A boarding pass for nine years
By: Mahmud Jega
Just when I thought that there had been enough painful deaths in 2020, two more persons who had an impact on my childhood departed recently. One was Alhaji Usman Faruk, former Military Governor of the old North Western State. I was in primary and early secondary school when Faruk governed our state. My family lived just across the road from Government House in Sokoto. On many occasions we went into his Government House to retrieve our peafowls which flew into it to join Faruk’s large flock of fowls, geese and guinea fowls. When another military governor arrived in 1975, soldiers stopped us from retrieving them.
My younger siblings were also regularly invited to Faruk’s family residence on Saturdays to watch film shows staged by a Ministry of Information Landrover. There was no television in Sokoto in those days. Luckily, Alhaji Usman Faruk wrote several books, including his autobiography, From Farmhouse to Government House. In it he told the story of how he was nearly eaten by a hyena when he was left in a farmhouse overnight to guard the farm from monkeys that often dug up the planted seeds in the rocky Pindiga area.
Five years ago, I received a phone call for the first time from Alhaji Usman Faruk. He never knew the impact it had on me. I who, as a primary school kid, lined up the road and waved flags in 1971 as Usman Faruk passed through Jega on his way to present a first class staff of office to the Emir of Yauri. Days before he arrived, folks from all over the district took chicken and eggs to the Sarkin Kabin Jega’s palace to feed the Military Governor. Here I am, now receiving a phone call from him!
In 1975, we used to cross the road from our secondary school to an old Health Centre, venue of the sittings of the Justice Usman Mohammed commission of inquiry that probed Usman Faruk’s tenure. The most sensational corruption allegation then was that a Ministry of Works drilling rig bought by the North Western State government to drill boreholes across the vast state was sent to Gombe, where it drilled a borehole in the governor’s farm. The rig was not stolen; it returned to Sokoto after drilling the borehole. Compare that to what happens these days.
A week after Alhaji Usman Faruk, former Grand Khadi of Niger State Sheikh Ahmed Lemu passed on in Minna. I first knew Malam Ahmed Lemu in Sokoto in 1970. My siblings and I had arrived in Sokoto for the holidays from Jega, only for our father to immediately send us to attend the Islamic Education Vacation Course that Lemu and his British wife, Bridget Aisha, organized at the Arabic Teachers’ College. There was one class for primary school pupils and another for secondary school students. After only two days in the primary section, Malam Ahmed Lemu personally promoted me to the secondary section, perhaps because I had memorized his entire book, The Young Muslim. We were taught in the secondary section by Lemu and Sheikh Sulaiman, a Saudi Arabian.
Around the same time, I used to accompany my father to the Islamic Education Trust [IET] office along Kalambaina Road in Sokoto. Sheikh Lemu founded it; my father was the Treasurer. They used to meet on Saturdays, perhaps once a month. Mrs. Bridget Lemu later became principal of Government Girls College, Sokoto and was famous for her disciplinarian ways. They relocated to Niger State after its creation in 1976 but both of them had made such a big impact in Sokoto.
In 2011 when President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him to head the presidential panel that probed the post-election violence, some people insinuated that it will do the president’s bidding. Sheikh Lemu replied that at 82, he had already collected his boarding pass and was waiting for his flight [to the hereafter]. The flight was delayed for nine years. May Allah grant Faruk and Lemu Aljannat Firdaus.
Part 2 of Monday Column in Daily Trust today, December 28, 2020.
