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An Open Letter To Sir Ahmadu Bello By Abdulkareem Mohammed abdulimage@justice.com
Sir Ahmadu Bello you were the Sardauna of Sokoto and only Premier of the defunct Northern Region of Nigeria. You were brutally murdered in Nigeria’s first military coup of January 15th 1966. Hence this year marks the 40th anniversary of your death. Northerners, and indeed Nigerians, mourn your death with deep sense of loss and nostalgia. Moreover, sober reflections abound about your life and times. In this spirit, I humbly write to give you an account of 32 personality interviews I had, from 1995 to 2005, with people who could reflect and inform us about you - Sir Ahmadu Bello. Thirteen (13) of them are already dead as well. Nonetheless, their reflections are good reading materials not for you but for us that are still alive.
In the course of my interviews, I was amazed to find that some of the interviewees were recalling your life and times with heavy laddered emotions. Can you believe that late Abdulrahman Okene who worked with you, late Alhaji Abdu Sambo (Baba Ja) who was your secretary and Abdulhamid Karofi who was a guard and domestic staff in your household, were all sobbing when they were talking about you? It was an unbelievable disclosure to me. It made me appreciate why you have remained a factor in the history of our nation.
Funtua as you knew it remains the last major town in the then Katsina Province before you get into the Gusau District of the then Sokoto Province which is now divided into Zamfara, Kebbi and Sokoto states. You may recall that your good friend and minister in your cabinet, Alhaji Shehu Sarkin Maska, influenced your holding cabinet meetings in Funtua. But of specific interest to me, you may recall that in an occasion of one of your Kaduna – Sokoto trips, the pupils of Aya Primary School in Funtua laid ambush to your vehicle. The pupils expressed their love to you by touching your car, clothing, tashaba, hands etc. You may, as well, recall that one of the pupils used his bare childish finger to brush your teeth. You cheerfully condoned, appreciated and gave out money to the pupils that displayed such childish behaviours. Pupils from primary 1 to 7 were given two pennies and two chocolates each.
I must confess to you that I was among the little ones that did that to you. Yet I somehow do not feel any remorse. Why? The experience has had an immeasurable impact on my life. It gave me the opportunity to see, first hand, what the first Nigerian Senior District Officer in Sokoto, Reverend Salchen Maina, said about you: “We call him Gamsheka. And the name alone depicts something frightening. But if you come close to him you will see that he is really a dove not Gamsheka. And you know dove is something likeable and that is the difference.”
Chief Sunday Awoniyi considered you a blessed man in many ways. Your achievements unsurpassed. You had genuine love of human beings irrespective of place, religion, ethnicity, linguistic or political differences. Awoniyi further submit that: “It is as if your star shines brighter everyday as the cloudy character of those after you provides the background foil to highlight your own transparency of character and achievements.” For you, this assertion may have no meaning in view of where you are. However, Hausa proverb says: “rikicin duniya da mai rai ake yinsa” (worldly affairs is for those living).
You may be gone for four decades now but I can assure you that your memory still lingers on. I asked Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene, whom you fondly called “Himalayan,” to comment about what he sees that remains of your legacies. Believe me sir, he sobbed. The emotion with which he remembers you was astounding – having gone for all these years. Alhaji Abdu Sambo (Baba Ja) who was one of your secretaries was equally sobbing when he was recalling what your daily schedule was; how you interacted with people; what they gained from you; etc. Another person that cried uncontrollably was Alhaji Abdulhamid Karofi. He was “Dan Doka” (Native Authority policeman) who was among those guarding your house in Sokoto but you had him transferred to Kaduna where he remained up to the point of your death. One of your drivers, Alhaji Ladan Gwandu, vowed never to drive anyone else up to when he died in 2005. His reason was that no body could match what you did for him. Late Reverend Vongen Gambo Sanda was an Agricultural Officer whom you and your entourage ate meals with him at Daudawa and Kafin Soli. He was quite happy with how you were able to eschew differences of class, religion and age in order to make everybody feel he belonged. These and other numerous persons showed fond memories of you.
I embarked on a project that intended to highlight your contributions to our lives as a people. The idea was to bring forth the knowledge of who you were: what you did; your philosophies, leadership style and achievements in order to exemplify what genuine and committed leadership is all about. In the process, I interviewed several of your contemporaries, those who worked or benefited from what you did and even one of your wives and your daughter Aisha. Sir, I have interviewed 32 of them with 13 now dead.
