Being text of a lecture on The Life and Times of Abubakar Imam: Lessons for Today by Mohammed Haruna under the auspices of Gamji Members\u2019 Association (GAMA), Niger State Chapter, on Saturday March 5, 2004 at General A. A. Abubakar Youth Centre Theatre, Minna, Niger State.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, permit me to begin this lecture by thanking its organisers, the Gamji Members\u2019 Association (GAMA), for the honour of inviting me to speak on one of the greatest sons, not only of the North, but of Nigeria. For, the late Malam Abubakar Imam is one of the most brilliant and the most influential newspaper editors Nigeria has ever produced. We have, of course produced great editors in colonial times and after, such editors like Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ismaila Babatunde Jose. However in this big league only Abubakar Imam started and finished his journalism career as editor. The rest became publishers later in the course of their career. This may have made them more powerful than Imam but as moulders of public opinion on a day to day basis, few publishers could match his influence as editor. In this respect, it is perhaps instructive that Malam Abubakar Imam stands out today as the only Nigerian journalist and the first Nigerian novelist to have won the Nigerian National Merit Award.<\/p>\n
It is this great editor and author that GAMA has given me an opportunity to talk about this morning. The title the association gave me was \u201cAbubakar Imam: A Prodigious Talent for Today\u2019s Reference.\u201d Without doubt Imam was a great talent, a prodigy if you like. No doubt he is also an excellent example for today\u2019s journalists and public officials alike. However I thought GAMA\u2019s title was rather mouthful so I took the liberty of rephrasing it while retaining its meaning. Hence the new title, \u201cThe Life and Times of Abubakar Imam: Lessons for Today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking to a few of the people who know him well and also reading the excellent Abubakar Imam Memoirs edited by one of his in-laws, the late Alhaji Abdurrahman Mora, one cannot avoid the conclusion that Imam was a symbol of all the qualities of good leadership, including honesty, self-sacrifice, modesty, hardwork and wisdom. Imam displayed these qualities in abundance not only as author and pioneer editor of Gaskiya ta fi kwabo, the longest running newspaper in Nigeria, bar the Daily Times, he also displayed all these qualities in his other roles in the service of the North and Nigeria.<\/p>\n
If Nigeria has suffered retrogression since independence in almost all aspects of life \u2013 economics, politics and social \u2013 it is mainly because our leaders have behaved less and less like the Abubakar Imams of this world. This is the main lesson of the life and times of Imam.<\/p>\n
Before we go into some details about what we can learn from his life and times, it is important, even necessary, to delve into his ancestry because there is also a lesson to be learnt from that aspect of his life.<\/p>\n
Malam Abubakar Imam was born in 1911 in Kagara, in the then Kontagora Province which was subsequently merged with Bida Province and became Niger Province. Imam\u2019s great-grandfather, Malam Muhammadu Gajibo, was originally from Gajibo town in Dikwa Emirate of former Borno Empire. He emigrated from Gajibo as a partisan of Maina Ibrahim who had lost the contest for the Maiship of Dikwa to his younger brother upon the death of their father. Maina Ibrahim and his followers, including Imam\u2019s great-grandfather, finally settled in the vicinity of Bida, the headquarters of the then powerful Nupe Kingdom. The Etsu Nupe at the time chose Kutigi as a home for Maina Ibrahim and his people. Kutigi rapidly grew and is today one of the Niger State\u2019s most important towns.<\/p>\n
R. M. East. The title of his book was called Ruwan Bagaja. Among the other winners was his elder brother Muhammadu Bello who wrote Gandoki, and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who wrote Shehu Umar, Balewa was to become Nigeria\u2019s first and only Prime Minister.<\/p>\n
Apparently Imam\u2019s writing skills won Mr. East\u2019s admiration so much so that in 1936 he requested for Imam\u2019s temporary transfer to the Literature Bureau in Zaria. This was granted and Imam spent six months working day and night to produce the three volumes of Magana Jari Ce which became classics in Hausa Literature. The first volume was published in 1937 and the remaining two in 1938.<\/p>\n
During the same year the British decided to establish a strong regional Hausa newspaper to replace the many provincial newspaper already in circulation. Mr. East, who was in charge, once again decided that Imam was the best person for the job. Imam was at first reluctant to accept the job but eventually was, for all intents and purposes, ordered by the Emir of Katsina, Alhaji Mohammed Dikko, to do so.<\/p>\n
Imam\u2019s refusal to sign the memorandum became a source of a huge national controversy about the relationship between the North and the South. This controversy was fueled by an editorial in Zik\u2019s West African Pilot which portrayed Imam as anti-progressive and anti-people because of his refusal to sign.<\/p>\n
This negative portrayal of Imam came as a big shock to him because throughout their passage to England as well as throughout their stay, Zik and Imam struck a very cordial relationship. Even when Imam refused to sign Zik\u2019s memorandum giving his reasons, Zik, who Imam looked up to as a professional elder, gave the impression that he understood and was satisfied with Imam\u2019s explanations.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Azikiwe and myself,\u201d said Imam in his memoir, \u201cwere always together. He taught me a lot of things. The only thing he could not teach me was how to dance. I accompanied him to dances and held his coat for him. When he was tired we drove back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can therefore imagine Imam\u2019s shock at his treatment by Zik\u2019s paper based, of course, on the dispatch Zik sent to the paper about how his fellow-voyagers\u2019 reacted to his memoranda.<\/p>\n
