Kano to Ilorin by Road:Adventure and Discoveries

Let me begin by admitting that there is nothing extraordinary about travelling by road from Kano to Ilorin. Our grandfathers had travelled far longer distances to faraway lands on foot and on the backs of animals. In modern times, professional drivers, merchants and other travellers cover thousands of kilometres in their vehicles every day, traversing […]

Let me begin by admitting that there is nothing extraordinary about travelling by road from Kano to Ilorin. Our grandfathers had travelled far longer distances to faraway lands on foot and on the backs of animals. In modern times, professional drivers, merchants and other travellers cover thousands of kilometres in their vehicles every day, traversing this country from Maiduguri to Lagos, Sokoto to Calabar, or Kano to Port Harcourt. They do it for a living; it is their way of life. You cannot beat them, unless you are one of them.
What made our own journey different was that we were not travel professionals. Perhaps, a more significant factor was the age: most members of the group were physically beyond their ‘Best Before’ date. Some of them might contest it, but the collection of baldheads and grey beards, grey heads, grey eyebrows and grey moustaches said it all; firmly supported by the eyeglasses of varying thickness that sat on the ridges of oily noses. It was a collection of old teachers, the type usually one would encounter only at university senate meetings.
The University of Ilorin was presenting a journal to the public in honour of its former Vice Chancellor, Professor Shuaib Oba Abdulraheem, the Chairman of the Federal Character Commission, Abuja, on 20th March 2013. Professor Abdurraheem is an eminent member of the Ilorin Emirate Council and the Talba of Ilorin, but Kano may lay better claim on him, because he spent the most formative years of his adult life there, teaching English in the Bayero University, Kano (BUK). Starting as a young Graduate Assistant in 1975, he had risen to the rank of Professor, headed the department and served as the Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies, before his appointment as the Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin in 1997. Since then, he has kept relations with BUK, visiting regularly for one programme or another.
No wonder, the Department of English and Literary Studies, BUK, nominated us – Professors Saidu B. Ahmad, Zaynab Alkali, Mustapha Mohammed, Mohammed O. Bhadmus and the writer – as well as two younger colleagues – Ismaila Bala and Maikudi A. Zukogi – to participate in the ceremonies in Ilorin. The BUK Vice Chancellor (VC), Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, himself a former student of Professor Abdulraheem’s, felt personally committed to lead the delegation. Yes, we all had good reason to visit Ilorin, in order to re-state the claims of Kano in regard of its dear “Oba of English”.
Another equally important reason for the visit was to attend the planning meeting of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) for the 8th Conference on Literature in Northern Nigeria (CLNN). Instituted by BUK, which hosted the first to fifth editions from 1989 to 2007, the conference provides a forum for the celebration of the literatures of the people of Northern Nigeria in English and the indigenous languages. Researchers and scholars come together for a few days to explore new grounds and offer fresh perspectives on the existing literatures, as well as mediate the position and relevance of such literatures within the larger matrix of the Nigerian, African and world literatures. It is the greatest annual meet on literature in Northern Nigeria.
Subsequently, BUK and the Kwara State University, Malete (KWASU) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding for joint and alternate hosting rights between them, which enabled KWASU to organise the 6th conference in Malete in 2011, while BUK hosted that of last year. The 8th round is due in December 2013; hence, the LOC planning meeting in Malete on 21st March 2013. This had brought in Professor Sani Abba Aliyu from ABU Zaria and two other members of the LOC from BUK – Dr Aliyu Mu’azu of the Department of Nigerian Languages, and Dr Isa Yusuf Chamo of the Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages.
By Road, Is It?
There is no direct flight to Ilorin from Kano; one has to fly past the city and land in Lagos, then drive back through Ibadan and Ogbomosho. One could also go by road to Abuja, a journey that takes at least five hours through endless military checkpoints, and catch the Ilorin flight from there. The most comfortable arrangement is to fly to Abuja and from there catch another flight to Ilorin, the only risk being the uncertainty in the schedule of our domestic air services. Just a few days earlier, we had read in the papers about how some passengers to Abuja had spent the night at the Ilorin Airport waiting for their flight. Nonetheless, the VC was already resolved on this as the best option – to fly to Abuja first and from there go to Ilorin.
