Ibrahim Damcida: Exit of a Biu prince

In fact, we were looking back at the 2011 general elections in which both of us lost. While I re-contested for the House of Representatives seat, he contested for a seat in the Borno State House of Assembly. Somehow as the discussion progressed, we found ourselves talking about Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida. My friend who knew […]

In fact, we were looking back at the 2011 general elections in which both of us lost. While I re-contested for the House of Representatives seat, he contested for a seat in the Borno State House of Assembly. Somehow as the discussion progressed, we found ourselves talking about Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida. My friend who knew him very well had described him as an intelligent and astute man, his advanced age notwithstanding. Referring to a discussion they had on Biu, my friend said Damcida knew a lot about the history of Biu and has a sharp memory of events, because he was without any stress giving dates and time. My friend at the end suggested that a book should be written on him before he becomes too old to talk or remember certain things or before anything could happen to him. I told him Biu Forum was quite aware of the situation and was already working towards that. In fact, a writer has already been commissioned to do that and Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida has already been contacted.

I returned to Kaduna on Friday  June 1  2012. On Saturday the 2nd of June 2012 at 11.00 a.m, somehow my mind went back to the discussion about Damcida and I picked my phone and called the former Chairman of Biu Forum, Alhaji Mai Mamman Kogi to find out how far he has gone in trying to arrange a meeting between Alhaji Damcida and Saleh Mari who has been commissioned to write the book on him. Mai told me he was still on it and that the problem was that Alhaji Damcida was not keen about the project, but he was sure he will soon give in. That was one of the numerous times I had called Mai Mustapha on the issue. On the 3rd of June at about 6.00 p.m., somebody called me from Biu to ask if I had heard about a plane crash in Lagos with Damcida on board. I told him I did not hear about any crash. Soon a text message came in from a friend with the same information. Our fear of the worst happening to Damcida just two days ago has materialised.

I probably started hearing the name Damcida in the late seventies, but the first time I saw him was in 1998 when I was working on the biography of late Alhaji Ibrahim Biu. He had asked me to meet him in his hotel in Abuja at 11.00 a.m. when I reached the hotel, few minutes to 11.00 a.m. he had already instructed somebody to wait for me in the lobby. I was also to be taken to the dinning section to have my breakfast. Few minutes after 11.00 a.m., he came to meet us, tall and slim as I am, he walked majestically like the Prince he was. I told myself “this is the famous Damcida, the rich Damcida, that super Permanent Secretary who along with his colleagues controlled almost everything during Gowon’s period. When he sat down to have his breakfast with us, I immediately felt a false sense of importance,  for here I was, sitting with this powerful man having breakfast in a Five Star hotel located in the heart of Abuja, the Federal Capital. All through the meal, he had kept us engaged with some form of discussions. After the breakfast he settled the bill in some currency I never saw before, dollars. I have to confess, that was the first time in my life I saw the American dollar. I had a two-hour session with him on Alhaji ibrahim Biu. He spoke the Queen’s English and as my friend did observe, he had a sharp memory of events and time.

Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida was born in Biu, Borno State about 80 eighty years ago. His father, Maina Yerima Damcida was a Prince of the Biu ruling dynasty. In fact, Yerima Damcida was Mai Ali Gurgur’s brother who ruled Biu from 1935 to 1951. Both of them were the sons of Mai Garga, who was also the chief of Biu.

Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida started his education at Biu Elementary School in Biu and then proceeded to the Bornu Middle School in Maiduguri. After graduation, he went to the famous Barewa college, Kaduna. He then went to Westminster College, London where he graduated in Accounting in 1956; and then to the North-West Polytechnic, London and finished in 1958.

Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida started work as an Accountant with John Holt and later Under Secretary in the Ministry of Industries in 1962. He worked there for three years and within that period did an attachment with the World Bank in Washington D.C. He was a Deputy Permanent Secretary and Permanent Secretary at the Ministries of Industries, Finance, Trade and Defence. He was Permanent Secretary Ministry of Trade from 1966 to 1970, Ministry of Defence from 1970 to 1975 and Ministry of Finance in 1975.

His search for knowledge and work had taken him far and wide, both in and outside Nigeria. He had connected with first-class businessmen the world over and linked with the most powerful in Nigeria; the technocrats, industrialists, businessmen and politicians parallel to no other person from Biu. No other person from Biu dead or alive has his mastery of running business and banking. Damcida lived and died in his own class, for there was nobody from Biu in that class with him. A commentator in The Nation newspapers had stated that “his accounting training and experience gave him the uncanny ability to pick determining figures ahead of the lot, while his experience at the Ministry of Trade and Defence made him understood and embraced the risks and returns that came with business, while maintaining a defensive strategy to minimise risks”. As One of the largest investors in the Nigerian Banking sector, Damcida held 3rd largest equity stake among the directors of the First City Monument Bank (FCMB).

