Hajiya Dada: A Matriarch Departs

Olusegun Adeniyi

Our movement was fairly routine. We would fly into Katsina Airport from Abuja and drive straight to the presidential lodge. But on this occasion, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua changed the protocol. “Please drive straight to my mother’s place. I came purposely to see her.” Prior to that day, only the ADC, Mustapha Onoyiveta, CSO, Yusuf Tilde, SA Domestic, Hamza Nadada, PLO, Habu Habib, Chief Physician, Salisu Banye and Alhaji Inuwa Baba (the only ‘Senator’ with a global constituency) went with the president whenever he visited his mother. That occasion provided the first opportunity to meet Hajiya Dada, and I noticed something as we took turns to greet her. Though there were a few chairs in the room for visitors, the late president took his seat on the floor beside her mattress. Before we left them alone, I witnessed how the power dynamics in Nigeria had changed as Yar’Adua attended to his mother in awe. When he eventually came out of the room, he held a jug I was told contained fura da nono, a special delicacy she always made for him.

I arrived back to Abuja on Monday from China and was not feeling too well when the news broke that Hajiya Dada had passed. But I was determined to pay her my last respects by attending the burial slated for 1.30PM on Tuesday. I must therefore express my appreciation to the former Governor of Gombe State, Senator Danjuma Goje who provided a space for me on the aircraft that took him, his former Kebbi counterpart, Senator Adamu Aliero and Professor Modibbo Ahmed to Katsina. And I was impressed that Vice President Kashim Shettima, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Labour Party presidential candidate in the last election, Mr Peter Obi, as well as former Senate President Ahmad Lawan, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe and many other important dignitaries defied the slight rain to attend the prayers on the football field of Katsina Township stadium.

Beyond the usual stories you hear about mothers of influential children, I really did not know Hajiya Dada. So, apart from Baba, Nadada, Banye and Tilde whom she had known before her son became president, the only other person close to her among us was Mustapha. It started from an innocuous incident. On one occasion the president visited her, we were outside when a family member came to call Mustapha. What we later learnt was that Hajiya Dada had asked the president, “Where is that soldier who usually stands behind you?”. It was no surprise that Mustapha arrived Katsina on Tuesday with former First Lady, Hajia Turai and is still there with the family to join the third day prayers today.

In every sense, the late Hajiya Dada bore similarities to the late Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy of the United States. Mrs Kennedy died in 1995 at age 104. Hajiya Dada died at age 102. Mrs Kennedy was married to a top politician who chaired the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Hajiya Dada’s husband was also a politician, administrator and Minister of Lagos Affairs during Nigeria’s First Republic. Mrs Kennedy had nine children, including a US President who died in office and two senators who also died in office, all during her lifetime. Hajiya Dada also had nine children, among them a former number two man in Nigeria, Major General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and his younger brother, Umaru who died as president—both in her lifetime. Perhaps because of their longevity, both Mrs Kennedy and Hajia Dada also lost other children while alive. Fortunately for Hajiya Dada, she left behind Hajiya Habi, Malam Sule, Hajiya Hafisatu and Senator Audu Musa Yar’Adua (Audu Soja, as he is fondly called within the family being a retired Lt Colonel). And of course, she is also survived by Murtala Shehu Yar’Adua, a former Minister of State for Defence, among many grandchildren.

But the essential similarity between Mrs Kennedy and Hajiya Dada is that they raised extraordinarily successful children and suffered more than their share of tragedy. Even though both families were privileged, one could see the critical roles played by the matriarchs. This much was captured by Mrs Kennedy in her 1974 autobiography, ‘Times to Remember’, where she explained her role in bringing up her children to be who they were. “I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it,” she wrote as a testimony to her influence in how the children had turned out. “What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?”

Hajiya Dada was noted by many as an exceedingly spiritual woman whose guidance was sought by her sons throughout their lives. But she was also known for her uncommon special attention to detail, especially regarding them. The Director General of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Ms Jacquline Farris once shared a story with me. “When Umaru (the late president) took me to condole with Hajia Dada after Shehu died in December 1997, she went into her room and brought out his school uniform after hearing about my plan for the exhibition hall,” she said. “That she had kept it in her room all those years and knew exactly where she kept it amazed me.” And on the day that Hajia Dada visited the Centre, many people panicked when they couldn’t locate her whereabouts. “We later found her at the exhibition hall, alone”, evidently absorbing the environment while reliving the memories of her departed son.