You may recall that students of Barewa College in Zaria ever staged a drama depicting your leadership style. The person who played your character was named “Sardauna of 5b”. Believe me sir, he is now the Talban Bauchi and is known to all as Dr. Ibrahim Tahir. He cautioned me about the project by saying that: “… thinking about (you) Sardauna is disturbing because any child that continuously cries of daddy means that he has not measured up to the father. And if the father has relations, it means that none of them has measured up to the father either.”
Though I had this at the back of my mind, I went on to ask about who has continued from where you have stopped. Sir, Alhaji Shehu Shagari confessed that you have, during your last pilgrimage, told him that he would succeed you. Yet the general consensus, including him, was that nobody has stepped into the leadership shoes you left behind some forty years ago. Your Minister for Internal Affairs who is now Sarkin Katagum, Alhaji (Dr) Muhammed Kabir Umar, categorically said: “People like (you) Sardauna come once in a century.” While your Agent–General in London, late Ambassador Jolly Tanko Yusuf said since you died: “we have become like children who lost their father and have no replacement of him.” Shagari opined that the only condition that produces your kind is crisis and unless we are faced with it, we are not likely to get a hero like you.
Most of your contemporaries are ever grateful to your vision and foresight. You certainly “worked and worshipped.” They are uniform in conceding this of you. What stems from their confession is the inability to continue from where you stopped. What has gone wrong? What can be done to correct the situation?
These are fundamental questions that are of great interest and relevance to your present day people and constituency. Your cohorts seem to have resigned to fate; the middle-aged (40-50) who were young but caught up a glimpse of your action are yearning for someone like you to come forward; while the new generation of thirty nine years and below are just in doubt of who you were because your story is like a fairy tale to them.
Sir, you have been credited as the master of cross – generation breeding in your bid to beep up development and growth within your constituency. Your cabinet was, for example, made up of old men like late Aliyu Makaman Bida and Ibrahim Musa Gashash; and the young people like Sule Gaya (Sarkin Fadan Kano), Tijjani Hashim (Turakin Kano) and Muhammed Kabiru Umar (Emir of Katagum). But sadly enough, this useful strategy of inter generational cross-fertilization of ideas has long been thrown to the woods. The old of these days are primarily self-centred and therefore do not realize that they owe your constituency what you envision to have being their role and commitment to the system. And to compound the problem further, they do not appreciate the fact that as beneficiaries of the system, you established using public funds, it has become morally mandatory on them to put back what rightly belongs to the system. System, a group of units so combined as to form a whole and to operate in unison, is what you left behind to your constituency. Sir, what obtains today is sadly the opposite. The fact that your constituency was first broken into six before the present 20 (including the Federal Capital Territory) was not the problem. According to General Yakubu Gowon, who was the principal architect of breaking Nigeria into States, it was a necessity to keeping the nation one. His primary mission on assuming leadership was GOWON: Go On With One Nigeria. So the reason he advanced should be accepted as a price the nation had to pay.
However, those who learnt first hand and appreciated your concepts of “Dan Arewa”, northernization policy, unbiased leadership devoid of favouritism in terms of social, political, ethnic, economic or religious are the same people that terminated the doctrine at the expense of the system. Here lies the calamity that has befallen the system you left behind. Without the system, anti-developmental traits are prevalent because without unity there will be no formidable force to pursue and achieve unified greatness.
Today if one does not have a “name tag”, no matter how brilliant or productive he may be, the biased and self-serving system reduced to such myopic level, does not have place for him. Through this adverse development, Sir, your constituency is unable to harness its natural resources properly. You may recall that during your time there was a deliberate “talent hunt” which brought about the empowerment of your constituents to high positions and subsequent upward mobility. The products of such programme enclosed their minds and enslaved their vision to the confines of their respective households of which the system was sacrificed to. Luckily, sir, there is an Olusegun Obasanjo ruling Nigeria that is succeeding in becoming the turning point of the situation. He has shown that “kowane tsuntsu kukan gidansu yake yi” (every bird sings the song of his environment).
