Encounter with Malam Liman 

By

Mahmud Jega

mmjega@yahoo.com

Standing under a tree at the Kinshasa Road cemetery while Malam Liman Ciroma was being laid to rest last Monday morning, I thought of all my many encounters with him over the last 14 years. I reckoned that among the thousands of people who were present at the funeral on that day, there were at least hundreds who knew Malam Liman much better than I did. I wondered how many of them would share their interesting accounts of him with newspaper readers, but at least I should record my own small encounters with this great man.

The first time I ever saw Malam Liman, albeit at a distance, was in 1982, when he came to the University of Sokoto's convocation ceremony to receive a Doctor of Letters. We were the graduating students that year, and while delivered an address on behalf of the two other honourary degree recipients, I delivered one on behalf of graduating students. His own was calm and full of wisdom, while mine was bristling with Marxist-Leninist rhetoric.

It was 9 years later, a year after I moved to Kaduna in 1990, that I saw Malam Liman again, this time at a slightly closer range. It was in July 1991, at the residence of Ambassador Muhammadu Aliyu Carpenter at Tudun Wada, Kaduna. Both Malam Liman and Malam Adamu Ciroma attended the naming ceremony that morning of Carpenter's grandchild, and I was there because the child's father was my friend.

It was another 18 months before I had my first real encounter with Malam Liman. In late 1992, my friend Mohamed Bello, then of The Nation newspaper, was invited to write a biography of Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene, and he invited me to assist with the work. One day, at the Citizen magazine's Editorial Conference, discussions turned to books, and I mentioned that a book was being written on Okene. I however asked the managing director, Malam Mohamed Haruna, why he wouldn't urge General Hassan Katsina to have his biography written. I knew Haruna had served on the board of National Oil, of which the General was chairman.

Haruna took the suggestion seriously, and that afternoon, he went to see General Hassan with it. The General agreed, and he asked Haruna if he would write it. The MD replied that he was too busy to undertake the task and that, in any case, it was my idea, so he thought I should write it. But General Hassan did not know me, so he demurred.

A few days later, I was told that General Hassan said I should go and see Malam Liman Ciroma. He did not say what it was for. Since I had not been to Malam Liman's house before, I asked our General Editor, Malam Mohamed Bomoi, to help me get there, and we went there after Asr prayers one afternoon. Malam Liman received me well. He said my father was a year ahead of him at Barewa College. Next, he launched into a wide-ranging discussion of local, national, African and world affairs. He spoke about the Falklands conflict, the Balkan wars, the origin of the Slavic peoples, Mongolia, apartheid, Arab-Israeli conflict, the Nigerian civil war etc etc. Whenever he paused, I would offer a brief comment about those issues.

It was only later that I realized General Hassan had sent me to Malam Liman to evaluate me and determine if I can write the biography. I concluded as much because, a few days after that encounter, General Hassan sent word that I should come and start work on the book. He was so eager at that point to get started that he offered Citizen N40, 000 to finance my research work. Haruna attended the first interview session with the General and afterwards allowed me to do it alone. The work however got stalled at some stage, but that is another story.

Over the following months and years, I went to greet Malam Liman several times, usually with Malam Mohamed Lawal, who knew him much better than I did. In the 1992-93 period, there was a snag in those meetings because Malam Lawal was an active supporter of Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, whose main NRC rival was Malam Adamu Ciroma, Malam Liman's kinsman. Malam Liman knew that very well, so during all our visits, he carefully avoided all talk of politics.

Things changed during the annulment crisis of 1993-94.

With the politicians in complete disarray, Malam Liman and other statesmen took center stage during the ING days and into the early Abacha period. Frequent meetings were held by caucuses of Northern leaders to decide what to do. Malam Liman chaired many of those meetings, and he placed me, along with others, into the secretariat of the meetings. One day in early 1994, I arrived late at one of the closed-door meetings and the secretary-general determined to throw me out, saying that, as a Citizen magazine reporter, I was there to spy on them. But Malam Liman firmly said I must be allowed to remain inside, to the visible discomfiture of all the others present, including Dr.

