Encounter with Malam Liman By Mahmud Jega
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.
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