Our week of grief

One of my unforgettable sessions, at the Daily Trust editorial board happened on the day of President ‘Yar’adua’s funeral. The ‘who was who’ in Abuja had all gone to Katsina for that sad event, and the rest of us had come for our weekly editorial board meeting. Workers and students were all at home because […]

One of my unforgettable sessions, at the Daily Trust editorial board happened on the day of President ‘Yar’adua’s funeral. The ‘who was who’ in Abuja had all gone to Katsina for that sad event, and the rest of us had come for our weekly editorial board meeting. Workers and students were all at home because the day had been declared work free. 

While the rain poured heavily above us, we sat around our large table at our big gazebo, in the lovely garden behind the Media Trust head office. The rain was so thick and strong you’d think the skies were shedding tears in tune with a country in mourning.

Our discussions naturally centred around the death of the president. I looked around and saw that we almost had a full house because almost every chair around the table was occupied. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. I found myself thinking that just like we were all there discussing President Umaru Yar’adua’s demise, one day our own deaths will be discussed.

I looked again and said to myself that one day death will strike at the editorial board. And it won’t just strike once, but it will continue coming till everyone of us seated there discussing it today succumbs to it. This is, after all, the promise of Almighty Allah in the Holy Quran where He said ‘Every soul must taste of death.’ 

Needless to say, I did not voice my scary thoughts to the gathering of intellectuals that was busy deliberating on the way forward for Nigeria, in the wake of Umaru Yar’adua’s death. And ‘luckily’ for us it took exactly three years and a month, after the President’s funeral, before death struck at our editorial board. But struck hard it did, at the very heart of the board, because it came for the life of the Permanent Secretary of the board itself. 

We jokingly called him permanent secretary because Suleiman Muhammad was the only face that was never missing at the weekly meetings except when he was on annual leave. He had slumped and died on a Thursday, editorial board day, after he had gotten everything ready for the session and gone out to the bank. It was a shocking blow to us and we deeply grieved for our amiable and honest colleague. But we knew that death had just began it’s job on our board.

Less than two years later, death came calling again. This time it was Ibrahim Auduson,  late Suleiman’s office-mate and his successor as secretary, Daily Trust editorial board. He died after a long battle with kidney ailment. Then in June last year, we lost Malam Ujudud Shariff, a columnist and member of the board. He also succumbed to kidney failure. I first knew him as our editor-in-chief, at the Triumph newspapers in Kano. 

And just when we thought the year wouldn’t end on a sad note, on the night of Friday the 30th of December 2016, the board again lost another respected member. This time it was the easygoing but humorous blue-blood, Dr Sanusi Abubakar. I was sitting right next to my dear friend Dr Hadiza Nuhu in Kano, where we were accepting condolences over the death of her daughter Aisha Idris Bugaje, when I received the text message informing me of Dr. Sanusi’s death. 

She couldn’t remember him immediately when I first notified her, but when I mentioned the sad incident that bound their two families together, Dr Hadiza recalled who he was. By some tragic irony, the two families had both lost their first daughters in the ill- fated Dana plane that crashed near Lagos in June 2012. 

Amina Idris Bugaje and Kaltum Sanusi Abubakar were among the over one hundred victims of that tragedy. By some strange coincidence the two families had found themselves mourning again, four and a half years later. It was indeed a week of grief for members of both families and those of us who were close to them. 

Aisha Idris Bugaje, better known as Nana had passed away on Thursday December 29th leaving behind her young husband, Muhammad Isyaku Tofa and their 15-month-old daughter Amina. Though a science student, Aisha had studied Mass Communications at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria due to her love for and interest in writing. She wrote beautifully too, in a very good and simple style. Twice before in this paper we have published tributes she had written to her late sisters. First, Nana wrote about Ikram who had died at the age of five and just two years ago she wrote about her virtual twin, Amina Firdausi, who had died in the Dana crash. By her own admission, the tribute took two years to write because she just couldn’t come to terms with the reality of her sister’s death. They were a package deal, she had written in that memorial piece, because they went to the same school and had the same friends. 

Aisha had written other articles too which were not memorial tributes, and had proved herself an expressive and talented writer. She was a soft-spoken, well-mannered and deeply religious young lady. She died after a brief illness at the age of 27.

As a school girl going to my aunt’s home for school holidays at Yakasai, Sabuwar Unguwa, I had heard a lot about one Yaya Femi. Apparently his younger brother known as Yaya Tuta, lived next door to my aunty’s home and the two families were actually related. Even in those days I’d wondered how a Hausa man could have a Yoruba name. Though I’d never met him then, I did know that he was a Hausa man and indeed a nephew to the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero. 

It was not until a few decades later, when I found myself sitting next to him at the Daily Trust editorial board, that it occurred to me to ask how Dr Sanusi Abubakar came to be called Femi. 

 He explained simply that many of them were named Sanusi after the late Emir Muhammadu Sanusi 1. But when Emir Bayero married an Ilorin princess, the daughter of the late Sulu Gambari, Sanusi Abubakar was a school boy then. The royal bride took a liking to him and named him Femi, in order to distinguish him from the other Sanusis in the royal household. This name stuck to him till the end of his life.

His death was a shock, especially to those of us who didn’t even know he had been ill. He was a real intellectual whose specialisation in Economics made him the first choice to draft any editorial requiring economic analysis. 

Because I called him Yaya, big brother, he also always called me Qanwata, my little sister. And he often joked that I was the only reason he was coming to the weekly meetings, so if I continued to miss them,  he too would stop coming altogether. 

He was full of interesting anecdotes about people he had met and places he had been to, indeed there was never a dull moment with Yaya Femi.

One day he saw me with a copy of Sisters Islamic magazine and quickly asked me to let him buy it off me. He explained that as a father to five girls, this is the stuff he needed to get them to read. I let him have it but he insisted on paying for it. Dr Sanusi was very glad when I  promised him past copies of the magazine for his young daughters. He talked about his daughters with the affection one reserves for his special friends. I’m very sure that they’ll miss the loving, easy-going  and affectionate father that he was; just as we will miss a brother, a friend and an intellectual of repute. May Almighty Allah have mercy on Dr Sanusi Abubakar and Aisha Nana Bugaje. May He SWT, grant thmes in aljannah Firdausi, amin.