For a self-styled “humble Muslim fundamentalist”, his use of the occasion of presenting his then three newly published books two years or so ago to honour a long-serving elderly Catholic priest in Minna, the Niger State capital, couldn’t have seemed more incongruous. But then Malam Abubakar Gimba, OFR, technocrat, best-selling author (Sunset for a Mandarin, Witness to Tears), banker, newspaper pundit, and essayist, was not your stereo-typical Muslim fundamentalist.
The word fundamentalism has since assumed pejorative connotation, Islamic fundamentalism even more so. The fundamentalist is generally viewed as an irrational animal who wishes to return to or replicate the past, whereas the Islamic fundamentalist is invariably equated with political activism, fanaticism, terrorism and anti-Westernism, etc.
Gimba, who passed on last Wednesday at age 63, was none of these. On the contrary, he was liberal-minded in the best sense of the word, a pacifist and honesty and humility personified.
It was a mark of his liberal-mindedness that he chose the presentation on May 24, 2012 of his three books to celebrate the immeasurable contribution the Very Reverend Father Jeremiah Derry O’Connell had made to education in the state. O’Connell was an Irish Catholic priest who has lived virtually all his adult life in Niger State.
For nearly 50 years the reverend father helped to establish schools in the state, notably Saint Fatima Secondary School in Minna and Saint Maryamu Secondary School in Bida, taught in them and administered them. Today, at 79, he remains the humble principal of Government Secondary School, Minna, the name which Saint Fatima was changed into when governments took over denominational schools in Nigeria in the late sixties.
In his characteristic humility, Gimba chose the relatively bare Assembly Hall of O’Connell’s school when there were pushier venues in the state to celebrate the man who had arguably contributed to Western education in Niger State more than any other individual. It was a mark of the high regard citizens of the state, at home and in diaspora, had for Gimba as the inviter and O’Connell as the celebrant, that the large hall was packed to the brim and virtually the state’s Who’s Who, including former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the state’s governor, were in attendance.
In his tribute to O’Connell, Gimba likened the priest to Mary Slessor of Calabar and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, India. What he cherished most about him, he said, was “his quiet perseverance and wholehearted commitment to the education of our sons and daughters of every religious parentage and parental status, without any intrusion from the enthusiasm of his pastoral calling. This is the hallmark of an honest, great man. Father O’Connell is a symbol and an embodiment of the spirit of what should be.”
What Gimba said of O’Connell was indeed true of the man himself; as a technocrat for 12 years at the end of which he retired in 1987 as permanent secretary in his state, as an executive director of Union Bank Plc for four years, as chairman of the alumni association of his alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as member of its council, as president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), and in every assignment he was given, Gimba practiced what he preached with dedication and honesty.
In one of the tributes that have since been paid to the humble but great man, he was credited with being the pioneer chairman of the council of the Niger State owned Ibrahim Babangida University (IBBU), Lapai, his hometown. Actually, he was much more than that; he built the university.
When Engineer Abdulkadir Kure, then governor of the state decided to found it, he entrusted its building solely to Gimba – and gave him a blank cheque to boot. Kure could not have found a better person than Gimba who preached and practiced the principle of leadership as enunciated by Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), a principle he discussed in a chapter in A Matter of Faith, one of the three books he presented in honour of O’Connell, namely the principle that each and every one of us must exercise leadership responsibility whatever our station in life, whether as ruler, husband, wife, even slave.
Few human beings would have carried out that assignment as Gimba did; not only did he carry out his brief diligently, he never enriched himself in doing so. Today, IBBU is one of the best state universities in the country, in spite of its relative neglect by the state’s current administration.
In the last 15 years I have, as a reporter and columnist, read quite a lot of articles on innumerable subjects from our newspapers and magazines. Of the lot three have left the greatest impression on me for their precision, eloquence and the profoundness of their insight into Nigerian politics.
These are “Yorubaland as a riddle” by Femi Osofisan, a professor of Drama and columnist at the defunct Comet (December 17, 2000), “Jonathan and the Corporate Area Boys” by Eniola Bello, aka Eni-B, the managing director of Thisday and a leading back-page columnist of the newspaper (Thisday, May 30 2011), and an open letter Gimba wrote to President Olusegun Obasanjo in the Daily Trust of August 27, 2001.
How I wish I could reproduce each of them because of their relevance to our political-economy today. But since for want of space I can’t even summarise them without doing injustice to them, I can only plead with the reader to search for them and read them.
Osofisan’s piece was an analysis of the abuse of ethnicity by our politicians in the struggle for power and how this has held us back as a nation. Eni-B’s was an account of the first dinner President Jonathan hosted in the State House, Marina, for the top echelon of Corporate Nigeria. The picture he painted of the obsequiousness of our business moguls in the presence of power would only make you feel sorry for Nigeria and it explains why our economy is in a terrible mess.
If Osofisan’s and Eni-B’s articles provided us with insights on why our politics and economics are in such sorry state, Gimba’s open letter to Obasanjo possessed the greatest foresight to date of the huge mess we are in today.
In that letter, written at the time the Oputa Panel Obasanjo had set up in 1999, ostensibly to heal the wounds of past wrongs in the country, started sitting in 2001, Gimba pleaded with Obasanjo as a self-proclaimed Born Again Christian, to forgive the wrongs that had been done him and focus instead on genuine reconciliation in the land.
“The Holy Bible” Gimba said, “fully endorses reconciliation when it says (Corinthians 5:19) ‘God (the Most High) was in Christ…reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them and has committed to us the word reconciliation.’”
He then concluded his open letter with the parable of the rejected cornerstone, again with a quotation from the Holy Bible. “Think about it,” he pleaded with Obasanjo. “In particular, (think about) Psalm 118:22 ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.’ Your Excellency, Mr. President, you were once rejected. Then the Lord restored you to His Grace. Now you are our chief cornerstone. You must do the Lord’s will.”
No matter how hard he tries, Obasanjo cannot disclaim the main responsibility for the mess we are in today because, far from heeding Gimba’s call for him to do God’s will, he chose to do his own; throughout his eight years as president, settling scores for real and imagined wrongs was apparently his main guiding principle of state policy.
Gimba must have died a sad man that his prophesy came to pass. May Allah grant him aljanna firdaus.