There are Biu indigenes in different walks of life that have excelled in their own rights, but none is yet to reach the point raised by Damcida in terms of international connections, exposure, domestic links and investments in both human and material resources. We as a people are proud of people like Alhaji Bukar Usman, former Federal Permanent Secretary, Alhaji Madu Umar a former Director on the CBN Board, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman (Ibus), Alhaji Mohammed Ibrahim (Danmasani), Hajiya Inna Ciroma, a former Minister, the Zaifadas,late Ambassador Pindar and a host of others in that generation.

There are the younger ones who have so far exhibited promising dispositions. People like Alhaji Ahmed Kuru, Managing Director, Enterprise Bank; Alhaji Dauda Danladi, Nigerian Ambassador to Pakistan; T.A. Musa, Assistant Controller General of Customs; Major-General Debiro, Brigadier Buratai, Brigadier B.Y. Bukar, Rear Admirals A.G. Inusa, Audu Shettima and a host of others in medicine, police, academia and even politics. The question now is who among these sons and daughters of Biu will wear the shoes of Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida? Alhaji Damcida lived and died in his own class.

Alhaji Damcida was a Permanent Secretary when civil servants served the people, when the civil service in Nigeria was almost everything; when the name Permanent Secretary connotes influence, intelligence, power and smartness. In an interview he granted The Economy in 2009, he had said their dream as civil servants at that time “was to achieve rapid development across the nation. We also discouraged corrupt practice among public officers, but today things have changed…” Talking about the series of civil service reforms he had observed that “specifically, it was intended to purge the civil service, sadly too, the plan has not changed except for the introduction of new words like downsizing, restructuring etc. In fact, according to him, the civil service has been reduced to a group of people who the government has no confidence or given serious job to do.”

Alhaji Ibrahim Damcida lived a life of a philanthropist. He was a board member of the Childlife Line, an international non-governmental organisation. As a Chairman of the defunct Nigerian American Merchant Bank Limited, and later a Director on the Board of FCMB, he used his position to assist innumerable number of people particularly from Biu. Narrating his experience, Mohammed Tafida Abba told me how Alhaji Damcida in 1988 sponsored his medical trip to the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford for a specialist attention. Alhaji Damcida paid for the trip, all medical expenses, accommodation and feeding. He had also placed Tafida on a weekly pocket money of two hundred pounds throughout his stay in London. To secure a visa for Tafida’s journey, Alhaji Damcida wrote a letter to the British High Commission, Consulate-General in Kaduna introducing himself, the patient and expressing his ability to bear the financial burden. He had stated in the letter that his ability to bear the financial burden of the medical trip could be confirmed by the National Westminster Bank Plc. and Bank of Boston. Tafida was issued the visa without delay.

In 2005, Damcida established an Educational Foundation to help the underprivileged in Borno state with an initial funding of one hundred million naira.

Alhaji Damcida was never known to be an active politician; while he identified himself with powerful politicians who were mostly in the ruling party. he was hardly ever in the open campaigning for any party or anybody, not even for his son who in the last elections participated in the ANPP primaries for a House of Representatives ticket, or his junior brother who was a Member of the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2003. However, his ability to manipulate the political process to favour one interest or the other has never been in doubt. I know of an ANPP Governor in Borno State who depended on him to create and maintain some relationships with the government at the centre and also the late Alhaji Ibrahim Biu, a former minister in the 1st Republic to win the 1961 elections into the Northern parliament.

In the book “Humility and Service”, which I wrote on the late Wazirin Biu, both Damcida and Ibrahim Biu had narrated how the former came up with a strategy which saw Ibrahim Biu winning over a very popular NEPU die-hard Garga Ali Diwar in the 1961 Parliamentary elections. The plan saw Garga Ali Diwar leaving Biu for Kaduna twenty-four hours before the elections. On the election day he was nowhere to be seen and was announced to have withdrawn.

All of us from Biu feel this great loss, but one person that would feel this loss the most is the Emir of Biu, Mai Umar Mustapha Aliyu. Apart from being a son to Damcida, by the family lineage Alhaji Damcida had been the Emir’s closest adviser and confidant. He had been a source of support and strength to the Emir and had acted as a shield to him in this complicated period of modernity and politics.

We the people of Biu mourn the exit of our elder statesman, our “Mallam”, our Prince, our northern star. We pray Allah gives us another Damcida and another Alhaji Ibrahim Biu, the Waziri of Biu among the crop of the young promising ones that are coming up. May Allah grant him Aljannatul Firdaus and may He have mercy on all of us. Amen

Dr. Yarima is a senior lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria and former member of the House of Representatives.