Upon his return, Imam wrote his own defence in his newspaper, a defence which received overwhelming support from the newspapers\u2019 readers. Out of all the reactions to his explanation only one stood out in total disagreement. This was the reaction from Malam Aminu Kano who had already established a reputation as a very unrelenting critic of Indirect Rule which, for all practical purposes, gave emirs the power of life and death over their subjects. It is a mark of Imam\u2019s broadmindedness that he became one of Malam Aminu Kano\u2019s best friends.<\/p>\n
When Imam declined Zik\u2019s invitation to sign his charter, he (Imam) made it clear that is was not because he did not share Zik\u2019s objective of local autonomy and eventual independence from British rule. He refused to sign, he said, because he did not have his peoples\u2019 mandate to sign any memorandum. Besides many of Zik\u2019s demands, like free education and free health services, were already being provided by his region. He also felt that his region had not produced enough personnel to man its administration. More importantly he was also worried that the North and South had not built enough mutual that was necessary for the unity and harmony of the country. For these reasons alone, he said, it would have been presumptuous of him to pretend that he was speaking for the people of the region whose primary source of news and forum for expressing their views was Gaskiya.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the matter is viewed dispassionately,\u201d he said in the course of a interactive session with members of West African Students Union in UK during the course of their visit, \u201cit is clear that it is the Northerners and Southerners themselves who create differences among themselves and not, as some maintain, the Europeans.\u201d It was Nigerians themselves, he said, who created negative stereo-types about each other and not the Europeans.<\/p>\n
However, he pinned the greater blame for mutual distrust on Southerners who he said regarded Northerners as backward and a drag. If, he said, for example a Northerner did something irregular, the Southern press always blew it out of proportion to portray the Northern as a backward. The newspapers, he said would carry such sensational headlines like \u201cHAUSAMAN STABS COUNTRYMAN WITH KNIFE\u201d\u2026 \u201cTWO HAUSAMEN LOCKED IN FIGH AND EACH LOSES A HAND\u201d\u2026 \u201cHAUSAMAN EATS TWO MUCH RAW CASSAVA AND DIES.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch things,\u201d said Imam, \u201cdo not promote friendly feeling. They show the Hausa up as a backward sort of person. Then when the Southerners have finished humiliating us in this way, they turn round and say we are their brothers, and that it is the Europeans that are trying to separate us from them.\u201d In subsequent correspondences with senior colonial officials including Lord Lugard, Imam said the Northerners\u2019 share of the blame for the mutual hostility between the regions, was in the reluctance of its emirs to reform the Native Authority system and that way allow commoners to have a say in governance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way Indirect Rule is practiced in Northern Nigeria,\u201d he said in one of his correspondences with Lord Lugard, \u201cbreeds evil in the Region and it is one of the factors that hinder the progress of that part of the country\u201d. The colonial officers should therefore not regard the demands for its reform as a root and branch attack on the system or as an indirect challenge of their authority. Rather they should view it as a demand for justice and for broadening the power base so as to make governance more democratic.<\/p>\n
servant, Malam Abubakar served with honesty, with dedication, with selflessness and with hardwork. And as he served he counted his reward not in material terms, but in the difference he made to the quality of the lives of his people.<\/p>\n
By now Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed I have focused my speech on the career of Imam as a journalist and author. This, however, is not because it was the only role where he served with distinction. As I have said, he discharged every responsibility he was given with the same distinction with which he served as editor and author. If I have focused on his career as journalist and author, this is only because these were the roles he was more famous for.<\/p>\n
This speech has by no means exhausted the numerous examples of how well he served the public. Given the time available to me it is simply not possible to do justice to the character of Malam Abubakar Imam as a leader worthy of emulation. Anyone wishing to know how great a leader he was would have no choice but to read his memoirs which was edited by the late Alhaji Abdurrahman Mora and which was published in 1989 by the Northern Nigeria Publishing Company, Zaria.<\/p>\n
Indeed I would like to suggest that the book be made compulsory reading for all our journalism schools not only in the North but in Nigeria, because, for me at least, the book reads like a classic manual of how journalism should be practiced.<\/p>\n
Malam Abubakar Imam died in 1981 leaving behind 14 children and a legacy of authorship in the North matched only by the trio of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, his brother Sheikh Abdullahi and his son, Sultan Muhammadu Bello. By the time he died he had also served with distinction as the first indigenous chairman of the North Regional Public Service Commission, as a pioneer chairman of the then North Central State Public Complaints Commission, and as a director of New Nigerian Newspapers, among many other public offices he held.<\/p>\n
Here then is a legacy whose preservation and promotion we owe Imam and ourselves.<\/p>\n
Fortunately the Zaria Academy under Dr. Haroun Adamu one of Imam\u2019s disciplines, and in his time one of the most incisive and prolific columnists working for Daily Times and writing in the Sunday Times, has set up the Abubakar Imam Foundation to preserve and promote his legacy. As a first step the initiators of the foundation have set up a website which can be visited at www.abubakarimam.com. This initiative deserves the support of all men and women of goodwill.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for listening.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Haruna<\/p>\n
March 5, 2005.<\/p>\n
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