ADIEU, LIMAMIN CANJI, ADIEU!
“Kai Bala, Ya Ka!” Rimi beckoned. There was never a better way, in Hausa, for Seniors to show their hold and dominion over Juniors than the use of the phrase “Kai…Ya Ka”. Both are diminutive words to show who the ‘boss’ was. To beckon an equal, the term ‘Kai’ may not be used and ‘Ya […]
“Kai Bala, Ya Ka!” Rimi beckoned. There was never a better way, in Hausa, for Seniors to show their hold and dominion over Juniors than the use of the phrase “Kai…Ya Ka”. Both are diminutive words to show who the ‘boss’ was. To beckon an equal, the term ‘Kai’ may not be used and ‘Ya Ka’ would have been substituted by “Zo”, meaning the same thing, “Come”. Rimi wanted to show all and sundry around the Villa that day that I was “his”, despite my being an Atiku staffer.
You see, Rimi was our Aristotle of the Santsi School of Kano Politics; my immediate ‘Sensei’ and Rimi’s protégé Alhaji Sule Lamido (now Jigawa State Governor) was our Socrates. Several others were vying to one day be the Plato. (Indeed, Lamido it was, as Foreign Minister, that had gone all the way to London to recruit me from the BBC and supplant me in the Villa.)
Knowing my antecedents as a diehard Santsi (then, please), and doubting whether Villa ‘enjoyment’ had made me a die-soft one, Rimi had asked me in a jocular mode: “In Atiku ya tsaya ni ma na tsaya, wa za ka yi?” (“Were Atiku and I to contest the presidential elections, whom would you support?”).
As a journalist, one should always have answers at the ready, should the questioning go the other way. I had a ready answer: “Your Excellency, I am but a prisoner of war here. You brought me here [through Lamido]. A POW does not fight his relatives, and cannot fight his captors. And you wouldn’t want me to be disloyal, Sir.”
Rimi burst into laughter, used an expletive and added “Danjarida! Ka iya ba da amsa!” (“You pesky journalist! You know very well how to give answers!”) and took his leave. (Indeed, Rimi himself had dabbled in journalism at the BBC when he was a student in London).
Rimi was almost a bolt out of the blue in the Kano politics of the late 1970s, though he had in his 20s back in the 1960s participated in the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) struggle. Despite that earlier politicking, by 1978 Rimi was almost a complete unknown in his own home state. He had been away working at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA in Lagos, where he was Administrative Secretary or similar position.
A writer had written, in Arabic, “iza aradal Lahu shay’an, hayya’a asbabahu” (if Allah willed something, He initiated its precursors). The then INEC, known as Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), had disqualified then Peoples’ Redemption Party (PRP) gubernatorial candidate, late Enginer Salihi Iliyasu, party leader Mallam Aminu Kano’s first choice for Kano Governor. Rimi was then vying for senator from Kano South on the same PRP list. With a few hours to the closure of name submissions, Iliyasu’s name was substituted by Rimi’s, and the rest is history.
Not too long ago again, I had occasion to again be in the company of Rimi and Lamido on a flight to Abuja. After disembarking, Rimi had looked at me again and remarked: “Bala, I see now you have two Limans; me as your Limamin Canji and Mallam [meaning my current boss Governor Ibrahim Shekarau] as your Limamin A Daidaita Sahu. Who is actually your Liman?” One handy answer coming up: “The one is temporal Sir, the other spiritual!” It was laughter all through.
“SDP mu ke so/Ita za mu zaba/
Mu zabi Aminu Gwamnan Kano/
Sule na Jigawa!”
(“It is SDP that we love/We shall vote for it/
To elect Aminu [Inuwa] Kano Governor/
And Sule [Lamido] in Jigawa”).
This was a famous Santsi song back in the early 1990s when the little-to-nowhere Social Democratic Party, SDP and the National Republican Convention, NRC, were struggling for the stillborn Third Republic. Lamido, as Foreign Minister, and I would sing it at the top of our voices whenever he came visiting London. The presidential variation, to celebrate Rimi’s choice of Chief Olu Falae as its candidate, ran:
“SDP mu ke so/Ita za mu zaba/
Mu dau Falae dan takararmu na Shugaban Kasa”
(“…to vote for Falae as our presidential candidate”).