Hajiya Dada left no memoir, but I believe she could say the same thing about her efforts in raising her children to who they were in Nigeria, just as Mrs Kennedy did. And there could have been no greater testimony than the number of people who gathered in Katsina on Tuesday for her burial. Most of them may never have met Hajiya Dada in person. Even some of us who had met her could not boast of any special relationship with her. We were there in Katsina simply to honour her illustrious children—a worthy legacy to her life.

May God grant her eternal rest.

But Where We Wan Go?

It is not the kind of argument a government official should be making but we live in a country where people say all kinds of things. “If NNPC imports PMS and sells to marketers at perhaps N600 or below, there’s no way that smuggling can stop,” theMinister of State for Petroleum, Heineken Lokpobiri said last week while arguing that the only antidote to fuel smuggling across Nigerian borders is to sell the commodity above the landing cost in a tacit admission of failure of critical institutions. “When smugglers are taking the products outside the country, even if you put all the policemen on the road, they are Nigerians; you and I know the answer.”

When the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) responded on Tuesday by jerking up the pump prices of fuel by about 50 percent, Lokpobiri became angry that Nigerians would hold the federal government to account on the issue. He would not even take responsibility for his own declaration a few days earlier. “We categorically condemn these claims as baseless, malicious, and a deliberate attempt to incite public discontent,” he said in response to reports on the pump price. “Such a claim is entirely devoid of truth and should be recognised as an intentional effort to mislead the public. It must be stressed that NNPCL operates as an independent entity under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, with a fully empowered Board of Directors.”

It is not only Lokpobiri who takes Nigerians for fools on this matter of subsidy.  Several other operatives of the current administration have also decided to adopt the same lie: The federal government has nothing to do with the pump price, it is the NNPCL. But Lokpobiri is adding insult to injury with his CAMA tales. Meanwhile, it is not a secret that I endorse removal of fuel subsidy. It is an argument I have canvassed for more than two decades and my position on it has not changed. But implementing fuel subsidy removal at the same time as floating the Naira has proved to be a dangerous combination for the economy. Now things have gone haywire.

I have read people who blame the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for our woes. The usual argument is that the government is taking their usual pills. But that’s not my reading of the situation in Nigeria today. When Witold Henisz, currently theVice Dean and Faculty Director, ESG Initiative; Deloitte & Touche Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania, joined other leading academics to conduct research on market reforms in dozens of Third World countries, they were said to be looking for a link between failed or troubled reform efforts and the presence of the World Bank or the IMF. At the end, they reportedly found one interesting link. “If you see the IMF and World Bank influencing reforms in a country,” says Henisz, “It’s not a seal of approval. It’s a warning flag!”

That remains true of Nigeria today. We are in a serious economic crisis. The situation may have been exacerbated by the arrogance and thoughtlessness with which the Tinubu administration handled critical issues, but the problems preceded them. The challenge is that to get out of the mess, we require short-term, medium-term and long-term solutions. Part of the long-term solutions must include how to tackle the menace of a growing but largely unproductive population. I am aware that some don’t like to hear this but it’s an issue we must deal with. In 1960, the United Kingdom from where we secured our independence had a population of 52.2 million people whereas Nigeria was then inhabited by 45.14 million people. Today, the UK is 69 million, an increase of about 14 percent over a period of 64 years. Meanwhile, the population of Nigeria today is put at 229 million, an increase of about 500 percent! And we are talking of people with little or no access to education, healthcare and other basics of life.

However, that is not the issue for today as we seek to tackle the current challenge. In his 1923 work, ‘The Tract on Monetary Reform’, English economist and philosopher, John Maynard Keynes, made a profound statement though not often referenced in full.“The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead,” Keynes wrote but most people often leave out the next lines. “Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.”

It is not that Keynes could not appreciate the benefits of long-term planning. On the contrary, his thesis actually supports that. What he is saying is that you must survive today before you can envision tomorrow. That is a message for those who are formulating policies for this administration. Yesterday, I was listening to a radio call-in programme in the vehicle and many callers were expressing their frustration about the high cost of living which would be compounded by the hike in fuel price. The picture of deprivation painted by many was just too harrowing. One caller summed it up by repeatedly chanting, “Where we wan go? Where we wan go? Where we wan go?”

Most Nigerians are now at their tethers end. And they need solutions to their pressing challenges. Deploying the Sani Abacha tactics of intimidation, coercion and other forms of repression provide no solution. Beyond mismanaging expectations, I hope those in power today are not also poor students of history.

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