ELEGY FOR LITTLE HAIDAR

Aliyu Haidar was my wife’s four-year-old nephew, born October 2009, the little son of her younger brother Aminu Ahmad (my own favourite brother-in-law), who was murdered in cold blood by kidnappers this Wednesday. The abductors demanded and got a ransom and promised to return him alive, yet they mercilessly killed him, put him in a […]

Aliyu Haidar was my wife’s four-year-old nephew, born October 2009, the little son of her younger brother Aminu Ahmad (my own favourite brother-in-law), who was murdered in cold blood by kidnappers this Wednesday. The abductors demanded and got a ransom and promised to return him alive, yet they mercilessly killed him, put him in a sack and dumped the body somewhere, only for it to be discovered by a police patrol.
There was evidence of brutal torture on the body of the little boy – his eyes had been punctured with what appeared to be a sharp object (perhaps Haidar had recognised one or some of them?) Haidar’s hands showed rope marks – he had being tied. And the boy was only four!“Inna lilLahi wa inna ilaiHi raji’un!
Haidar had gone to Islamiyya school on Tuesday, not too far from his family’s home in Na’ibawa area, Kano. At close of school, the girl who usually accompanied Haidar home could not find him, and raised the alarm. Alas! He had been kidnapped. It may have been someone Haidar knew and was familiar with that took him, for the little boy was wise for his age. He would have resisted following a stranger; he would have raised an alarm. (And we must reform our Islamiyya schools to copy the standard of Boko schools in the retrieval of children).
May Allah curse and destroy this little boy’s abductors, kidnappers, torturers, killers, murderers; may Allah punish them in this world and follow it up in the hereafter; may Allah admit Haidar among the children of paradise, those children who never age – wildanun mukhalladoon. May Allah grant Haidar’s father Aminu, mother Fatima and the siblings and us all the fortitude to bear this loss. Haidar! An innocent little boy murdered in cold blood. “Inna lilLahi wa inna ilaiHi raji’un!
I had gotten particularly close to late Haidar’s father Aminu, quite a young man himself, in April 2011 when my own then six-year-old son, Mahdi, suddenly disappeared when on a visit to his grandparents’ home in Gyadi-Gyadi, Kano. It was said a victorious political rally was passing by the area and had swallowed Mahdi into the ensuing milieu. It was the same Aminu that called to tell me what had happened; that Mahdi was missing.
It was with Aminu, Haidar’s father, that we drew up strategies to search for Mahdi. We had feared the worst. Ritualists. Kidnappers. Accident. Anything Nigeria can inflict on you. We divided Kano, as large as it was, between us, Aminu and I – searching police stations, hospital emergency wards and mortuaries, homes of Ward Heads, Hisba offices, even the random uncompleted building. At the backs of our minds, we were expecting that dreaded phone call; it never came.
May Allah not test you with the heart-wrenching bala’i and masifa and  tashin-hankali (extremely tragic and traumatic calamity) that is a missing child. Aminu and I didn’t sleep that night – we were speaking on phone almost every minute, sharing notes, monitoring the continuous announcements on radio, getting feedback from the radio room of Police Headquarters at Bompai, Kano, and from Hisba Headquarters at Sharada, Kano; following and verifying any false alarm. It was really heart-wrenching! “Inna lilLahi wa inna ilaiHi raji’un!
So when Haidar was kidnapped, I could imagine what Aminu was going through. He had been through that with me in Mahdi’s case. The difference was that we got no phone call in the case of Mahdi, but immediately after Haidar disappeared, a note was delivered to his home that: “If you want to see your son alive again, go to the Ward’s Heads house with a phone number.” And the parents did. For the next several hours, the kidnappers negotiated a ransom. And got it. But yet they killed the little boy.
To lose a child in whatever circumstances is devastating enough. To lose someone so young in this kind of manner is doubly devastating. And to lose a first-born son in a family – as Haidar was to this young couple – is unfathomably tragic: the father has lost a future friend, confidante and supporter; the mother the apple of her eye; the siblings their mentor, their guide, for the Hausa say babban wa magajin uba (‘the first-born son is the acting father’). One cannot imagine the depth of the grief, the loss, the sadness in the Aminu Ahmad family. We share this grief with them. “Inna lilLahi wa inna ilaiHi raji’un!
Mahdi’s disappearance almost three years ago turned out to be a normal ‘missing’. He had strayed into the hands of a Good Samaritan, yet the six-year-old had become so confused that he could not mention my name, my office (then A Daidaita Sahu in Kano), his mother’s name, our numbers, anything. Aminu and I had created many scenarios, including thinking of raising ransom money. In the end, Mahdi was returned next morning by the Good Samaritan. He was apparently taking the boy to the Hisba Headquarters when all of a sudden the boy recognised the house of his uncle, my elder brother, in Gandun Albasa area of Kano. That night I couldn’t sleep again; overjoyed that Mahdi was back! Alas for Haidar! Alas for Aminu with whom we went through that traumatic experience!
Elegy is a sad lament. I have, on this page in the past, sang the dirge of Captain Isma’il Yadudu, son of Professor Awwal Yadudu; Ahmad Galadanci, son of Dr. Bashir Galadanci; Auwal Bala Shanono, my daughter’s classmate at ABU Medical School in Shika, Zaria; and Abubakar Tafida, my mathematician classmate at the School for Arabic Studies, Kano. If death were something we could get used to, we should have. But alas no! Especially in the case of Haidar, a favourite cousin of my children.
Throughout history, and across all religions, questions have been asked on why calamity is so non-discriminatory; and why is it that sometimes good people suffer. Of course, as Muslims, we know the answer in the concept of qadr, belief in which is a fundamental part of our iman. And we know that apparently good people are not spared of grief and calamity in the here-and-now.
Aminu is a good young man. But he should remember what Allah says in the Qur’an (Surah al Ankabut, The Spider 29:2): “Do people think that they will be left alone because they say: ‘We believe,’ and will not be tested?”
Allah has tested Aminu and Fatima with the loss of Aliyu Haidar. wwSai hakuri. Allah Ya jikansa.