A SENTIMENTAL longing or feeling for a period in the past, which comes with an affection, is the commonest description of nostalgia. For a lot of people living in northern Nigeria now, where poverty is a permanent partner, their minds are in that gear.
While some may be thinking of how things have changed, mostly changed for the bad, some, the extremists, are saying, things are reminiscent of the doomsday scenario.
To them, the situation of the north, is like things are approaching the last day of the world’s existence. Many of the north’s prominent figures are being called to the grave, and the vacuum they left behind, looks too difficult to fill, at least by those that are parading as modern northerners. In other words, the north is in need of some one to nurse it to good health.
In recent weeks, almost in succession, several prominent figures from northern Nigeria have been lost. These individuals span various fields, including politics, business, judiciary and literature. These were people that have significantly shaped the region’s history and development, since the departure of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the north’s pre-eminent political leader.
In recent weeks, the north has played host to death in a manner that is unpalatable. Yes, death, the inevitable end of everyone, has been a regular visitor to the north recently, taking away the remaining men and women of substance to the region.
The roll call of victims,(and I am using the word victim lightly, respectfully and complementarily), is long, very long. As I write this article, almost every segment of the north is mourning, because of the loss of one of its own.
Kano, Nigeria’s oldest commercial center, and the shaft of the north’s political umbilical cord, is mourning the loss of Alhaji Aminu Dantata. Alhaji Aminu Alhassan Dantata was not only an illustrious son of Kano, but a man that acted as a beacon to other people, in other regions, through inspiration or encouragement to them.
Apart from being a Nigerian businessman and philanthropist, who was the champion for the promotion of the Kano Foundation, an endowment fund that supported educational initiatives and provided grants to small-scale entrepreneurs in Kano, Aminu Dantata was a beacon of hope for the hopeless, who helped them in navigating the darkest passage of their lives. The vacuum he left behind, may be difficult to fill in the north, and by extension, the whole of Nigeria.
In next door Daura, a historical city and respected emirate in northern Nigeria, a city that is considered the spiritual home of the Hausa people, a city that produced for Nigeria a military Head of state and two times political President, the people and the ancient emirate, are mourning the loss of one of Nigeria’s most respected citizens, former Governor, former Minister, former first and last Head of Nigeria’s richest parastatal, the PTF.
A simple search via any search engine, using the above mentioned qualities or qualifications, would automatically unveil the name, Muhammadu Buhari, the late General that stood taller than all Generals. And this was in deeds and in words. The vacuum he left behind, may be difficult to fill in the north, and by extension, the whole of Nigeria.
Before the departure of these two distinguished sons of the north, death had played visitor to the region quietly, where it carted away people like Professor Jibril Aminu, former vice-chancellor of the University of Maiduguri, now renamed Muhammadu Buhari University, the pioneer Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, NUC, former Minister of Education, former Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, former Senator and former professor of cardiology.
Also taken away without notice was Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais, late jurist and former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. The Biography of late Justice Uwais is long, with a long shopping list of former this and former that, all in the service of northern Nigeria, and the larger Nigeria.
If I am to take stock of the names of eminent northerners that have succumbed to death in recent times, this article would be too long to read. Like the umbilical cord, the biological tube that connects the mother to the baby during pregnancy, which has blood vessels and a vein, that carries food and oxygen from the placenta to the baby, and that which Biologists call the arteries, the north has lost in recent times, major veins and arteries, the replacement cost of which is unquantifiable.
Unless something is done, and done quickly, to attend to the situation, the north may be pushed into a state of dangerous and desperate dilly-dally, occasioned by a nostalgia, due to the loss of those needed to nurse the region to good health.
- Ibrahim is Publicity Director for the All Progressives Congress (APC).