Sola Saraki, Alhaji Sule Katagum, Wazirin Jema'a Alhaji Aliyu Mohamed and Alhaji Sule Gaya. At that very meeting, another of the young men present, Alhaji Salihijo Ahmed, greatly annoyed Malam Liman when he said the current crop of Northern elders did not do anything to bring up future generations.

Over the rest of the Abacha era, Malam Lawal and I went several times to greet Malam Liman in his house, and I witnessed the evolution of his thoughts with regards to strongman Sani Abacha. He wasn't fond of Abacha and was very critical of the government's policies and tactics. However, one day in early 1998, Malam Lawal and I went to see Malam Liman and found him sitting in the garage, about to have a hair cut.

It was at the height of the tazarce phenomenon and surprisingly, Malam Liman supported the Abacha tazarce. For over an hour, the barber had to stand by, his equipment poised, while Malam Liman explained at considerable length why he supported tazarce. The bottom line was, he felt the North would be in trouble if it lost power at that stage, given all its other disadvantages.

Some months later, with the situation completely altered by Abacha's death, we were again at Malam Liman's house. He supported power shift fairly early in the day, but he was very much disturbed by what he saw as Yoruba political blackmail of the North and the dangers it posed. I then suggested that the North had the option of helping to install an Igbo or a Southern minority president. At that, Malam Liman grimaced and said, "If power must go to the South, it has to be a Yoruba man". I asked why that was so, and he said it requires a man whose ancestors built large and diverse polities to be able to preside over a diverse polity like Nigeria. Well, I thought, that line of thought must be attributable to his training as an archeologist.

In 1999, Malam Liman was happy with Chief Obasanjo's return to power, which was perhaps understandable since he was his Secretary to the Federal Government and Head of Service back in the 1970s. In the next 4 years, though, his opinions of the Obasanjo government also evolved. By 2000 AD, he was very critical of it and believed the North had a raw deal [I was tempted at that stage to ask Malam about the Yoruba man's historical sense of balance, but I held my peace]. But as the 2003 elections neared, he again supported a second term for Obasanjo, something that was by then anathema in ACF circles and for which Malam Liman suffered greatly with criticisms all around that he had abandoned the organisation's major aim.

>From mid-2000, Malam Liman was the intellectual and organizational driving force of the Arewa Consultative Forum [ACF]. Though his position as chairman of the Board of Advisers didn't suggest it, he was in practice ACF's single most influential member, and all strategic as well as day-to-day operational decisions were cleared with him. I happened to know this because, in September to October 2000, I was on annual leave and the only place I could spend the day at was Malam Lawal's office at SCOA. However, Malam Lawal himself was then spending most of the day at the ACF's secretariat, where our friend Magatakarda Inuwa Abdulkadir was acting secretary general, so I went there with him.

ACF's Rapid Response Committee, which Malam Liman chaired, was meeting at the secretariat virtually everyday and, before I knew it, he integrated me into it. We would sit in the conference room, no more than 6 or 7 people, discussing issues as they arise in the day's newspapers. It wasn't a completely open forum though, for Malam Liman did most of the talking. His knowledge was really profound, and he would approach issues from historical, philosophical, sociological and political angles. Even though I did not always agree with what he said, I took my cue from the other participants and for the most part, we only sat and listened, and then wrote what he told us to write.

When my leave was about to end, Malam Liman fixed a meeting for the following Tuesday, and Magatakarda remarked that I may not be able to attend it because I would have resumed work by then. Malam Liman lost his temper. He said, "Mahmud is not attending the meeting because he has nothing to do! He will continue to attend even after he resumes his work!" In order not to disappoint him, I attended the next meeting of the Research Committee at Arewa House, which turned out to be crucial. Malam Liman, who chaired, expounded on a proposal for the North to rise up to the challenge of its media marginalisation with a scorched earth policy. The plan called for every Northern Emir or Chief to summon an emergency community meeting, and for the whole North to raise N500 million to establish a newspaper. The North had done that kind of thing only twice before, Malam Liman said, to send a delegation to the Colonial Office in London in the 1950s and during the Civil War. When the matter was being discussed around the table, Alhaji Bashir Mohamed criticized it, and Malam Liman asked me to comment. I also criticized the idea, saying a paper in which every Northerner was a direct stakeholder would be impossible to handle editorially.

