Goodnight, Sanusi!

Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free. I’m following the path God has laid, you see.  I took His hand when I heard His call.  I turned my back and left it all.   – “Im Free” (Author Unknown) The Lord gives, the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord (Holy Bible). […]

Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free.

I’m following the path God has laid, you see. 

I took His hand when I heard His call. 

I turned my back and left it all.  

– “Im Free” (Author Unknown)

The Lord gives, the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord (Holy Bible). Surely, from Allah we came and to Him shall we return (Holy Koran).

At times like this, religion comes as the only consolation that gives succour. We are totally helpless in the hands of Fate. Here today, gone tomorrow – gone forever! It isn’t the fact of death that keeps me benumbed; it is the finality of it. Never again will one see the beloved. Unlike long journeys entailing long absences, this one is final. Till the last day. And no philosophy prepares anyone for that.

Mohammed Sanusi Abubakar was my brother. He was the human validation of my long-held conviction that it is the relationship of ideas that establishes kinship. Not blood. Not tribe. Not religion. Not social circumstances. When your path crosses that of a brother from a different set of parents, human chemistry takes over to the consternation of those afflicted with tribal constrictions. That is why anyone who had the privilege of knowing Sanusi intimately will be inconsolably dumbstruck by his untimely demise.

Right from his PRP days when he was on the academic staff of Ahmadu Bello University, I had always wondered what made Sanusi Abubakar tick: In one breath an unrepentant socialist, in another a liberal conservative. No, you pigeonholed him at the risk of an argument. Many of our mutual friends predicted that the second republic would come to grief, what with the recklessness of the politicians. We didn’t gloat over our prediction when it happened because we would rather have had democracy with all its warts than military rule.

Around 1987, we started ruminating over making a definitive intervention in the educational sector. We had many informal sessions where we belly-ached about the rot creeping into that vital sector. Thus was born the idea of a weekly newspaper titled ‘Education Today’. Sanusi brought in his mentor, the legendary Bala Usman, whose incredible insight livened up our discussions.

At our ‘Abe Igi’ open air restaurant around Ladipo-Oshodi area of Lagos where a set of Owo-born female twins teased and satiated our palates, we made plans and “oiled the impeding revolution” with drinks which, following the great Dr. Usman’s advise, was paid for “by the round”.

Together with businessman Aliyu Dasuki and Sully Abu, then a top editor with The Guardian, we constituted the Board of Education Today newspaper with Sanusi as Publisher/Editor-In-Chief. We operated from Ilupeju, Lagos, near Academy Press. We made history. There was no newspaper like it in Nigeria. Sanusi’s background as an academic was quite useful on the editorial front, although that background wasn’t exactly an advantage in running a business as complex and slow in yielding returns as a weekly newspaper.

We did not curse our stars a couple of years later when we had to lick our wounds as our newspaper joined the list of have-beens in the cemetery of Nigeria’s print journalism. There had been no harm in trying. We continued with our individual careers as Sanusi returned to his academic calling.

Around 2001, I relocated my company from Lagos to Abuja. Apart from my family, I had taken only Sanusi into confidence and he joined me in my hotel room on my first night to chew the cud of remembrance and share new dreams. His friends became mine and mine his. At any of our informal colloquia, you would see the usually coy Sanusi come alive, ventilating his economic theories and chipping in commentary on politics, culture, the media… anything. He knew a little bit about virtually everything to sustain a conversation, but never claimed exclusive expertise in his chosen field, Economics, even as you could easily rouse him from slumber with an argument about the economy.

Although born into royalty, Sanusi sided unquestionably with the proletariat, a fact about which we teased both him and his equally blue-blooded mentor, Dr. Bala Usman of blessed memory. Those who did not understand how an academic trained in both ABU and Sussex universities could be so down-to-earth, so free spirited, so urbane, so compassionate, so pan-Nigerian – wondered if he was real. But real he was, as they were to find out in informal circles. That was why he was contemptuous of unearned wealth, believing that life was more about what we put into it, not the mansions we rob the poor to build.

A Sanusi event was usually a pan-Nigerian event because he was usually surrounded by friends from various parts of Nigeria and beyond. Several years ago when I drove in his company from Abuja to Maiduguri for the burial of his father-in-law, the illustrious Alhaji Ahmed Talib, I met on ground several friends who had journeyed to the event from various directions to support their pal. (Since I was behind the steering, Sanusi was the disc jockey and he alternated between Mamman Shata, Bob Marley and the Everly Brothers.) And were we spoilt with hospitality in Maiduguri? Anyone who has ever tasted the hospitality of Borno people will understand what great tragedy the Boko Haram scourge must be!

Similarly, at the marriage of one of his daughters in Kano in the heat of Boko Haram bombings in the city when a delegation of ‘vets’ like this writer, Wing Cdr. Emma Madukife, Okello Oculi, Bisi Ogunbadejo, Tom Odemwingie and McBello joined others who had converged on Kano from different directions of the compass to rejoice with the family, the general consensus was that our friend could successfully make a career of being a great host. Not for him Henry Van Dyke’s observation that, “Some people are so afraid do die that they never begin to live”.

We weren’t doing him any favours. He would be there unobtrusively for any of us if the occasion demanded. All one has to do is look back. Too many instances of Sanusi standing up for his friend, even at great cost to him.

That was one of the whispered consolations going round as news of his demise rented the social media. He wasn’t ostentatious about his faith; he lived it. He related with compassion and understanding to people to such an extent that you’d say, “I’d like to know what faith this guy professes”.

And commitment to worthy causes? I’m not sure that Sanusi would want me to chronicle the many instances of our diving into the ‘trenches’ to get things done, or quietly spending our own time and money in furtherance of a cause we believed in while those who benefitted from our exertions didn’t even have the decency to show gratitude.

One legacy of Sanusi’s about which all his friends are in agreement was his complete devotion to the education of his children. He wanted the very best of education for them. Nothing could agitate him more than anything that had to do with the well-being of his family. Mercifully, they all graduated in his lifetime, making him a grandfather six times over and still counting as at the time of his demise.

Goodnight, Sanusi. None of us knew we’d be missing you this soon, or that you’d predecease the rest of us, despite the fact that we sometimes shared gallows humour among our circle of friends. Over time, as we grow older and inch our individual ways to our respective graves, we come to terms with the finality of death and the supremacy of the Unmade Maker in determining which fruit drops from the tree of life. But it hurts. It rends one’s heart apart!

And the family, nuclear and extended? My heart goes out especially to Fati and the children as I pray that the Ultimate Consoler will console them and fill the huge void Sanusi has left behind. And to the royal family of Kano, my heartfelt condolences.

Sanusi, May Almighty Allah who you believed in and served, the all-powerful, ever-forgiving and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer and judge of everything in existence, grant you the ultimate crown of Paradise.