Rimi had raised Falae’s hand in Kano and told the Santsi multitudes that Olu Falae’s real name was indeed Auwalu Falalu, and he was ours. Therefore in the subsequent Kano SDP primaries, Olu Falae roundly defeated the leading candidate late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, elder brother of current President Umaru. (Though defeated in Kano, Gen Yar’adua was later to defeat Falae in most South Western states and almost clinched the nomination but for a certain maradonic dribble).
Rimi had the last laugh when Santsi neutralised Shehu’s meddling in the Kano State SDP primaries. Shehu had ostensibly imposed candidates on the SDP, thereby defeating Rimi’s choice. A night before the elections, the Santsi political machinery rolled out with specific instructions from Rimi and Lamido: vote for the NRC. And indeed NRC’s Architect Kabiru Gaya was elected the next morning. The winner was as stunned as the loser, it was said. (Kano’s political sagacity always equalled that of Lagos State where the exact same thing occurred when three candidates muddled the SDP waters and the NRC’s Sir Michael Otedola won a stunning victory).
Rimi had the gift of the gab, no doubt, sometimes even of the gaffe. At one political rally, Rimi had ended his speech with the rather untranslatable Hausa catchphrase expletive: “uban kuturu ya yi kadan!” Realising it was a heavy knock on those finger-challenged folk, the brilliance in Rimi upped and he ended…”kuturun ma na NPN!” What applause! What mirth! (Rimi was a master of expletives, one thing Katsina people used to have an edge over us. But in Rimi, Katsina had an equal match.)
Long after the 1983 military coup, Rimi had continued to be the ideologue of the Santsi School while the late Sabo Bakinzuwo (he of “Ya Shugaba” fame) continued to lead the Tabo School of Kano Politics. As luck would have it, both of them were thrown into Benin jail by the Buhari Regime. There, it was reported, Rimi and Sabo made up. More than that, Sabo was said to have become the prison Liman and Rimi, yes himself, the Ladan! Therefore, when they returned to Kano, Rimi’s and Sabo’s political enmity vamoosed. Allahu Akbar!
Rimi was fearlessness and eloquence personified; but so was Sabo! Kano had been blessed with such superlatives: the late Mallam Lawan Kalarawi was another. And Rimi was consistent, even if sometimes not in substance, but always in style. When I interviewed Rimi back in late 1998 on BBC Focus on Africa, he came out forcefully against the then impending PDP power-shift, and that he was going ahead to contest the presidential primaries of his party. And he did. A decade later, his principled stand on that night in Jos has stood the test of time.
Rimi is said to have rebelled against his Sensei, his teacher, Mallam Aminu Kano. The truth of the matter was that Mallam Aminu had so radicalised Rimi, Lamido and others that when he tried to reign them in to be less radical (and abandon their fraternising with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, for example), they boiled over. What Rimi and the Santsi cohort did to Mallam was akin to Cardinals staging a successful coup against the Pope on the interpretation of Catholicism.
Rimi was but human. He had some altercation with his Emir. For some reason, Rimi had at one time suspended the Emir from being Chairman of the State Council of Emirs. Many years later, they had made up. Allahu Akbar, it was at the Emir’s Palace that Rimi’s funeral prayer was held, with the Emir and Sule Lamido as joint Chief Mourners.
My highest point with Rimi came in 1996 when I was teaching at Bayero University’s Mass Communications Department. I was then keeping a column on the Lagos-based Guardian newspaper. Rimi’s good friend, Chief Bola Ige, avid reader of my write-ups and who always sent comments to me by posted letters, had come visiting. He asked Rimi that he wanted to see Bala Muhammad at BUK. I was lowly-placed in the Santsi pecking order that Rimi had seemingly forgotten about me. He told Bola Ige that Bala Mohammed had actually died back in 1981 (remember Rimi’s political adviser Dr. Bala Mohammed who was murdered in the July 10, 1981 rampage in Kano?).
No, said Bola Ige, this is a young writer who is very much alive. And so it came to pass that Rimi and Ige visited my humble offices at BUK. (Not the first time I have been confused with more prominent Bala Mohammeds.)
Adieu Rimi, my Temporal Limamin Canji, Adieu! Allah Ya jikanka!