GOOD LUCK, BAD LUCK? WHO KNOWS?

Therefore, as we can see, there is no better time than this to revisit the matter of luck, Good Luck that is, which we discussed about eighteen months ago when this nation was in the throes of a similar national discussion. If we all recall, by May 29 last year, at the occasion of the […]

Therefore, as we can see, there is no better time than this to revisit the matter of luck, Good Luck that is, which we discussed about eighteen months ago when this nation was in the throes of a similar national discussion. If we all recall, by May 29 last year, at the occasion of the First Anniversary of this Administration, our president came out and declared: “I could live to be ninety.” Thanks be to God, the journey of ninety years has since began with these past eighteen months. May we see the remaining eighty eight years and six months, amin. May Allah restore the health of our President . Amen.

Anyone who becomes anything in this world, we all believe, becomes so by the Leave of Allah, by His Grace, by His Will. That is what is sometimes described as ‘luck’. On this very matter of ‘luck’, we in Kano remember how, in the early 1980s, two gentlemen became governor and deputy governor of the state solely by luck, the Will of Allah. The duo of late Alhaji Abdu Dawakin Tofa and Professor Ahmad Tijjani Abdullahi came to the helm of affairs of Kano State by circumstances some would describe as miraculous, since none of them ever stood for election to their respective offices. And alhamdu lillah, fine gentlemen they were.

If memory serves this writer well, at the advent of the Governor Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi Administration in Kano State in 1979, both these gentlemen were highly-placed academicians in higher institutions: the Audu Bako School of Agriculture, Dambatta, in the case of late Governor Tofa, and the Kano State Polytechnic in the case of Deputy Governor Abdullahi. They became commissioners in the Rimi Cabinet and, in the case of Tofa, rising from Agriculture to Special Duties to Deputy Governor, when the then incumbent Deputy Governor, the erudite Alhaji Ibrahim BB Farouk was impeached. (And may Allah restore the health of former Kano Deputy Governor Farouk who has been ill for some length of time. Many believe that his impeachment back in the early 1980s neatly mirrors that of the immediate past Deputy Governor of Bauchi State Alhaji Garba Gadi in 2009).

So it came to pass that, when Governor Rimi changed his political platform from the People’s Redemption Party, PRP, to the Nigeria People’s Party, NPP, to recontest the seat in 1983, political decorum required that he resign from the office as he had left the party that had him elected in 1999 (a great lesson for today’s politicians). So when Rimi resigned as governor, his deputy, Tofa, who was not elected with him but became deputy by default, became Governor. Fellow academic Abdullahi became Deputy Governor. That was luck. Good luck.

In the book Autobiography of Siaka Stevens, the one-time President of Sierra Leone narrates this story about luck, which he said he liked so much:

“There is an old Chinese story about a peasant who lost his only horse. His neighbours said, ‘Your only horse has disappeared. Bad luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ The next day the horse returned, bringing twenty wild horses with him into the peasant’s compound. The neighbours said, ‘You have gained twenty new horses. Good luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’

“Then the peasant’s only son broke a leg training the new horses. The neighbours said, ‘Your only son has broken a leg, and the harvest is at hand. Bad luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ Within a few days, soldiers from the Imperial Capital arrived the village and conscripted all the young men, except the boy with the broken leg. The neighbours said, ‘Your son has escaped conscription while ours are all gone. Good luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’”

People get ill. Kings and servants get ill. Princes and paupers get ill. Queen and handmaidens get ill. Presidents and subjects get ill. And, despite all the hue and cry and national contrition, the Hausa have a brilliant saying: ’wa ya san gawar fari’ (literally, ‘who knows the first corpse’, or, who knows the first to die?)

The ill health of our president reminds one of the ill health of one-time US President Woodrow Wilson. In the fall of 1919, Wilson had a disabling stroke while he was on a train trip across America to mobilise support for his cherished League of Nations (now the United Nations). The public knew he was ill, but they didn’t know how ill. Only his wife Edith Wilson, his chief of staff Joseph Tumulty and his personal physician, Cary Grayson, were allowed to see him. Issues were brought in, and decisions would come out.

Some may say the closest America got to having a woman president was in Hillary Clinton, both as a First Lady and a leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination last year. But many Americans believe that they effectively had a woman president already in Edith Wilson, First Lady of President Wilson. After her husband partially recovered, Mrs. Wilson was said to have said: “I don’t know what you men make such a fuss about [being President of the United States]. I had no trouble running the country when Woody was ill.”

(Scary stuff! May Allah save us from the situation that someone would have to go in with the issues and come out with the decisions in this country, amin. But if it happens, it is our luck!)

We similarly all remember US President Ronald Reagan, don’t we? Here was a president who was never hale, nor hearty. Added to that, he was shot in an assassination attempt. Yet his handlers managed America for the eight years he was there, although alas, most times disastrously. That was their luck!

 Therefore, if a country is sick as Nigeria definitely is, does it matter whether its leaders are sick or healthy? Was it not said that a people get the leaders they deserve?

Some superstitions suggest carrying a rabbit’s foot around for good luck. But someone had since reasoned that there is no greater folly than that: that foot did the rabbit no good.

Said Jean Cocteau: “I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”

And finally, the New Year Remorse: didn’t you, Nigerians, reject the apparently healthier option of a Third Term for a former president who is apparently still bitter with that? For that, the former president still wishes all Nigerians Goodluck.