ADC to the military governor, Alfred Diete-Spiff.

Amakiri, the Port Harcourt Correspondent of Benin-based Nigerian Observer, was punished for publishing an article about a teachers’ strike on a day Diete-Spiff was celebrating his birthday.

Adoke was said to have openly condemned the action of the governor’s aide.

His son, Mohammed, was the AGF under former President Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015.