Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, yesterday broke down and wept, while speaking about his over 40 years of friendship with Professor Andrew Jonathan Nok, the late Commissioner of Education, Science and Technology.

The governor shed tears at the Kaduna Government House during a valedictory executive session held in honour of Professor Nok.

His colleagues, the commissioners and other top government functionaries, also shed tears as they eulogised him.

The governor announced on the occasion his readiness to adopt the three children of the late professor.

He said the state government would sponsor the education of the three children up to the PhD level.

He said a campus of the Kaduna State Polytechnic would be sited in Nok, the hometown of the late commissioner.

The governor said one of the state’s secondary schools and an health institution would be named after the professor who served meritoriously as the state Commissioner for Health and Human Services and later Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology.

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 Nation)