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Alhaji Adamu Liman Ciroma Chiroman Fika 1930-2004, was a Nigerian bureaucrat, archeologist. Famously known as Nigeria’ first qualified archeologist.

Liman was born on Sept 30th 1930, a member of the royal family of Fika, during the period of British administration. He went to school in his home town, Potiskum, then to Borno Middle School in Maiduguri and finally to Kaduna College.

As a sixth-former at northern Nigeria’s top boys’ school, Kaduna College, Liman had heard a talk by Bernard Fagg, then assistant surveyor of antiquities for the colonial government. Fagg had asked for volunteers to train to locate and save the country’s history. Liman stepped forward.

He became a great friend of Fagg and his family and worked with him from 1949 until 1953, during the building of Nigeria’s first museum at Jos in central Nigeria, where open cast tin mining was uncovering archaeological material, including the famous Nok figures. By 1961, Liman was acting deputy director of antiquities, would be lured into administration. In 1961, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Northern Region’s premier, headhunted him for a senior post in the region’s local government ministry. By 1968, he was in Lagos as permanent secretary in the federal ministry of industries.

In 1966, Liman authored an infamous memo which laid out the ground work for the creation of states in the Nigerian Federation.

He died on May 23rd 2004