Tribute

Tribute: The Many Sides Of Tragedy

Mahmud Jega

When the editor of Sunday Trust asked me to write a tribute to the victims of last Sunday’s ADC plane crash, which was on its way to Sokoto from Abuja, my first thought was, where is an old Sokoto man like me supposed to start or finish this tribute? When we first heard that a Sokoto-bound plane had crashed, someone nearby said, “We pray that there is no one we know on board that plane”. I immediately replied that that was not possible. How could 100 people board a Sokoto-bound commercial plane, from anywhere in Nigeria, fall out of the skies and I do not know a single one among the passengers?

In fact, as names of people who were on board the plane slowly came in, it began to look like I knew everyone who was aboard. It was a monumental tragedy for, especially, Sokoto and Kebbi States, even though something of that sort had happened to Sokoto at least three times before in the last 50 years. In January 1973, there were many pilgrims from the old North Western State on board when a Jordanian Airlines Boeing 707 plane conveying pilgrims from Mecca crashed at Kano airport. [My uncle, Sule Jega of the Ministry of Defence, died in that crash]. It happened again in 1991, when a Holdtrade Air plane also conveying Sokoto State pilgrims from Mecca crashed just outside Jeddah. [My father and stepmother returned on the flight just before the one that crashed]. I was not old enough to know this one, but I heard that in the 1950s, a lorry on its way to Sokoto crashed, and most of the town was awash in tears, as in the other three cases.

How much tribute can I pay and to how many people? Let us begin with Sultan Muhammadu Maccido. I had known Sarkin Kudu, as he was called before he became Sultan, at least since 1968, when he became Commissioner for Health in the North Western State. Though he lived inside the town, just outside the Sultan’s palace, he sometimes drove into the GRA, where we lived, in his old model Mercedes car. His son Saidu was my classmate at Government College, Sokoto, and several of his junior brothers and nephews were also in the same school.

In 1978, during the transition to civil rule, Muhammadu Maccido scored something of a political first when, for some days, he was the state chairman of both the NPN and GNPP in Sokoto State. What really happened was that he was the GNPP chairman, but in November 1978, when the NPN held its state congress at the Sokoto Cinema and nominated Alhaji Shehu Kangiwa as its governorship candidate, it also elected Sarkin Kudu, eldest son of the revered Sultan Sir Abubakar III, as its chairman. We waited for days to see where Sarkin Kudu will go, and when he went to NPN, GNPP began to weaken in the state. In later years, he was the Presidential Liaison Officer [PLO] under President Shehu Shagari and was a senior member of the Emirate Council when his father’s health was failing in the 1980s.

However, I got a bit close to Alhaji Muhammadu Maccido only when he became Sultan in 1996, and that due to the first Secretary of his council, Magatakarda Babba Inuwa Abdulkadir. In Sokoto, Sultan Maccido’s humility and simplicity were well known, but I only got to know how simple he was when I interviewed him for an hour in 1996, returned to my hotel, only to find that the tape recorder had not recorded a word. I was trembling with embarrassment when Magatakarda led me back to the Sultan to tell him what happened. To my surprise, he only smiled and said, “Kasan karfen bature [you know these White man’s gadgets]”, and sat down with me again for another hour.

Despite the tape recorder mishap, Sultan Maccido somehow began to trust me from that day, because I heard that on one occasion, when members of the Emirate Council said there was the need to call in reporters and brief them on some event, Sultan Maccido remarked, “Any reporter, if it is not Mamuda….” He left the statement hanging. The following year, when he was invited to visit India, he put me in his 5-member delegation. During the trip, we visited many places, including two universities and the Indian Central Election Commission. At all those places, the Indian officials asked many questions about Nigeria, and the Sultan mandated me to give the answers. When we visited the Indian city of Jaipur, we were taken to visit the grave of one ancient Mughal emperor. As Sultan Maccido stood near the grave, he beckoned to me to come closer. He then said, “Do you know this man? How can we pray at the tomb of a man when we don’t know his religious standing?” I had to explain that the Indians didn’t take us there for a ziyara, but just as a tourist attraction. In later years, though, I had no direct contact with Sultan Maccido, but always remembered his kindness and humility.

During the Indian trip, I also befriended the Sallaman Sarkin Musulmi, Alhaji Ibrahim Mohamed, who also died in last Sunday’s crash. That didn’t surprise me, because Sallama was the Sultan’s closest personal aide who entered his bedroom and handled his food, clothing and personal effects. Sallama was a very jovial man who for many years afterwards called me “Jogba”, as one Indian official erroneously called me back in 1997. He was Sultan Maccido’s driver before he became the Sultan. Many people tried to exploit his unlimited access to the Sultan, but Sallama would never handle any message that he knew could annoy the Sultan. For that reason, other palace courtiers nicknamed him ‘Biri baka taka wuta”, that is, a monkey who is too clever to step on fire.

After I lost my direct contact with Sultan Maccido, I still maintained regular contact with the secretary of the Sultanate Council, Ciroman Dange Alhaji Umaru Babuga. He also died in the crash. I had known him since 1984, when he became a commissioner in the old Sokoto State. He often called me to discuss problems of moon sighting and the lunar calendar.

I could say enough about Abdurrahman Shehu Shagari, who also died in that crash, to fill a book. I first knew him in 1977, when I went to visit my cousin at the Yabo Secondary School and he took me to see Abdurrahman, who was then in Form Four at Yabo. In 1979 to 1983, when his father was the president, Abdurrahman still visited our house at Abuja Road, Sokoto several times a week. He had no airs at all, and he regarded us as his closest friends. One day in 1981, he returned from Lagos and came straight to our house. He said he had told his father that he just secured admission to read a diploma in tourism at Kongo, but the president said he did not think it was a good course and he should go and ask us. The President, saying he should seek our advice? How important we felt that day! Abdurrahman’s lowest moments were in 1984-85, when his father was detained by the Buhari-Idiagbon regime. He came to my office regularly at the university in Sokoto with all kinds of suggestions about how to free his father. I kept urging him to be patient, that things will be all right in the end.

As for Alhaji Waisu Yaro Bodinga, Executive Director, Nigeria Ports Authority who also died in this crash, I first knew him in 1978, during the student vacation work program at the Sokoto State Ministry of Establishments. That year, Mukhtari Shehu Shagari was the national president of the Sokoto State Students Association [SOSSA], Waisu was the secretary general and Abubakar Abdulkadir Jega was the treasurer. As secretary of the University of Sokoto’s SOSSA branch, I worked with them for three months, on a salary of 75 naira a month. Waisu was a “real guy” in those days, with a thick and very well maintained Afro hair. Otherwise, he was very gentle, did not like arguments, as most of the other students did, and was very thorough in his work. In later years, he was a close friend of Dr Shehu Lawal, my colleague at the university, and in recent months, he was quietly seeking to be the next governor of Sokoto State.

Yet another victim of the crash that broke my heart was Hajiya Aisha Abubakar, principal of the Federal Government Girls College, Gwandu. I had known her since 1976, when her father, Alhaji Sani Kangiwa and his family lived along Junaidu Road in Sokoto, not far away from my own family’s house. How was I to know that, years later, my junior brother Abbas will marry her junior sister Hajiya Fati, or that Abbas will serve as the chief organizer of her funeral at Gwarinpa last Monday?

Hajiya Aisha died along with her bosom friend, Hajiya Amina Aliyu Kardi, principal of the Federal Government College, Tambuwal. I first saw Hajiya Amina in 1992, when we went to the house of her father, Galadiman Katsina and district head of Malumfashi Justice Mamman Nasir. On that day, she married our brother Aliyu Kardi. Let us just fast track the story and say that Aliyu and their two daughters were waiting for her at Sokoto Airport last Sunday when they heard that the plane had crashed. She had arrived in Abuja from Jeddah the previous night and was in a hurry to get home. She was very unhappy that she missed the previous day’s education stakeholders summit [which the Sultan and others attended] and phoned several times from Jeddah to ask how it was going.

Malam Abdullahi Bayero Bello was another titanic figure on the Sokoto scene in that plane. I first knew him in 1970 or thereabouts, when he returned to Sokoto to become the general manager of the North Western State Trade Development Company, better known as Tradev in those days. It was a real guy place, Sokoto’s first modern super market. Waisu Yaro’s Afro hair was child’s play compared to Malam Bayero’s in those days. We could only marvel as he drove by in his yellow Renault car. His junior brothers Hassan and Hussaini Bello were our mates and very close friends. I only knew Malam Bayero at a distance when he was an Executive Director at the Leventis Group up until the early 1990s. After he retired to Kaduna, though, I got to know him much better. He was passionately concerned about political and social issues, and regularly called me to discuss negative political developments, most recently on Sallah day late last month.

I did not know the deputy governor of Sokoto State Alhaji Garba Silame [who was aboard that plane] very well, though on a few occasions, I saw him playing badminton at the Civil Service Club. I knew the Commissioner for Education Dr. Sanusi Usman Junaidu much better, at the Usman Danfodio University in the 1980s. The last time I saw him in Kaduna, he was attending a committee meeting at Arewa House, and he sprang to his feet when he saw me [and I thought, you are a commissioner, I am only a reporter]. Perhaps he greeted me that way because his uncle, Ahmed ibn Junaid, was my secondary school classmate, and two more uncles of his, Professor Sambo Wali Junaidu and Professor Mohamed ibn Junaid, were my senior colleagues at the university. Or perhaps it was because I wrote a 10-page tribute in memory of his illustrious grandfather, the Waziri Junaidu of Sokoto, when he died in January 1997. We all have very intricate webs of connections there in Sokoto.

As we also have in Kebbi, incidentally. I had known Malam Faruk Shamaki, who was on that plane, for many years through his cousins, particularly Malam Buhari Shamaki of the Nigeria Ports Authority. Since 1999, Faruk had been the personal assistant to Governor Mohamed Adamu Aliero, and on all the occasions that I saw the governor, he was always there, very polite, very efficient and very unobtrusive.

Then there was Alhaji Ahmed Hanafi Sa’ad in that terrible plane. Where do I start? That his father is a very close personal friend of my father? Or that his father’s father, the late Ubandoma [district head of Birnin Kebbi] Sa’adu, was a very close personal friend of my father’s father, Magatakarda Malam Kakale Jega, at least since 1930? Or that all Ahmed’s senior brothers are my close friends? Or that my brother Idris married his sister Hafsat and his brother Ibrahim also married my niece Fadila? Or that Ahmed’s closest friend is my junior brother, Dr Faruk Jega of the National Hospital, who took him to the airport last Sunday, raced back to the airport when he heard of the crash, and was one of the first people to reach the crash site, looking for Ahmed? Or even, that Ahmed is the husband of my niece, Jamila Attahiru Jega, and he has now left her with their two very small children?

You can’t have a Sokoto-bound plane falling out of the sky without causing me and all my folk terrible pain and monumental loss. The only redeeming defect, such as it were, in the whole tragedy was that as the ADC plane fell, one of the eight people it tossed out was my first cousin, Zahra’u Umar Jega, who suffered many cuts and a cracked bone. At least, she may still be able to meet her wedding appointment in December.