Soon afterwards, the meeting adjourned for Zuhr prayers. Malam Liman lingered on in the mosque after the prayers, and six of us, the younger ones at the meeting, stood at the entrance waiting for him to come out. We noticed that Malam Mamman Daura held Malam Liman's shoes when he was going into the mosque, so before he came out, Magatakarda picked them up and held them. When Malam came out, his shoes were laid out on the ground and he slipped his feet into them.

Immediately he looked up, he began to scold me fervently for opposing his idea at the meeting. "Why did you disagree with me?" he demanded. "Did I not send for you to attend the meeting? Don't you know that I sent for you so that you can come there and support me? Next time, when I say something, you must support me, you hear?" It was a really awkward moment, and afterwards, my friends wanted to debate its significance. Well, I said, they could debate for all they want, but as for me, I would simply comply with what he told me.

In the ensuing months, Malam Liman sent for me whenever there was a delegation of eminent visitors who wanted to meet with him and the ACF leaders. I was there when he received a member of the British Parliament and later the American scholar Professor Richard Sklar, both at Arewa House. On all occasions, I listened attentively to Malam Liman's remarks, and then I shopped around for some historical or other anecdotes to support what he said. Me, I no dey for wahala.

Though I never saw Malam Liman actually reading a newspaper, I had circumstantial evidence that he read them avidly, because on dozens of occasions, he called me on the phone to correct an impression that New Nigerian or some other newspaper erroneously or mischievously created. He hated historical inaccuracies, I could see. He apparently read the New Nigerian all the way down to the imprint, because on several occasions, when I was acting editor in January 2000 to October 2001, Malam Liman asked me why I was not confirmed. He threatened to take up the matter with the Federal Government. When I told him that it wasn't the Abuja people's matter but our own management's, he also wanted to take it up with the MD. I however pleaded with him not to do so, because the impression would be created that I reported the matter to him.

In 14 years, I asked Malam Liman for only one personal favour and, what a big one it was. In January 2002, after strenuous pleas with the Presidency over many months, New Nigerian's managing director at the time, Dr. Omar Faruk Ibrahim, managed to secure a grant of N100 million. The spirit of the grant was clear, that it was to help pay salaries, pensions and buy production materials. However, leaders of New Nigerian's restive pensioners soon discovered from the Federal Finance Ministry that the money given was from a pension subhead, so they demanded all of it and threatened to unleash violence if it was shared with anyone.

Dr. Faruk was in deep quandary, and at 7pm one Saturday evening, himself, Mr. Ndanusa Alao and I sat in the MD's office, shopping for an answer. We asked him why he could not get the Finance Ministry to spell out the reasons why it gave the money. That wasn't possible, he said, because his relationship was then Finance Minister Malam Adamu Ciroma was extremely sour. Well, I said, Malam Adamu Ciroma would have no option if Malam Liman Ciroma asked him to do it. Dr.

Faruk however did not know Malam Liman, so I offered to set up an appointment. I went downstairs to my office and called him on the phone. Malam Liman said while he as a rule does not go out in the night, he was committed that evening to attend a reception at some place, but if we could come in 10 minutes, he would wait.

I rushed up the stairs and told the MD, and both of us hurtled down the steps like missiles, jumped into the car and rushed to his house. Malam Liman was already standing outside when we came, fully dressed, his car's engine running. The MD began to explain what we wanted and Malam Liman impatiently interrupted at a stage, saying, "You want viement". Okay, he said, "I will speak to Adamu this night". Pronto! At midnight, Malam Liman phoned Dr. Faruk and told him to proceed to Abuja early on Monday and collect the viement authorization. Malam Adamu Ciroma, however, was really angry at the high-powered intervention and it was clear that without Malam Liman, he would never have granted it. When the MD got to his office, the Minister scolded him for 10 minutes, saying, "You go and do your things outside the rules, and then you go around forcing elders to cover up for you!" He then grudgingly instructed Dr. Haruna Sanusi, the DG Budget at the time, to grant the letter.

Now that there is no Malam Liman, who will clear our doubts, who will tell us what to do, and who will pull our chestnuts out of raging bureaucratic fires? That is why we cry.

Jega is editor of the New Nigerian, Kaduna.