Fond memories of Marafan Sokoto

The road to my long and close association with Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi began in July 1991. A year after I relocated from Sokoto to Kaduna to work at Citizen magazine, Malam Mohammed Lawal came to my office and said Marafan Sokoto wanted to see me. At that time, newspapers were already mentioning his name as […]

The road to my long and close association with Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi began in July 1991. A year after I relocated from Sokoto to Kaduna to work at Citizen magazine, Malam Mohammed Lawal came to my office and said Marafan Sokoto wanted to see me. At that time, newspapers were already mentioning his name as a likely presidential aspirant in the Babangida regime’s transition program. When I got to his house at Kinkino Road, Shinkafi confirmed to me that he would seek the presidency. He said “many people” in Sokoto told him to look for me and make me his political assistant.

I was very surprised to hear that. Up until I left the town in 1990 my image in Sokoto was that of a Communist firebrand. Shinkafi on the other hand was a top police officer, a lawyer, federal minister, Nigeria’s top superspy, reportedly wealthy, holder of the prestigious traditional title of Marafan Sokoto and son-in-law of the Sardauna himself. You cannot be more Establishment than that. In the 1980s when we used to print and secretly circulate Communist literature, we always imagined that Shinkafi’s NSO goons were after us.
I never met him in Sokoto during those years but I remember a speech he gave in 1987 at the launch of the Sokoto State Development Appeal Fund. He was the chief launcher and in his speech, he said he was only made the chief launcher because of some internal disputes. He would not mind, he said, if other donors “flatly beat” his donation of N100,000. This was a reference to the raging feud between Sarkin Sudan of Wurno Alhaji Shehu Malami and Baraden Sokoto Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, who were angling to succeed the aged Sultan Abubakar III.
I declined Marafa’s offer to work full time in his campaign but I agreed to be his informal communications adviser. Right away he gave me a book to read. It was by Ted Sorensen, speechwriter for John Kennedy. I read it overnight and the next day he asked me what I thought about it. He was probably thinking of modelling his campaign after Kennedy’s so I said, “Sir, Ted Sorensen wrote that the American political campaign is built around the speech. It is not the same here.”  He readily agreed. Shinkafi took his communication very seriously and over the next months and years, I ghost-wrote dozens of speeches and articles for him, beginning with one he read at his friend and fellow policeman Chief Bassey Etim James’ birthday party.
Two issues bothered him when he began his campaign. One was public perception of him as a secretive spy master. One newspaper wrote at the time that he had secret information on everyone in Nigeria and would unleash it in the campaign. I therefore wrote a speech for him on the subject and he was particularly happy with the paragraph that said, “Many Nigerians have read about the FBI’s John Edgar Hoover, were fascinated by him, shopped around for a Nigerian equivalent and they settled on me. I am very sorry to disappoint them. I am not John Edgar Hoover and I have no secret files on anybody.”
The second issue that bothered him was the perception that another Sokoto man should not be president so soon after President Shehu Shagari. We tackled that problem by subtly emphasising Marafa’s Yobe roots. His father, Alhaji Ali Bisije was a cotton merchant from present day Yobe State who followed the cotton trail to Gusau, Kaura Namoda and finally settled in Shinkafi in the 1930s. “Bisije” means BCGA, British Cotton Growers Association, the main buyers of cotton in those days. I soon became an important, though informal member of Marafa’s Choice 92 campaign group. Its top shots in the early days were Alhaji Samaila Isa, Alhaji Adamu Augie, Marafa’s Law School classmate Dr. Hameed Kusamotu, Dr. Ademola Adebo, Alhaji Kaloma Ali, Alhaji Kura Mohammed, Alhaji Sa’idu Dansadau, the Kaduna State chairman Alhaji Audu Kiskis and the Northern zonal coordinator Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Sokoto. We also sat for nights on end in Mohammed Lawal’s house and drafted Marafa’s position on every national issue.
Marafa was obsessed with Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki, who he believed was undermining his campaign. At a point I thought one of the reasons why he drew me close was because of an anti-Dasuki article I wrote in the New Nigerian in 1988, at the height of the Bamuso protests of that year. The article made a big impact in Sokoto and it probably caught his eye. One night in 1992, Marafa sent for me and angrily told me that a book launch was planned in Dasuki’s palace and they invited his NRC rival Alhaji Lema Jibrilu to be the chief launcher. He wanted me to draft a harsh article in response. To his surprise I said, “Sir, there is no need to take on the Sultan’s Palace. You have got thirty states to conquer and should not be bogged down in your home state. If it is book launching, we can write our own books and organise a grand launching.”
He remained silent. Marafa had a penetrating stare that made you feel as if you were being X-rayed. Sitting with him, you never forget that this was the country’s top spook. He soon left for Lagos. That night however, Mohammed Lawal came to my house at midnight and said Marafa phoned and said I should be told that on reflection, he agreed with my idea and that I should immediately plan the writing of the books. He provided the funds so I mobilised six solid Usman Danfodio University lecturers. We resolved to write three books. One was his campaign program and another was on Borno-Sokoto relations, about his two roots. We shared out the chapters and the books were ready within three months. By then the NRC primaries were in full swing and Marafa could not find the time to read them. He carried the book drafts in his briefcase for weeks. At one point, he said if I was satisfied with the contents we should go ahead and publish them but I said since he was the “author” of all three books, he must read them in order to avoid future embarrassment.
