Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, has resolved to adopt the three children, of the late Commissioner of Education, Science and Technology, Professor Jonathan Andrew Nok.
He said the state government would sponsor education of the three children of the late Commissioner up to Phd level.
Governor El-Rufai made the disclosure in Kaduna on Friday during the valedictory executive session held in honour of the late Professor Nok.
The governor said that one of the state’s secondary schools and a health institution would be named after the late professor, who served meritoriously as the state Commissioner for Health and Human Services and later Commissioner for Education.
Governor El-Rufai, who broke down in tears while speaking about his over 40 years of friendship with the late Professor and the indelible marks he left behind as a Commissioner, said a campus of the Kaduna State Polytechnic would be sited in Nok, the home town of the late Professor Andrew Jonathan Nok.
His colleagues, the Commissioners and other top government functionaries shed tears as they eulogised the late Professor.
Born on February 11, 1962 in Ungwar Rimi, Kaduna, Professor Nok was appointed Commissioner for Health and Human Services in August 2015. In that office, he pushed the programme to equip 255 primary health centres with tools to save infants and pregnant women.
Following a cabinet reshuffle, he moved to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in 2016, where has championed the renovation and rehabilitation of schools, the training of teachers and the provision of better learning aids.
The late commissioner was a professor of Biochemistry at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Acknowledged in the science community for his contributions, Professor Nok won the Alexander Humboldt prize in 2013 for his research into finding a cure for trypanosomiasis.
In 2009, he won the NLNG prize for identifying the gene responsible for the enzyme which causes sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis). The Federal Government of Nigeria also honoured him with the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM).
