Prof El-Miskin: The other half of our loss

It was inevitable that they would grace the cover of most Nigerian newspapers on Friday last week, they were the most prominent of the earliest-known victims of the Hajj stampede. But equally inevitable was the fact that Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf and Professor Tijjani El- Miskin knew each other and were well-known to many. This was […]

It was inevitable that they would grace the cover of most Nigerian newspapers on Friday last week, they were the most prominent of the earliest-known victims of the Hajj stampede. But equally inevitable was the fact that Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf and Professor Tijjani El- Miskin knew each other and were well-known to many. This was what made their double loss a monumental tragedy for this part of the country and the nation at large.
It is for this reason that I earlier planned two tributes, one for each of them, in this column last week. But after penning what I could on Aunty Bilkisu, I got so emotionally exhausted that I couldn’t write any more. I felt drained by the sheer weight of the exercise, knowing that it was a piece to say goodbye, to accept that she was gone forever.
So I had to delay my piece on Professor El-Miskin till today.
In-between hearing about their death and now, we have learnt the painful truth that many other Nigerians, prominent and ordinary, have also been lost at the Mina stampede. The best known to me were Justice
Abubakar Jega, whom I met once and Hajiya Hadiza Imam, the wife of my former manager in Continental Merchant Bank, Alhaji Garba Imam. May Almighty Allah accept their shahada and give them Aljannah Firdausi, amin.
I met Professor El-Miskin for the first time at an iftar dinner organized by the German Embassy in Abuja, during Ramadan ten years ago (October 2005). I was invited by His Royal Highness, Emir Muhammad Sanusi II and his wife Hajiya Rakiya, when he was the Managing Director of First Bank, and the duo had come to Abuja on official assignment and was staying at the Transcorp Hilton.
I had gone to see them at the hotel because Rakiya wanted to present some collaborative proposal from her London office to the Daily Trust management and my husband was out of town and there was only me available. After our fruitful afternoon discussions, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, as he was then, invited me to join them for the German Embassy iftar; having heard my views on terrorism, because there was going to be a presentation on terrorism at the dinner. I readily accepted. By the time I showed up for the iftar, I found out that the speaker was none other than Professor Tijjani-el- Miskin, someone I had heard a lot about but never met.
As was to be expected, he did a short but excellent presentation on so-called Islamic terrorism, such that the rage with which I came gradually dissipated. I had expected the usual apologetic presentations, blaming Bin Laden, blaming extremism and regurgitating all those lies about 9/11 but I saw none of that. Indeed I ended up seeing an echo of my skeptical mind in the Professor’s viewpoint. That encouraged me to rise and give an addendum to what he said, when the floor was opened for comments. We greeted briefly at the end of the programme, because the German ambassador had cornered him and the other dignitaires, and I had to rush home to my children.
I was to meet him again, two years later, when I went to cover an international Tijjaniyyah conference hosted by the King of Morocco, Muhammad the 6th at Fez City in Morocco. He immediately recognized me and engaged me in a discussion of an article I wrote after my trip to Turkey just a month before. He was deeply interested in the happenings in Turkey and questioned me on a lot of issues that were making headlines from there.
But even as I answered him, I realized that I was talking to someone who knew more about Turkey than I did. Even the way he pronounced the names of the leading political figures there showed someone quite knowledgeable about them. I left with the distinct impression that his erudite scholar only humbly engaged me in this discussion because he was being sociable not because he really didn’t know.
We were never to meet again since Morocco but we had spoken a few times on phone. Once when I couldn’t show up in Damaturu to present a paper during a Muslim Sister’s Organisation (MSO) conference and my sister, Amina, was asked to present it on my behalf, she came back to tell me that the Professor had greatly complimented my paper. Needless to say, I was greatly flattered.
Like other writers have said, the death of this multi-lingual professor of Islamic studies is a huge loss to the Muslim Ummah and the international intellectual community. More than a just university don and a Sheikh of the Tijjaniyah order, he was also a deputy secretary general of the Nigerian Supreme council for Islamic Affairs and the Executive Chairman of the Borno State Pilgrims Welfare Agency.
Before then he was the Director-General of the Nigeria Arabic Village at Gamboru, Borno State.
An eloquent speaker, the late Professor was very prominent at academic and Islamic lecture circles and has hundreds of seminar papers and several publications to his name. He only recently succeeded his late father, as the Tijaniyyah Sheikh when Sheikh Abubakar El-Miskin, died in Maiduguri last November.
A very close friend of late El-Miskin, Alhaji Ali Gaji, Wazirin Gujba, who spoke with some on-line publications, talked about this distinguished academician. ‘We really lost an intellectual of very high standard and he was not only vast in his field, but one can say that he had virtually an encyclopedic knowledge of world events and current affairs. Whenever you want to know some developments, particularly of African events, nationally, or internationally, you need to meet Prof. Tijani for in-depth and highly intellectual analysis that you can hardly get from any other person. This is one specialty that he had.
“He was very eloquent in about four to five languages like French, English, Arabic and Spanish, Hausa, not to talk of his own native Kanuri language. When the king of Spain visited Borno in the mid-80s, he was conversing fluently and translating the speech of the King of Spain to the Shehu of Borno. Tijani was officially co-opted to do that job and he did it very well.”
“Our friendship started from University of Maiduguri and what actually brought us together were union activities because we were both very active in unionism. That was how we came together. When NTA Maiduguri was launched in preparation for FESTAC, we (would) normally go to NTA Maiduguri then he presented programs and commentary on current affairs and world events, and our friendship continued to develop because of his interest in intellectual pursuit as both of us were in academics.,,, Even before he left for this hajj, he was here in my house and he told me he was involved in the Amirul Hajj team of Borno.
“Yesterday (on Sallah day) in the evening, before I went for prayers, I had it in my mind to call him. I even took my phone, but I said ‘oh, this is the time they are likely to be stoning Satan’, so I decided I would call him after magriba hoping that they must have finished by that time and returned to base. Then all of a sudden I was sitting in my parlour around 11:00 pm, I got a call from Mecca that my friend was dead. I was totally shocked and I couldn’t even tell any of my family members. The calls kept coming in and one even called me from Sudan, and all over the country people were calling me.
“His death is a great loss not just to our society but to the entire humankind because even this year alone, he was invited to Turkey, Morocco, USA and Senegal to present papers on one topic or the other. So that shows you how he was an internationally-accepted scholar.
Anywhere that Prof Tijjani spoke on any topic, the people would continue to follow up to get more from him.
“In the North East and particularly northern Nigeria, he was regarded as one star that was always hunted to tap from his wealth of knowledge. He presented issues and the needs of his people and anytime he did that it was always in-depth. He had a vast knowledge of the Borno Empire, vast knowledge of the Sokoto Caliphate and the good knowledge of Islam, maybe because of his comparative Literature background.” Allahu akbar!
Like I said, in conclusion to this column last week, our only consolation at a time like this is knowing that these great individuals have died a good death. We hope they have earned their smooth-sail ticket to aljannah because of the circumstances of their demise. Again may AlmightyAllah re-unite us with them in His mercy and paradise, amin.