Even though I was a confident young man then, my regular interactions with him had showed me the gulf in knowledge and experience between him and I. Marafa was self-effacing and soft spoken but he had read a lot of books, had a lawyer’s penetrating mind and then he had the super spook’s intimate knowledge of hidden connections. He read the newspapers and magazines for many hours every day, slowly and quietly. He would suddenly refer me to a small story in a newspaper and point out to me its hidden political, historical and national security import. I also noticed some of his peculiar habits, such as after each prayer, he would do an extra sujud and remain in that position for up to five minutes.
Marafa was quietly worried that his presence intimidated people. In Sokoto one day in 1992, he told me to go and see Muhammadu Sambo Wali, the poet and radio personality. He did not say what for. When I went to him Sambo Wali told me, “Please be patient with Marafa. He has the face of a cow. You know what that means?” I said no, so he said, “From afar he looks fearsome but actually he is not.” Remnants of my Communist instincts also helped; that night he offered me N60,000 to buy a tokunbo car. With so many politicians around him hankering after money, I turned down the offer and said I needed only N10,000 to repair my old Fiat car.
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The NRC primaries ended with a scheduled run-off election between Malam Adamu Ciroma and Shinkafi. Days before they held, Inuwa Abdulkadir and I went to see Marafa at the Nicon Hilton Hotel in Abuja. He was pacing up and down his suite but he was confident he would win the run off. It never held; General Babangida soon annulled the NRC and SDP primaries and banned 23 top politicians from politics, including Shinkafi and Ciroma.
If Marafa was bitter at the banning, he did not show it to me. He instead continued to play politics behind the scenes. During NRC’s Option A4 convention in Port Harcourt in March 1993, he sneaked into town, lodged at the Presidential Hotel and coordinated the successful campaign to elect his friend Dr. Kusamotu as National Chairman.
Before the primaries, Citizen magazine decided to do a cover story on each of the major aspirants. My boss Mohammed Haruna, who knew my closeness to Shinkafi, assigned me to do his story. I told Marafa that I was doing a story on him and he invited me to Lagos. I put up at Ikoyi Hotel and that night, his aides brought to me lots of files and newspaper cuttings. I sat up all night and read them. The papers gave me a very good idea of the planning that went into Choice 92. But there were no secret files!
Closeness to Marafa brought me close to many NRC top shots and eased my political reporting work for Citizen. In 1993 I went to interview new NRC chairman Kusamotu. When he saw me, he sent everyone out of his office and gave me a long interview. Reverend Hyde Onuaguluchi of Enugu also gave me a memorable interview partly because of the Marafa connection. As his informal communications adviser, my biggest problem with Marafa was that he said things in a highly nuanced manner.
He also became upset when newspapers misquoted him. I told him that the way to avoid being misquoted is to say things directly, but he never changed. One day he called me and gave me an article he had written in which he analysed the country’s political situation. He wanted it published so I said, “Sir, you are too big for analysis. As a major political actor, people want to hear your opinion. Analysis is for academics and columnists.”
Marafa serially rebuffed my suggestions to write his biography. Most probably, Nigerian spooks are not allowed to write books, though he never said so. The only book he was keen on writing was what he called Sardauna’s “home front.” He first raised the issue with me ten years ago and he wanted the old courtiers of Sardauna’s household to be interviewed. However, the project was delayed and most of them died out. During my last meeting with him earlier this year, he asked me to accelerate work on the book.
In 1998 Marafa sued me. I had interviewed Alhaji Umaru Dikko for New Nigerian Weekly and the former Transport Minister alleged that as NSO boss, Shinkafi connived with soldiers to overthrow Shagari’s government. When Dikko refused to recant the allegation, Marafa wrote to President Shehu Shagari and asked him to confirm that as NSO boss he sufficiently warned him about the impending coup. Shagari wrote back to Marafa saying “as Fulani, we should ignore such allegations.” Marafa wrote back and told Shagari that “I am not a Fulani man,” a reference to his father’s Yobe ancestry. Marafa then sued Dikko, New Nigerian Weekly and I at a Lagos High Court. He later excised me from the suit.
After Abacha died in June 1998 and a new transition began, Marafa waded back into politics as an APP chieftain. Mohammed Lawal, Inuwa Abdulkadir and I quickly formed a small committee to provide him with some assistance. APP later ditched its presidential candidate, Ogbonnaya Onu, adopted AD’s candidate Chief Olu Falae and made Marafa his running mate.
I was in quandary when I went to the polls in February 1999. I preferred Obasanjo to Falae because of the latter’s record as “Grand Apostle of SAP,” but I felt it will amount to betrayal if I did not vote for the ticket with Marafa on it. So I closed my eyes and voted for Falae. Marafa later told me that the ticket would have done better if AD had fielded Chief Bola Ige instead of Falae. Marafan Sokoto is no more. A colossus has fallen. May Allah grant him eternal rest in Aljannat.