“But wait, Zaynab”, someone queried Professor Alkali, “you attended the Queen Elizabeth College in the mid sixties. Since then, how many times have you visited Ilorin by road?”
“I have never travelled to Ilorin by road from here”, she explained. “We used the train throughout, across the Jebba Bridge.”
“Oh yes, the Jebba Bridge!”, someone remembered. “I haven’t seen it for decades! I wonder what it looks like now.”
“For me, it is the road up to Tegina”, Professor Ahmad, recalled with nostalgia. “I did my NYSC in Bida in the late seventies; that was my route from Kano throughout my stay there.”
“Look here, all you old travellers, why don’t you refresh your memories now and go to Ilorin by road? It would be a wonderful adventure”, another person suggested. There was widespread laughter at this joke, but which soon gained acceptance. “In that case, the university can give us an air-conditioned bus, say the Toyota Coaster. It is stable and not too bumpy, and each person can have three seats to himself or herself to stretch out their old legs. In addition, we go at our own chosen speed. Why not try it?”
“That’s really great!”, someone shouted softly.  The statement appeared to have signalled the consensus. “So then, the VC can keep his air tickets and we go by road, isn’t it, ladies and gentlemen?” There did not seem to be any particular objections.
“I see what you guys want to do: turn the trip into a holiday, shake off your boredom, become kids again, tell stories and say a lot of jokes and laugh all the way to Ilorin and back!”, Professor Rasheed observed. “We may all come back with tired bones and be in bed for a couple of days afterwards, but I will not miss this company. We go together.”
“We object to our Vice Chancellor travelling in a bus from Kano to Ilorin and back. Please go and catch your flights!”, someone protested; which fell on deaf ears.
The whole episode reminded me of a story my Bororo elder brother once told me when I was young. He was camping with his cattle near Gwarzo, in Kano State, from where he and a friend wanted to visit another friend in the bush somewhere near ’Yarkasuwa in Kaduna State. “We leave in a bus early in the morning tomorrow, so that we could come back before sunset”, suggested my brother, after considering the distance of over seventy kilometres. “No”, his friend objected vigorously. “Why go in a bus that would speed away, without letting you see the countryside? We take a day to go on foot, spend the night there and trek back the following morning”, replied the friend. My brother concluded the story to me thus: “I laughed and said to him, ‘You are truly a bushman. How can you go this distance on foot? Anyway, if that’s what you want, let’s go.’”  Whenever I remember the story, I wonder who the real ‘bush man’ was between the two of them!
Anyway, to Ilorin we set off in the Toyota Coaster early in the morning on Tuesday 19th March, with Oga VC being the first onboard!
Defining the Ground Rules
A small problem to solve at the beginning was that of drawing the rules for the journey and choosing who would take charge of them. Fortunately enough, after the first round of discussions, it was resolved that there should be only one ground rule, which was set as “Raw Democracy”: all passengers had equal rights and privileges; everyone should talk and agree together before passing any major decision. We were truly a democratic republic.
In contrast, it proved far more difficult to select whom to put in charge. Professor Sa’idu B. Ahmad was officially the trip organiser and had custody of the money for fuel, so we would not risk giving him more powers. I had control of the bus door, because I sat nearest to it and watched everyone who got on and off; but someone had complained that I should not be encouraged to see myself as the ‘Bus Conductor’, lest, like most conductors, become dictatorial. Professor Mustapha Mohammed lost out too, because he spoke his English with an Oxford accent, which everyone said brought back memories of the rigidity of the colonial District Officers. Professor M. O. Bhadmus simply failed for being the youngest among the old members; besides, some feared that, if given more power, he too might behave like a conductor, because his seat was close to the door.
That was how, one after another, the older hands were disqualified, as our younger colleagues took cover in the back seats, politely refusing to take part in what had by now clearly turned into a ‘power tussle’. It all seemed to favour Professor Sani Abba Aliyu, but he was quickly turned down also, for being too much of a gentleman who might not wish to enforce the rules in extreme situations. The VC, Professor Rasheed, did not even qualify for consideration because we only gave him a lift in OUR bus; he was not a full citizen of the ‘Bus Republic’.
