Walin Lafiagi: Memories of a life well-lived

At about 2:30 pm on the day the final journey to eternity commenced for Alhaji Saidu Isa OFR, Walin Lafiagi, my wife and I had only managed to approach Bida, from our Kaduna base, on our way to Lafiagi, Kwara State. Proceeding from these parts to join family, friends and well-wishers, it was all too […]

At about 2:30 pm on the day the final journey to eternity commenced for Alhaji Saidu Isa OFR, Walin Lafiagi, my wife and I had only managed to approach Bida, from our Kaduna base, on our way to Lafiagi, Kwara State. Proceeding from these parts to join family, friends and well-wishers, it was all too certain we would miss the funeral rites as scheduled, the same Thursday, October 17th, 2017. The Suleja-Lapai-Baddegi-Agaie-Bida-Enagi route was a sad reminder of some of the many contradictions imposed by our leadership failure. Only a few elites in Alhaji Isa’s generation still traverse segments of that road between Niger and Kwara states. The choice of Enagi route terminates in some mix of adventurous voyage across the Niger River by speed boat for a scary hour-long ride; and I was with a woman inconsolably broken. 

It was our best bet out of the other options, and not even a kind offer to have us board an available small capacity airplane from Abuja to Ilorin was attractive enough to assuage the anxiety to join other mourners in good time. A delegation from Abuja included Senator Shaba Lafiagi, who led other family members, and had taken off from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at about 3:30 pm to Ilorin. With about two more hours by road between Ilorin and Lafiagi, my wife and I made it ahead of a delayed air flight in our ‘boat cruise’ to Lafiagi. Whatever, we missed the rites of Wali’s eternal journey, except for those who arrived from Ilorin and nearby towns.

About two months ago, Alhaji Isa, who had barely recovered from illness, traveled to Abuja from his Ilorin base along that same terrible Niger road that I could not drive a car through. For another time, he was being called out for inauguration from retirement to take on a new assignment in Abeokuta, in Ogun Sate. It will take a round of queries to follow that avoidable road trip, since he had the option to fly. But Baba was not your regular elite. Until his death, he traveled mostly by road, and has turned down every persuasion to be flown abroad for treatment on the generous bill of the state government, or from any of the two separate councils he chaired, when his health relapsed with some frequency in the recent past. 

Baba would not accommodate the character deficit, contempt or hypocrisy of the average Nigerian elite, and he spared no void affirming his firm disposition against the grain of what represented, a norm among that strata. He usually stuck his head out to risk isolation and neglect in his defence of truth and justice. Those were part of his ideals. I recall several instances in the last 12 years of my encounter with him, when he called the bluffs where others would not dare. There was a particular one he shared regarding his difference of opinion on a position with the late Oloye, Chief Olusola Saraki who led the Kwara contingent of the 2014 National Conference of which he was a delegate. Walin Lafiagi was wired like that. 

For over 20 years after retiring from active public service as a technocrat and diplomat with an unblemished career at state and national levels, the closing days of Ahlhaji Saidu Isa’s life has been of consistent devotion to the goals of his eventual end. In the past few years in particular, he committed his energy and resources to the multimillion naira Central Mosque project of his Lafiagi, Edu Local government community. In 19 long years, it had been a dream he pursued with relentless vigour, ensuring the project is realized and providing leadership to the cause, to its end. The huge edifice, now long completed, has equally been complemented with an expansive women’s wing equipped with all amenities required including restrooms, from Alhaji Isa’s personal funding. It was this concluding part of the entire project that heralded his last public appearance the day before his passing. It was his parting shot with the community, as he was said to have traveled from his Ilorin base to deliver panel doors on his insistence that, the section is put to use in two days ahead, being the next Juma’at service. 

As if prompted by death to do a premonitory roundup, Baba, that Wednesday diligently dispatched payments to all outstanding liabilities identified with the mosque expansion project, including the fulfillment of an initial pledge of cash donation to the Jama’atu Nasril Islam youth wing of the community. Before leaving Lafiagi the same day, Baba was said to have extended a hand to everyone he met, meeting the needs of quite a number of them, including paying a brief homage to the Emir. His body returned to the same community the following morning to commence his final journey to eternity. It was a pact fulfilled. 

Alhaji Isa’s humble beginnings as a native boy from the backwaters of Kwara North and his eventual, modest end can only be what it is. In between these extremes, Baba remained meek in a league of elite-gone-irate with mad acquisition of wealth. Until his death, Baba owned no landed property in Abuja, or elsewhere outside Ilorin and his hometown, even with all the privileges he has been exposed to. 

Baba settled for a career in the state civil service, against an earlier offer to teach at the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University, in recognition of his exceptional performance. But like they say with goldfish, his sojourn through the state public service, in several capacities as Clerk of the State Assembly, Permanent Secretary, and rising to become the Secretary to the State Government proved he could not hide. His early retirement to farming was truncated by his appointment as Minister of State External Affairs under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and retained under Chief Ernest Shonekan. Until his death, the truncation continued. He once served as Chairman of the State Local Government Service Commission and was recently appointed Chairman, Governing Council of Kwara State University, Malete and Federal College of Education, Osi-Ile, Abeokuta Ogun state; appointments he held before his death.

As the curtain closes on Walin Lafiagi, we are once again reminded that there is no cause more fulfilling than a life devoted to humanity and the service of Allah. In the end of it all, there is no joy more consoling knowing that Baba typifies the embodiment of those for whom Allah has promised an enduring reward in the hereafter. Wali’s life was well-lived. And in this, we hold the belief and wish in our prayers that, our supposed loss is his gain from a graceful end. May Allah be pleased with Alhaji Saidu Isa. Ameen!

Sa’id wrote from Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna.