Adieu Abdullahi ANNOUNCE THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS! Friday, June 2, 2000 M. O. Ene Egbedaa@aol THE MAN He was tall. He was physically built for the army. He looked fit. Very fit. He was full of life. A gentleman in simple traditional attire, he stood like a good neighbor next door. I had never met him before this chance meeting, but he looked like someone you could call an uncle, a friend, or simply a compatriot. He exuded energy. He looked like a people’s person. He was at home abroad, and he looked it. Above all, he inspired confidence in the Nigerian enterprise. He looked like a lawmaker, if lawmakers are describable. He projected an air of a man willing to serve for the common good. He could have been your local government chairman, a senator, or even the president, and you would still feel the irresistible alacrity to address issues of common concern. He paints a cautiously concerned but rosy picture anyone would buy for the right price at Sotheby’s. He looked like he needed more work to do than sit around in a town-hall meeting in Washington, DC. Oh yes, you remember. You recall my piece on NPF formal of Saturday, April 15, 2000 heralding “A new dawn in Pan-Nigerian USA.” launch [See npf-usa for details] In Part II of the piece titled, “Haba Na’Abba!” (nigeriaworld/feature/publication/ene/0502100.html), I recollected an interesting aspect of the meeting. Ms. Obot Okoko, ex-NTA News, wondered why the United States was spending $10 million training Nigerian soldiers. Haven’t they caused enough trouble? Speaker Ghali Umar NaAbba, who by now had talked long enough, deferred to his honorable friend. Honorable Ibrahim Abdullahi. And that was when I saw him up close and felt a certain character and correctness. He spoke in a voice so natural and so vibrant, so true and so convincing. You just want to believe him. HIS CONCERNS GOLDEN NUGGET How do we carry the man with a broken waist? How do we learn the lessons of the untimely demise of Abdullahi and the other thousands? Since the desire for a discussion among all the restless ethnoreligious nationalities is “idle thought,” maybe it is time the lawmakers think through and thoroughly a new path forward, if only in memory of a fallen colleague. Abdullahi narrated the poor condition of soldiers all over Nigeria. He had traveled from Diobu (Port Harcourt) through Udi Hills, at which foot Enugu nestles, and up Jos of Benue-Plateau highlands. He had seen soldiers still living in matchbox shacks called batchers. I mentioned almost inaudibly that Jaji, the seat Nigeria’s topmost military academia (Command and Staff College), had its fair share of batchers. I still doubt that the distinguished gentlemen sitting around me on the right flank -- Drs. Alex Ukoh, Manny Aniebonam, and Okey Onyemelukwe, and Na’Abba’s assistants -- heard me. Abdullahi must have had a very keen sense of hearing. He turned to me and said that Jaji was a military university and fared better... or something like that. In a tone oozing warmth, collegiality, and concern, Abdullahi invited Nigerians present to visit these poor left-behind Nigerians and see for themselves what he was talking about. Soldiers? Yeah right. Okay, you would laugh, right? Right! Many laughed. I did not. No one was supposed to feel sorry for the supposed oppressors. In fact, I wondered whether the military elected him to push the cause of disadvantaged and dispossessed other ranks. My mind was preoccupied by something else. I knew what he was talking about. I was a soldier. And I remembered. But my mind raced back to what I had thrown up effortlessly: Jaji. I served in Jaji. Youth service. I loved Jaji. I enjoyed Jaji. I remembered Mama Ngozi’s Booze Joint. It was a batcher, the family house; one of the sprawling sun-soaked shacks shielding the modern Corpers quarters from the filth of Mami Market. But it was home to Mama Ngozi (a big, beautiful Orlu lady whose real name I never found out), her Tiv husband (an easygoing NCO with a forgettable presence) and young children. When I came to, Abdullahi was coming to the end of his plea. The strife for a professional army could not be overemphasized. He knew that a poor and idle mind is a devil’s dungeon. In the above-mentioned piece, I wrote: “Apparently Abdullahi is thinking about his job security and that of his comrades and other scions of the soil currently pursuing only their self-serving interests in Abuja. Tell them to think it through thoroughly.” Why? I knew that Abdullahi was a voice of reason. His was the lone-ranger voice that urged the House to condemn February 2000 Kaduna Killings strongly and in its entirety; his motion was adopted as-is. I knew that Nigerians would not mind the dark days of Sani Abacha if another “Major My Fellow Countrymen” appeared on the radar. Abduallahi needed our support in his campaign to keep the military men and their families comfortable. LIFE’S IRONIES Life is good. La dolce vita! Oh yes, sweet life: The Italians got that right. You find out the hard way when someone close no longer has it, like I found out recently and for which I am still gobsmacked, as we say in England. It smacks you so hard you want to wake up and someone tells you it was a bad dream on Elms Street. Life in its infinite ironies has just dealt Honorable Abdullahi at least four very bad backhands and fatally so. 1. Here was a man whose exact words were adopted by the entire House of Representative as the resolution on Kaduna’s Sharia Saga of Monday, February 22, 2000. The same man who felt so hurt and outraged by the first millenium insanity in his beloved Kaduna has now become a victim of Kaduna Killings II of Monday, May 22, 2000, just one number in the statistics of senselessness of supposedly civilized leaders. 2. Abdullahi, representing Sabon Gari federal constituency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was in Kaduna to attend a party fundraising. He stayed back to discuss with State Governor Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi the implementation of the Poverty Alleviation Program. Poverty stalks Nigeria like a plaque; religion and ethnicity are secondary factors in the gully of gunpowder on which precipice Nigeria perches precariously. Poverty and ignorance driving people into doing desperate things. Poverty cheapens life. No one is safe, not even Abdullahi, a federal legislator. 3. He was a good Muslim, I am told. I do not know which side of the fanatically religious ragamuffins reportedly lynched and burnt the lawmaker and his driver to death. Honorable Florence Aya Kauru representing Kaduna federal constituency said she narrowing escaped the mob by instructing her driver to push the pedal to the metal. The irony is that Abdullahi had urged the Aso Rock to hunt down the perpetrators of Kaduna Killings I. To this day, those fingered by the Senate, and the sacred cows alleged to have instigated the recent carnage, are yet to be questioned. 4. Everyone bears witness to the patriotism and nationalism of Abdullahi. His belief in one Nigeria was said to be unparalleled and profuse. On Monday, May 22, 2000, the date his own countrymen lynched him, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) rocked the fragile foundation of Nigeria, citing among other things insecurity of life and property. Now hounded and indicted and two of its members killed in cold blood by the police, MASSOB suddenly makes more sense than the “kampe” Kahuns who still believe Sharia would die a natural death. It won’t; instead, it has reduced Kaduna to a grotesque ghetto of bloody barbarians who savagely smolder their own illustrious son. SECURITY Abayomi Sheba (PDP, Ondo) noted: “The death of M.K.O. Abiola, Gen. Musa Yar’Adua and now of Major Abdullahi teaches that no one is safe in an unsafe society. The death is a challenge to every Nigerian to help build a good, safe and just society under the rule of law.” What laws? What law in a country where a citizen is amputated for stealing suya and the whole country develops instant amnesia? Who would enforce the law in a society that viciously violates the basic tenets of human rights: the right to speak freely? Fifty-year-old Abdullahi was regarded by his colleagues as a man whose belief in the coexistence of all Nigerians is lavish. It was not surprising that although he retired as army major, he was appointed the chairman of the House Federal Character Committee. He was a pillar of Nduka Irabor-led “Conscience of the House” group (G-14) -- the group that drove Alhaji Salihu Ibrahim out of the House. His colleagues say he was one of a kind, and it was very respectful for the House to adjourn till Tuesday, May 30, 2000, so as to mourn the passing of a patriot. But the greatest respect they can accord Abdullahi is to work relentlessly for security of life and property of EVERY Nigerian citizen. Anything else is chasing the shadow of a camel, and the insecurity Abdullahi preached against by pressing for a professional army and hunting down those who maim and kill -- not those who express different opinions peacefully -- will come back to haunt Nigeria. NIGERIAN PEOPLES FORUM National Chairman of Nigeria People’s Forum, Professor Bart O. Nnaji, FAS, CON, most thoughtfully sent a message of deepest sympathy to Speaker Na’Abba (who is also the Chairman of Abuja Chapter of NPF). Abdullahi was a de facto friend of NPF, if not a de jure member. In the message he plans to hand-deliver personally to the Speaker, Chairman Nnaji stated rightly that “Many of us can still see in our mind’s eye Honorable Abdullahi speaking during the Town Hall meeting about the condition of soldiers in the military barracks in Nigeria.” He went on: “I believe that Nigeria has lost an important member of the new generation of political leaders. We saw in him a man of strong convictions and a man who could articulate them with great passion.” At its Saturday, June 17, 2000 meeting in Newark, NJ, the Forum executives should observe a one-minute silence in honor of a friend who fell in the search of a stable society devoid of ready-to-explode citizens. Abdullahi was a man who, according to Nnaji, “held out much hope for the sustainability of democracy …and for the emergence of a voice of reason and more balanced thinking in the Nigerian political arena.” FUTURE IMPERFECT Honorable Uche Maduakor (Information Committee chairman) and Honorable Alhaji Farouk Lawan (Ethics and Privilege Committee) are reportedly canvassing for the declaration of a state of emergency in Kaduna State as an option to end the crises permanently. Typical Naija fire-brigade approach! Maduakor said: “Kaduna state looks ungovernable, we will support the move for the National Assembly to [urge] the President to declare state of emergency in Kaduna.” Very interesting! It is interesting that the legislature is now itching to force execution, while the executive is busy trying to recast the legislature. But that’s not the main issue; the main issue is that Honorable Abdullahi would have opposed such a move. No, he would not willingly set the stage for now three-star General Victor Malu’s men to be tempted back from the barracks. During the town-hall meeting of Saturday, April 15, 2000 -- the first and last time I saw Abdullahi -- he quoted the now fast-becoming cliché: “The worst democracy is better than the best military dictatorship.” Na’Abba had joked earlier in an in-the-lighter-mood moment that Abdullahi had been “democratized.” It appeared later that the supposed dictator of democracy -- “the convert” -- was much more worried about the survival of democracy in Nigeria than the supposed darlings of democracy. Did he know something we couldn’t put a finger on, and so we all laughed? Abdullahi appeared to be a soldier against military incursion into politics. It is not that he was no longer in the force you could see that he liked being a people’s person. He took time to explain to Professor Bolaji Aluko, who sat by him on the left flank, why the legislature’s ballooning of the budget was kosher. I have interacted with many military men out of power; many still watched their back as if a batman was supposed to come with retirement. Abdullahi was comfortable with his back or face to any Nigerian. FINALLY… The Igbo has a saying, among millions of philosophical pronouncements: The coffin of another person’s relative seems like a bundle of firewood. Abdullahi is just one of the thousands who have perished in a senseless orgy of murder mayhem going on in Nigeria. Many more shall die. From Shagamu to Sokoto and from Calabar to Kano, nameless faceless Nigerians have become pawns in the pathetic power permutations of kingmakers and king killers. Abdullahi has put as human face and a name to the madness. Emission of hot airs won’t take Nigeria to the next level of its potential greatness. Glossing over real problems won’t make them go away; real solutions must be embraced (apology to Professor Bedford Umez). In a country where governors commit arson at dawn and amputate citizens at dusk, where deputy governors pack pistols and their security details gun down innocent citizens, and where governors fight with their deputies while pocketing the legislature, something is going terribly wrong In Nigeria. How do we carry the man with a broken waist? How do we learn the lessons of the untimely demise of Abdullahi and the other thousands? Since the desire for a discussion among all the restless ethnoreligious nationalities is “idle thought,” maybe it is time the lawmakers think through and thoroughly a new path forward, if only in memory of a fallen colleague. Let none think another constituency wont do an Abdullahi number. It only takes a triviality to unleash evil in any part of Nigeria. The road of patriotism and nationalism that Honorable Ibrahim Abdullahi chose just ended, ended by those who wont live together and yet wont settle for a thoughtful and truthful tete-a-tete. May the soul of Abdullahi and the thousands of dear departed peacefully rest. M. O. Ene NJ, USA
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:34:13 +0000
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