In the end, everyone appeared to have given a silent approval to ‘Mama’ Professor Zaynab Alkali to chair the ‘Honourable Parliament of the Bus Republic’, as someone named the group. She never got formally installed though, but it did not matter; she already had her recognised title as the Queen Maghira of Garkida, Adamawa State, since 2001.
The Age Divide
With this little problem solved, the first leg of the trip to Kaduna continued with no further incidents, as everyone tried to make up for their interrupted sleep, having taken off from Kano quite early.
 “So at which restaurant do we stop to eat in Kaduna?”, someone enquired. The answer came back promptly: “No restaurants on this trip. We all eat at a Buka or ‘Mama Put’ along the way, like any other traveller!” There was widespread laughter to signal the acceptance of the suggestion as the first major decision of the newly inaugurated parliament.
“Then please stop at the Dankande Mosque”, someone requested the driver as we approached Kaduna. “No”, another suggested, “it’s better we continue further to Birnin Gwari, before coming down to eat and walk around a little to stretch our legs.”
The last speaker seemed not to have reckoned with the condition of some of his fellow travellers though, especially those in the upper chamber of the parliament. Their wholesale rush in the direction of the conveniences confirmed this later, when the bus eventually stopped at Dankande.
The short rest stop also formally drew the dividing line between the younger members of the lower house and the older members in the upper chamber. Professor Alkali had noticed that everyone had brought back a small plastic bag into the bus. “Look at you all, being very health conscious!”, she complimented us. “You have bought fruits – apple, pear, oranges – but no junk food. That’s good.”
As we gradually opened the parcels, however, it turned out that, as if by design, only the elders had bought fruits, the younger colleagues had wraps of fresh and steaming sweet suya steak, temptingly dressed in aromatic spices. “Well”, someone summed it up, “the age line is now clear. Old people don’t eat meat, they eat fruits!”
“Who is deriding the old men?”, one of the professors quizzed, as he stood up in safari suit, shadow boxing in the air to show his agility, his snow white beard all the while raising more questions than his antics could answer.
Madness in Shakespearean Plays
Amidst the laughter, the bus sped past Buruku on the Kaduna to Lagos highway, stopping to re-fuel at Birnin Gwari, as parliament went into another session.
“Your book has introduced a new dimension to memoir writing in Nigeria”, someone said to me as we took off again.
 “Which of them?”, I asked.
“I mean El-Rufa’i’s book, The Accidental Public Servant. I saw that you were the editorial adviser on it. It has taught me about many issues in the Nigerian politics that I did not know before.”
For the next hour, parliament reviewed, assessed and scored the book. “It is a monumental work that gives deep insight into Nigerian politics and national governance; it should be compulsory reading in the Political Science class in all Nigerian universities”, someone summed up it up. “It is a candid book that only an honest mad man like El-Rufa’i could have written.”
“Well, human history owes its development to people considered mad by their contemporaries, whether in the military, religion, the sciences, or education; or, indeed, in politics and the world of business and finance. Without them, mankind could not have made the progress it did in the last three thousand years”, someone observed.
This appeared to have prompted the question: “Come to think of it, is there anything like madness in real life?” The matter was now fully academic.
“Not if we go by the conclusion to Ralph Bowman’s departmental seminar paper. Do you remember his paper on madness in Shakespearean plays? It attracted a long debate. The consensus, you know, was that, overall, there is no madness in the true sense. What is normally referred to as ‘madness’, is actually a stage in intellectual development, when the larger society fails to comprehend the communication of the alleged mad person”!
There was prolonged laughter, especially after someone interjected, “Like the Vice Chancellor of BUK and all of you travelling in this big bus from Kano to Ilorin!”
