Remembering a ‘pious predecessor’

On a hot Kano afternoon but in the cool interior of the air-conditioned Triumph newsroom, a tall man walked towards my desk and stopped there. He was dressed in a well-embroidered brocade gown and had a slight limp. He looked very familiar but I wasn’t sure where I knew him from. ‘Assalamu aIaikum, I promised […]

On a hot Kano afternoon but in the cool interior of the air-conditioned Triumph newsroom, a tall man walked towards my desk and stopped there. He was dressed in a well-embroidered brocade gown and had a slight limp. He looked very familiar but I wasn’t sure where I knew him from.
‘Assalamu aIaikum, I promised myself I’ll come and meet my first female successor. My name is Shehu Garba Durbunde, the first editor of Straight Path.’ He announced with a smile. I immediately recalled where I knew him from. Though we were never formally introduced, I had seen him from a distance at Islamic Political Class, at the Bayero University Kano, where he was a regular commentator after lectures were delivered. I’m not sure he was still a student then or he had already graduated but he was certainly a regular face at those Tuesday evening lectures.
I replied that I was very pleased to meet him too. And added that ever since I took over as editor of the weekly Islamic column, several colleagues had told me that I was the first female to edit it.
Years after this encounter with late Shehu Durbunde, my husband, who was the first editor of Daily Triumph, told me he remembered the very day Shehu walked up to him and said he wanted to start an Islamic page on Fridays and how he gave him the approval to go ahead. Over the next two years, Shehu and I had several memorable encounters, probably because as a self-appointed mentor he had decided to take me under his wing somehow.
The first of those encounters was the day he walked into the news room and simply asked whether I was all set for the trip. ‘Which trip?’ I asked perplexed and he answered.
‘The trip to Libya, which is coming up tomorrow.’ He replied. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and Shehu took the time to explain. He told me that Mrs Maryam Abacha, who was then the wife of the Chief of Army Staff, was leading a delegation of Muslim women to a conference in Libya. The group needed a woman journalist and Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf was recommended but she declined because she had prior commitments.
So he was contacted to suggest an alternative and he gladly recommended me. But all this happened five days ago and he couldn’t believe that the FOMWAN official who was asked to reach me did not do so. Visibly disturbed by the failure in communication, Shehu eventually left our office. About an hour later a lady called to say I should bring out my international passport and be ready for a trip tomorrow by noon. I told her that I had no passport and she said I should try and get one done before noon tomorrow or else I won’t be able to make the trip.
The prospect of making my first trip abroad was too tempting to let go so easily, so I quickly went to my editor, Malam Garba Shehu and told  him about the problem. He immediately instructed his secretary to draft a letter of introduction for me to the immigration office in Kano, telling them that I urgently needed a passport to travel with the next day.
The immigration officials obliged us and I spent the remaining hours of that day and most the following morning hours pursuing the passport. But it was not ready until 1pm that day. An hour after the flight had left Kano for Lagos, taking along all those who were billed to go.
My next memorable encounter with Brother Shehu was after he had sent me a ‘husband’ right in the middle of the Triumph newsroom. It was a Friday afternoon and as a young sub-editor with the Sunday Triumph, I was rushing to get my three broad-sheet pages ready because it was production day. Along came a well-dressed young man who politely asked to see me in private. I told him that wasn’t possible because I was busy trying to beat my production deadline. He then asked for an appointment to come back later and I wondered whether I shouldn’t just see him then and get it over with. So grabbing the next seat I could find (not my normal desk) I told my visitor that I could spare a few minutes to talk to him and gestured him to the chair opposite.
As soon as he took his seat, we exchanged polite greetings before he went straight to the point. He told me he was there to propose marriage to me because I had come highly recommended by others. I was so shocked by what he had to say that for a while I was just speechless. I looked to the left and to the right, wondering whether anyone had heard what he said but everyone was so busy in the crowded newsroom that no one seemed to be listening.
Having recovered from the shock, I simply said to the young man (he looked no more than 25 years old by my estimation and I was 23 then) that I was all spoken for, so he had come too late.
With a look that was either surprise or disappointment, my suitor rose from his chair and wished me luck. Then he left. Three days later, Shehu had showed up at my desk and with a smile demanded to know why I turned down his candidate. ‘Your candidate?’ I’d asked, confused.
‘Yes, the young man who came and proposed marriage to you recently.
Why did you turn him down?’
‘Oh, so you sent him to me? I should have known.’ I replied. ‘But I didn’t turn him down,’ I added, ‘I merely told him the truth. I am indeed all spoken for.’
‘I see, so when is the wedding?’ Shehu had asked.
‘I’m not sure when, that’s for our parents to decide.’ I answered. And Shehu had accepted that and left.
Our next encounter happened one day when I closed from work and was rushing to look for the driver who dropped people home on production nights. We met at the corridor and I asked what Shehu was doing at the Triumph at that hour. He said he had come to see me but since I was on my way home he will drop me home while we talked. We walked back to his car and Shehu opened the back seat, indeed the owner’s corner for me to sit. Apparently, no other female sits on the passenger seat in front, except his wife Hajara and any of his sisters.
The moment he began to drive, Shehu had told me his mission that day.
He explained that a colleague of mine, who was a good friend of his, had reported himself to him. He said that particular friend had told him how he offended me through a joke and how all attempts to get me to talk to him and accept his apology had failed. So he had gone to Shehu and asked him to intervene and that was why he came.
‘Do you have any idea what he said to me?’ I asked Shehu in response.
‘He said…’ I began but Shehu quickly interrupted me by saying ‘Please don’t tell me what he said. If he was too ashamed of what he said to quote it to me, it wouldn’t be fair to hear it from you. All he told me was he had offended you and you wouldn’t give him a chance to apologise. And I promised him that I will get you to pardon him and resume talking to him.’ After insisting, for a while, that what his friend said was too offensive to forgive or forget, I gave in to Shehu’s appeal and agreed to talk to that colleague again.
I had no idea I was seeing Shehu for the last time, when a few months later I was invited to speak at a Maulid celebration lecture, at a boarding secondary school for girls. The lead speaker was Late Sheik Aminuddeen Abubakar. I didn’t know that Shehu and his very close friend Malam Rabiu were in the audience, until they walked up to me after the lecture and shared a greeting.
Not long after that, I went to live with my elder sister and her family in Lagos. It was while there, about a year after the Maulid encounter, that I heard about Shehu’s death in a road accident. It was so shocking that I could not believe what I heard. It was not until I showed up at his home to condole his wife, Hajara, (whom I had known long before I knew him because of our common friend, Hauwa Muhammad) that I finally accepted the fact that Shehu was dead.
He was not only the first editor of Straight Path, he was also the first editor of an Islamic newspaper in Kano, The Pen, a position he held until his death. He was a thoroughbred Muslim activist, who dedicated his life to propagating Islam by establishing islamiyyah schools and by encouraging Muslim women to get empowered through pursuing education and suitable career paths. It seemed almost fitting that Brother Shehu should lose his life on an Islamic mission, because the accident that claimed his life happened when he was returning from the commissioning of a mosque in a town outside Kano.
June 6th 2016 will be 25 years since we lost this illustrious son of Islam. May Allah SWT have mercy on him and grant him a home in Aljannah firdaus, amin.