Baba Mailafia Gambo (1914-2014)

One Friday afternoon in 1969, young Obadiah Mailafia, who is at present the Chief of Cabinet at the office of the Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries (ACP) in Brussels, Belgium, and who was then about 11 years old and preparing to enter secondary school, washed his dresses and hung on […]

One Friday afternoon in 1969, young Obadiah Mailafia, who is at present the Chief of Cabinet at the office of the Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries (ACP) in Brussels, Belgium, and who was then about 11 years old and preparing to enter secondary school, washed his dresses and hung on the family clothes line in their little missionary village of Murya, Lafia, Nasarawa State. The dresses were his school uniform meant to be worn the next day to write the entrance examination into Mada Hills Secondary School, Akwanga, a famous missionary school in present day Nasarawa State. As is quite common of children his age, after he displayed his wears to be sun-dried, young Obadiah forgot all about them as he became consumed in the football game he went immediately after to play with his mates.
As twilight was fast approaching, he remembered his clothes and went to remove them. As he was trying to do so, he stepped on something which he could not discern in that enveloping darkness. All he realized was that it was as if something had pricked him on the lower part of his left leg. A few minutes later, he felt an itchy prick at the spot of that thing which had given him a little pierce.  He scratched it, felt a little relieved and therefore thought nothing of the matter with what he had just experienced. He ate his evening meal, never felt he should report the incident to anyone and went to bed.
What the young lad never realized was that he had just been bitten by a very poisonous snake whose species no one, including its young victim, had a chance to establish before it slid away. As fate would have it, a close family friend of the Mailafias came visiting that fateful evening. As is usually the case with friends who had not seen for a long time, the visitor and his host conversed far into the night, reminiscing on one incident after another. At about 12 midnight when both felt it was time to retire to bed, they heard groaning from the room where Obadiah laid.
When the mother checked, she discovered that young Obadiah’s left leg had gotten so swollen that the combined size and weight of his trunk and other parts of his body could not equal the size of that left leg. She raised an alarm. It did not take long before it was realized what had happened. That visitor and his long conversation far into the night may have been what saved the young man’s life. Before the slow-travelling poison could reach the heart and do damage, Obadiah was taken to the nearby Mission clinic. But the medics were in considerable difficulty because no one knew the type of snake that had bitten him and therefore the appropriate antidote to administer on him.
As soon as his father, MallamMailafiaGambo who was then working as a cook and evangelist for the White South African missionaries of the Sudan United Mission (SUM)realized that the life of his first son was hanging on a thread, he took a fast decision. He entered his room, picked up his Bible and a torch light and without speaking to anyone, repaired to the nearby mountains. The man knew that the battle he had on his hands had its roots in the spiritual and that he must recourse to the spiritual for the surest and most efficacious cure of his beloved son’s snake bite ordeal. There he was in the mountains for three days and three nights wrestling with God in prayers, beseeching Him for a cure for his son. He ate neither food nor drank any liquid. Because of his right living with God, his faithfulness and diligence in the vineyard of the Lord, the senior Mailafia’s prayers were invested with such tremendous powers that they moved God to erase the
handwriting of premature death via a snake bite apparently written against the life of Mailafia the Younger.
When he descended from the mountains three days later, he came home with a glowing countenance, filled with assurances from above that his petition had found favour from the Throneroom of mercy. He beheld his son healed, rid of the snake poison that threatened his life. He found the young man busy playing with his friends as if nothing serious had happened to him.
I recall this incident told me by Obadiah Mailafia several years ago which demonstrated the deep faith and spiritual prowess of his father Baba MailafiaGambo who was born in April 1914 in Randa, Sanga Local Government Area of Kaduna State and who passed on to eternal glory on December 8th last year, making him a full centenary man. I was among a mammoth crowd that assembled at the Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ (ERCC) at Murya, on the outskirts of Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, on Saturday December 27 last year with one purpose on everyone’s mind: to pay their last respect to the departed evangelist, lover of God, educator, family head and community leader who was known simply as Baba.
It was a gathering fit for royalty. Cars of every description brought Nigerians and foreigners from every corner of the earth to honour this truly great man who was undeniably a priest and a king in the order of Melchizedek. He was a man who seemed to have come from nowhere but who pursued his earthly ministry with such fervour and commitment that he became somebody and left a legacy impossible to erase. The cavernous main hall of the ERCC church was packed full with hundreds of thousands of indigenes and guests. Attendees spilled over to several tents of overflows outside. That the event was so well attended by even guests from other parts of Nigeria on a day (December 27) when many were supposed to be enjoying the Christmas festivities with their family members in their own homes, speaks much about the love and respect the man commanded from people and also of course the goodwill, love and respect which his children enjoy.
More than 2,000 people turned up at his funeral. Among the dignitaries who came calling were politicians from within and outside Nasarawa State and as far afield as Switzerland, notably Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) based in Geneva, H. E. Dr Patrick Agah. Fred AuduEnjugu, the Managing Director of the Port-Harcourt Refinery and his brother, Rueben Audu who recently contested for but lost the APC primaries for governor of Nasarawa State, were also there.