Obasanjo has neither said nor reputed that he has 3rd term agenda. But indicators like the constitutional amendment, fury over the Honourable Speaker’s pronouncement that there will be no extension of political tenure beyond 2007, North-South divisive tactics and others, have raised 3rd term agenda to the point of harnessing resistance from progressive groups to the unholy agenda. Incidentally sir, you are becoming the rallying centre for northern standpoint. Nonetheless, Gidado Idris, who was your private secretary and had risen to Secretary General of the Federation, is still mindful of your belief that Nigeria will one day seize to be one. The situation whereby the polity is being gradually heated up is alarming and heading towards your prediction. Should this happen during the clock of Obasanjo? He is a son that served in the Army, fought in the civil war to keep Nigeria one, accepted the surrender of Biafra, a military Head of State, member of the 3 Eminent Persons’ Group, Nigeria’s sponsored candidate for Secretary General of the United Nations, Chairman African Union, current President etc. If your prediction happens on his time, there is no generation of Nigeria that can forgive him. The nation has given to him a platform bigger and better than any of its citizens. It is therefore not uncharitable for Nigerians to demand a better deal than he is offering.
Through the auspices of the Northern Senators’ Forum (NSF), Northern Members Forum (NMF), Movement for the Defence of Democracy (MDD), Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), Movement for Unity and Progress (MUP), Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the north have converged at the point of pressing for power shift to northward and resisting the constitutional amendment of elongating the life of the current regime beyond 2007. This northern standpoint made southern politicians to parley in Enugu where they came out with their own demands:
1) The presidency-post-2007-zoned to either south south or the southeast. 2) The process of constitutional amendment/reform must commence immediately and affected prior to the 2007 elections. 3) Failure to above will lead the south to boycott the 2007 elections and consider the reconstitution of the country as a confederation on the basis of the six geo-political zones with each zone retaining its resources and contributing to the centre on the basis of an agreed principle.
Sir, in view of the aforementioned, you can see that the die is cast between your constituency (north) and the south. At the moment, the political system of the country has been heated up by the mere action or inaction of Obasanjo. It was he that some of your confidants moved from Kaduna to Maiduguri in the wake of your assassination so as to save him from possible reprisal. Another northern group worked assiduously to move him from prison to presidency. And now that his 3rd term agenda has pitched the south against the north as mentioned above, the NSF has magnanimously commended the southern politicians on their stand while reiterating the need for the political stakeholders from both divides to dialogue, make compromises as they narrow their differences in nurturing a viable democracy for Nigeria.
It is pertinent at this point to mention your position in respect of the Niger-Delta situation as narrated by Chief Sunday Awoniyi:
“Those who may feel that the problems of oil Producing areas are not in their backyard and feel A safe distance from oil communities, should be Reminded that Nigeria is an entity within one environment. Decay in one part will ultimately affect the rest of the nation. The fate of the mineral producing communities should be A concern for all”
As I write this letter to you, I have this compelling urge to let you know how some members of Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) feel about you. Alhaji Tanko Yakasai was full of praises for you that you were a just and committed leader to the cause of your people. Alhaji Mudi Sipikin went further to say that you were a NEPU agent within your party the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC). It was Chief Awoniyi that put things into perspective when he declared your stand one day after holding a meeting with some businessmen. And he quoted you as having said that:
The fact that you remain relevant to this day is a great lesson for leaders today and beyond. The question is how were you able to achieve it? In the course of my interviews, your wife late Hajiya Amina, your daughter Hajiya Aisha were both contended for your not leaving behind ill-gotten wealth through corruption to them. They appreciated so due to the resultant honour in your name and the kind of respect and assistance accorded them. In fact your wife said if it was money you had left for them, it would have long finished but your goodwill is outliving every physical material. As for your daughter Aisha, your moral training is her guiding light.
At this juncture, I would like to assure you that my interviews are not over yet. You must have thought of Alh. Muhd Bashir of Daura, Alh. Yusuf Maitama Sule and possibly Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Sir I have made contacts with them but I am yet to interview them. I will keep on trying. Equally, you might have thought of Ibrahim Dasuki, Alh. Mustapha El Kanemi, Adamawa, Ahmed Joda and Alh. Ado Bayero. They are on my list too. Invariably, I will capture their thoughts and views about you.
Finally sir, I have so far been overwhelmed by peoples’ perception of your life and times. It has indeed served as a motivation for a quartet (Arewa House, Arewa Consultative Forum, Amana Publishers and I) to publish the series of interviews under the title: Reflections on the Life and Times of Sir Ahmadu Bello 1910-1966. Posterity as said has a way of adjudging people. Your people have certainly passed a clean bill on your life and times. Hence yours remains one good example that humanity ought to learn from. May you receive Allah’s reward He reserved for those whom He has blessed? May the crop of our current leaders have the wisdom and courage to learn from the kind of legacy you have left behind.
AbdulKareem Mohammed is a Media Consultant based in Kano. |