“Do you know my (nick)name in this race?” Alhaji Musa Musawa asked me.
“No, sir,” I replied.
“Ɗan Filinge,” he said. “The Wind Horse!”
That was in 1991, and we were sitting on mats in someone’s zaure (house entrance room) in Ɗanja town in the southern-most part of Katsina State, where Alhaji Musa was campaigning for election. It was at night, after the Isha prayer.
I was the only journalist built into his small campaign team by the management of The Reporter, the defunct Kaduna-based daily newspaper which served as the mouthpiece of his party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). hence giving me the opportunity to capture intimate moments of the legendary Alhaji Musa’s campaign.
Ɗan Filinge was a mythical-like horse belonging to the Emir of Isa in the Zamfara land of Northern Nigeria, which won all the horse races organised by the British colonial government in the region. In a tribute panegyric he composed in honour of the horse, the famous palace singer, Ibrahim Narambaɗa, had called Ɗan Filinge “dokin iska”, i.e. the wind or rather flying horse, to symbolise its speed.
Musa Musawa’s soar-away popularity was the reason he considered himself a “flying horse” in the contest, running in the opinion polls faster than his opponent. He wanted me to reflect that in my report, and I did.
Alhaji Musa Musawa was an admirable grassroots politician whose tactics came straight from the old days of Malam Aminu Kano’s NEPU, of which he was chief organiser in Bichi, near Kano, when it was formed.
I learnt that he is now in retirement from politics, resting and attending to his health.
Oftentimes I recall his unique hustings of those days when I followed him from village to village for many days in order to file reports to the newspaper in Kaduna. I had been assigned by the editor to serve as an embedded reporter in his campaign, due to his political closeness to the owner of the paper, the then retired Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. That give me the opportunity to capture some of the intimate moments of the legendary Alhaji Musa’s campaign.
I wonder if any politician today runs his/her campaign the way the old political war-horses like him did — sleeping in remote villages in order to not only sell their manifesto but also to engage intimately with the villagers so that they could know their real problems and how to try to solve them when elected.
Alhaji Musa was a sought-after political strategist for any party serious about capturing the hearts and minds of the grassroots. He was a keen planner and a great orator, and it was always a pleasure to listen to him at the rallies or even on the radio.
In 2006 when former Sokoto State governor Alhaji Attahiru Ɗalhatu Bafarawa formed the Democratic People’s Party (DPP), on which he ran for president, it was Baba Musawa and like-minded elders he went to for intellectual support. In fact, Musawa eventually served as the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), the highest decision-making body in the party. I reckon it was the last political position the elder statesman held in his life, before his current incapacitation.
Allah ya ba Baba lafiya, amin.