A Small Matter at Gada
“This is Gada village. The biggest buka is over there. They serve a variety of food – pounded yam, rice, eba; with stew, egusi, okra; goat meat, chicken or fish. The mosque is over there…”, Professor Bhadmus announced with authority, as we all trooped out of the bus to say our prayers and stroll around. We were now deep in Niger State, having zoomed past Kagara, Pandogari and Tegina without notice, as we argued over one issue or another. The mosque was right by the roadside, but unlike in Dankande, there were no conveniences. One had to negotiate one’s way through an alley a short distance away, to reach a wide expanse of gully-eroded land where everyone did what they wanted, right behind the row of houses and shops on the side of the road. We all felt that unless someone acted quickly to save Gada from this health hazard, an epidemic outbreak one day could sack the entire village. 
Nevertheless, after saying our prayers, quite a few of us made it into the buka shed to a have a bottle of coke or water, or place an order from the assorted menu items boiling in large pots by the side. “Hajiya, this pounded yam is quite soft, is it Poundo?”, someone queried, upon dipping his hand expertly into the plate to mould a small piece to begin eating away. “No!”, the friendly lady in charge of the open restaurant responded, making it sound like an abomination to make pounded yam from the flour produced in the factory. “Not with the beautiful yams we grow around here! That’s the mortar we use to pound it,” she concluded, pointing at it. Some had amala or rice.
With all done, we washed our hands and came out to head for the bus. That was when the young man with the freshly fried long kuli-kuli sticks laid ambush on us. Like at the buka, he too had brought out his frying pans to the side of the road to fry the groundnut cake, using that to advertise the freshness of his product. In further show of his marketing tactics, the young man quickly distributed some sticks to us as free sample, guaranteeing their freshness and urging us to try it. The tactic would later work in his favour on our way back home, when we passed through Gada again.
As the bus took off, someone voiced his observation: “Look at how the decorated air-conditioned restaurants in the cities make fat gains off us! Imagine paying two or three thousand naira for a one-course meal that one could buy here at three hundred naira.” With the driver negotiating his way among heavily loaded trailers, we passed through Bokane and Mokwa towns, while discussing the ‘hidden persuaders’ often employed by marketers to push their products, at exaggerated prices.
Jebba Bridge
“Look, the Jebba Bridge!”, someone called out. For a time all attention focused on the old monument that has stood erect for over a century now, carrying train coaches loaded with goods from Lagos further into the North and back, without any sign of weakness.
“It is quite a nice engineering piece. Can you imagine that the colonial engineers built it in this far away part of the British Empire?”, someone asked.
“What is more,” another replied, “it was of the same standard and quality as those like it built on mainland Britain itself at the time. You still find exactly the same structures there, if you travel around. It contrasts sharply with what we are building for ourselves nowadays. A few years ago I had a programme in one of the older schools in Sokoto and I noticed the contrast between the solid old building, with its date clearly inscribed ‘1938’, and the much more recent structures nearby that were already tearing apart in huge cracks.”
“I had a similar experience,” another contributor explained, “at the old Maru Teachers’ College, which is now the Zamfara State College of Education. I noticed that the timber used in roofing the veranda of the classrooms and staff houses still looked fresh and strong, after so many years of direct exposure to the weather. The college opened in 1948, you know, with Malam Aminu Kano as its first Vice Principal.”
“Even the old mud buildings of the first secondary school in Northern Nigeria, the Katsina State Training College, which opened in 1922, are still in use in Katsina,” another person yet observed.
“This reminds me of the Convocation Lecture given by Malam Liman Ciroma, the late Secretary to the Government of the Federation, in BUK a few years before he passed away. He had lamented how the arrival of colonialism had interrupted our natural development in Africa. ‘But once they had come, perhaps it was even more unfortunate that in most parts of Africa the colonialists left too early’, he had said. I can’t agree more,” someone concluded.
Perhaps the discussion would have continued further, but as the bus turned off the Lagos highway at Bode Sa’adu, to take us directly into Ilorin through the old route, someone wanted to know how the town got its name. “Malam Sa’adu was a renowned Islamic scholar during the Danfodio Jihad,” Professor Bhadmus explained. “This was his home.  It used to be the first stop for many other scholars that came after him to the south from the upper areas of the North, and who later contributed to making Ilorin the famous Islamic centre that it became.”