According to a brief biography written for the occasion by his son Obadiah, Baba MailafiaGambo was the first son of Baba GamboGaladima who hails from an illustrious line of kings and warriors from Randa in Sanga Local Government of Kaduna. ’’Grandfather Gambo was a polygamist who had 10 wives. He was a tall and attractive aristocrat with a charisma that wielded enormous influence throughout Ninzo Chiefdom. Because of his military prowess, Grandfather Gambo was enlisted into the British Colonial Police Constabulary’’.
As to how his father later moved away from their original home in Sanga in Kaduna to live and  make Lafia his home, Obadiah gave a clue in the biography: ‘’As fate would have it, grandfather was in Lafia to suppress a riot when his first son, my father, was born in 1914. …When Grandfather received the good news of the birth of his first son, he sent back instruction that he should be named Mailafia. As one of those coincidences of destiny, father was later to emigrate to Lafia where he lived from April 1958 until his passing into glory on Monday, 8th December 2014’’.
In a sermon/tribute delivered at the burial service that Saturday, the lead officiating minister, Reverend Dr Peter Akaba, told the assembled that ‘’Baba started his long journey with Jesus Christ, continued it with Jesus Christ and died in Jesus Christ’’, urging them to learn to be as steadfast in their walk with God as the late faithful centenarian was.
The Scriptures cannot be broken. God himself said that he will reward those who diligently seek and serve him with long life and prosperity. By dying at age 100, Baba Mailafia not only enjoyed long life, he also had a most fruitful and impactful earthly mission. He won so many souls for the kingdom of God. Many also had the opportunity to acquire education on account of him.
Baba also fulfilled another Scripture which says that children are a heritage from God and blessed is the man who has a quiver full of them. He had a quiver full of them. As the Bible would put it, he begat six sons and three daughters, nine mighty children in all : Dr Obadiah Mailafia, an international civil servant and former Deputy Governor of the CBN; Mr.IliyaMailafia, a chartered estate surveyor and manager at the Kaduna Investments and Properties Development Board, who died in 2007; Mrs. Sarah Mailafia-Anye, a nurse at the Specialist Hospital in Lafia; Mrs. Julie Mailafia-Shammah, Coordinator of the Primary Health Programme at Obi Local Government, in Nasarawa State; Dr Luka Mailafia, a chartered accountant and Senior Lecturer in Accounting at ABU, Zaria; Dr. Samuel Mailafia, another Senior Lecturer and Head of Veterinary Microbiology, University of Abuja; Barrister Abel Mailafia, an Abuja-based lawyer and advocate; Barrister AncheMailafia,
another lawyer who is also a banker with Ecobank and Miss HajaraMailafia, the baby of the family who is a broadcaster with the Nasarawa State Broadcasting Service, Lafia.
Baba had several children by “adoption”, including this writer. The other adopted children were the late Mimi Ibekwe-Ahmed, a businesswoman based in Lagos and Chemieze John, a builder who lives in Agyaragu. A former Sunday school teacher, Baba had many more adopted spiritual children, many of whom have gone on to become famous men and women in their respective fields. As one of his adopted sons I used to visit him often and he would pray and bless me. I was told he often asked about me and about the welfare of my family.
It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. But when on December 26, the day of the wake keep, each of Baba’s children took turns to pay their tribute and recount fond memories of their departed pater familiars, no one had any unkind word to say of him. Obadiah led by saying of him, that although he loves his mother dearly, his father remained the Rock of Gibraltar of his life. That while father was not a perfect man, ‘’I must put it on record that he was the best human being I ever met’’. He continued: ‘’Baba never discriminated against anyone on the basis of tribe, religion or race; living in accordance with the precepts of charity and justice in all his dealings. He was also a deeply compassionate human being. In the late sixties, when Igbos were being hounded and killed, entire families took shelter in our humble abode. Father was the first person they fled to when their lives were in mortal peril. The spectacle of frightened
children continues to haunt me to this day”.
Dr. Luke spoke of the extreme financial sacrifices their father took in order to pay their school fees during their schooling years. He was a kindhearted man to a fault, he said. Dr. Samuel on his part corroborated Luke’s earlier testimony about their father’s passion to get his children educated and his readiness to sell anything in sight in order to do so. In his own case, Baba had to sell Mama’s farm produce without her permission in order to pay his own school fees! Julie spoke of how Baba, an expert cook, taught her how to cook and how she became an expert chef in her own right. Abel, everybody’s darling in the family, spoke of Baba’s devotion to his family and the larger community.
For me, one of the most fitting tributes of the night paid the departed centenarian came from another pillar of the Christian faith who is also Baba’s brother-in-law, Mr. Samuel Dauda Akpoko, of the Great Commission Movement of Nigeria, who said: ‘’Baba lived a long life because of his way of life’’.