Mohammed Haruna: Sunset at Dawn

As a student for the catholic priesthood then, I was along with several others, sent by His Excellency-Most Rev. Dr. Joseph Danlami Bagobiri, the Bishop of Kafanchan Diocese, to study Philosophy and Theology at the prestigiously enviable Saint Joseph Major Seminary, Ikot – Ekpene, Akwa-Ibom State. While in the seminary for a decade or so, […]

As a student for the catholic priesthood then, I was along with several others, sent by His Excellency-Most Rev. Dr. Joseph Danlami Bagobiri, the Bishop of Kafanchan Diocese, to study Philosophy and Theology at the prestigiously enviable Saint Joseph Major Seminary, Ikot – Ekpene, Akwa-Ibom State.
While in the seminary for a decade or so, and with other students from within and without the country, I learnt many extra-class lessons especially in my interactions with students from other climes and cultures. One of such lessons was that: an average person outside the north, largely as a result of the collapse of the railway system that has made a large chunk of people unable to travel outside their terrains, believes, among other things, that all northerners are Muslims and free-loaders. And no matter how well you try to explain, even with a claim of having had been baptized or initiated into Christianity by the Pope, you are at best a Hausa-Christian who may not be at the same level of Christianess with say, an Igbo or Ogoni Christian.
And based on this, we were called names ranging from “Aboki” to even “Boko Haram”. And this probably explains Bishop Mathew Kukah’s frustration when he severally complained about his friends and colleagues in Lagos, Enugu and in other parts of the country who on many occasions introduced him as “Father Kukah. A Hausa priest from the north”.
The most common of these seemingly conventional nearsighted and very nagging perceptions, is the view that northerners are doomed not to excel in academics.
The implication of all these on me was dual. One, in spite of our volatile nuances in the north based on ethnicity and religion in built in our sad and painful experience of feudalism as practiced by the emirates, we are, outside the region, seen as one and the same with no distinction whatsoever. And two, our so-called educational backwardness, the talk of which has almost become a cliche today, is by nature and that we are doomed by some unknown gods to remain so forever.
No doubt, these thoughts traumatized me and other students from the north in an inexplainable and startling manner that I was particularly not to overcome until I met a Mallam Mohammed Haruna in 2011.   The circumstance of our meeting was, I may say, accidental, but now I could see that it was actually programmed by God. Though I had severally heard about him through his friend, the then Fr. Kukah, and had equally read his classic foreword to the cleric’s collection “The Mustard Seed”, we then had not met.
With the help of a friend, I approached him for a foreword to a book I edited with the title “Fr. Kukah’s Discourses”. Surprisingly, the man appeared simple, ordinary, approachable and even mortal like the rest of us, contrary to my imagination of a miniature god based on his pedigree as an unparalleled patriarch of journalism and guru in political science and government. Malam Haruna knows something about everything and everything about something especially in journalism, political science and government.
Since then, I have regretted not knowing him earlier especially for who he is: a nervous, star-studded journalist, knight, teacher and above all, a northern breastplate who is ever disposed to dream for, protect, shield and defend the north against the attacks of insular-countrymen and other men and women within and without the pen and paper apostolate, who are out to blackmail, stereotype and destroy the north.
Meeting Mallam Haruna, Bishop Kukah, Fr. Gotan, Adamu Adamu, Fr. Alex Yayock, Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Kabir Yusuf, Dr. Haroun Adamu, Mannir Dan-Ali, Dr. Chris Abashiya, Mahmud Jega, Prof. Andrew Nock, Hannatu Musawa and thoughts of the likes of Dr. Bala Usman, M.D. Yusuf, Abubakar Gimba, Aminu Kano, Hajiya Bilkisu, among several other intellectuals of northern stock, has left me wondering why some chaps still believe northerners are doomed not to excel in academics.
Among all these intellectuals, Mohammed Haruna, as a proper and complete northerner, based on the criteria of geography and religion, stands out among his generation as the greatest defender of the north and its people. And others may add: also its religion; “northern Islam’. This is probably why Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed called him “The protector-in-chief”. And for doing this, Haruna has no apology and might even want to cross sword with anyone who dares him. And he does it so passionately that a reader of his column in both nation and Daily Trust on Wednesdays remarked: “He writes what he thinks even if he is the only Nigerian holding that view”.
He himself was later to say: “we are born into a tribe, religion or region and we see things through those prisms. However, while I have no problem with bias as such, I do have one with the kind which is so deep that those who cling onto it never want to hear-anything positive about the other side”. Indeed, this is true considering that every point of view is from a viewpoint. And Mallam Haruna is not to blame for being a Muslim knight considering the atrocities that are often attributed to Islam rather than the few Muslims who are the culprits.
On September 8, 2010, one Olaitan Ladipo, while reacting to Mohammed Haruna’s column said: “It makes me wonder what, in those days in the late 70s in the U.I (University of Ibadan), made us look forward to reading your column even though we knew it was rabidly pro-north, a habit I have been unable to give up even now. We must have been seduced by the rare literacy, perhaps more so even now, of your writings”. Wow! An amiscal commendation in inimical outlook, the Latin students will say.
For all that Haruna stands for, it is unbelievable that the career of this uncommon man spanning over four decades may have come to a terminal point with the ratification of his nomination as INEC commissioner recently by the Federal Council of State.
At least, Mahmud Jega clued us in. I am sure many of his readers who by merely being his regular readers qualify for a certificate in English, History and Political Science, must be lamenting now that their teacher’s career has set while they are yet to graduate. This is really Sunset at Dawn; and it caught us unexpectedly.
Finally, though Haruna himself has said in his very last piece that it amuses him each time people talk about Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s free education in the then western region because, while the great premier of the west gave free education, in the north, they were paid to go to school in their hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
“The problem, I think”, he said, “was that the next generation of the region’s politicians chose to pay lip service to investment in education, especially primary and secondary education without which invariably we could only send garbage into our tertiary schools. And as they say of computers: garbage in, garbage out”.
Really, this corroborates Bishop Kukah’s submission that the region’s elites have only been using the great Sardauna’s name and Islam to either buy legitimacy or as meal tickets.
As Mohammed Haruna and his contemporaries-beneficiaries of the great Sardauna’s be-paid-and-go-to-school policy retire from active engagements with and from the society, with some of them gradually congregating at the departure lounge of life, at a time the next generation of the region’s leaders and academics appear unsophisticated enough to replace them, it is no exaggeration to say that the north stands a great danger unless something is quickly done.

Damina, a student of Religion and Society, can be reached on [email protected]