Still on Marafan Sokoto

Last week I paid tribute to Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, Marafan Sokoto and one of Nigeria’s foremost politicians and respected leaders, who died on July 6. Today I am giving up the page for another tribute by one of his closest confidants, Saidu Mohammed Dansadau, a two-term Senator from Zamfara State who served with distinction, dignity and integrity.

Dansadau’s tribute is followed by some of the reactions to my own tribute.

“Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the State”

Nearly everybody in my generation who grew up in the North had heard of Umaru Shinkafi, the Marafan Sokoto. He was the super spook who knew something about everybody.

Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, had just lifted the ban on party politics in 1989 and political associations were being formed. That was when my path first crossed that of Marafa when we formed the Sokoto Organisation (then Zamfara was part of Sokoto State).

I was young and a firebrand. Little did I know that I made a deep impression on him during our first meeting. After the meeting he sent for me and asked me to see him in Shinkafi. That was the beginning of a close and intimate relationship, a mentoring and close benevolent big brother relationship.

When the military government decreed National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) into being, we joined the NRC whose manifesto we identified with and which we hoped to deepen. Marafa was running to be the presidential candidate of the NRC.

Not being a product of the known political establishment of the time, his aspiration seemed rather audacious. And, as every intelligence operator knows, he had made some powerful political enemies who would go to great lengths to stop him. But they did not reckon with his discipline and solid organizational abilities.

Soon, his campaign took off. He appointed me his Campaign Co-coordinator for Sokoto State. I think he liked how I organized the campaign, for, after six months he pulled me out to Kaduna and promoted me to co-ordinate his Campaign for the whole Northern States.

It was a most tasking and exhaustive campaign. We threw everything into it and came close enough to the more fancied Malam Adamu Ciroma as the winner to demand for a run-off.However, while we waited, Babangida announced the cancellation of the primaries and banned a crop of politicians, including Shinkafi and Malam Adamu.

Babangida said he wanted new-breed politicians and despite the experience, resources, network, relationships built, and the draining mental and physical exertions, Shinkafi took it with equanimity and moved on. At the NRC convention in Port Harcourt under Option A4, Shinkafi supported the presidential candidature of Bashir Tofa and the National Chairmanship of late Dr. Hameed Kusamotu. Both won.

When the dust settled, I told him I was returning to Sokoto to continue my life. But he had other plans. He convinced me to stay in Kaduna and bought a house for me.

It’s been 27 years since then and I have found Marafa as constant as a Northern Star: solid, steady, calm and unflappable. He was an extra-ordinarily selfless, admirably humble, gentle, soft-spoken, self-effacing, diligent, circumspect, shrewd and generous man.

But he was also a misunderstood man; he was not given to smiling easily, and people thought that this mien reflected his heart. However, even though he carried a serious mien, Marafa had a keen sense of humour.

A lot of people thought Shinkafi was stupendously wealthy because of his generosity to people. His wealth, however, was not in material possessions but in the generosity of his heart.

Marafa was the source of permanent shelter for so many of his household members, house helps, staff, classmates, neighbours, friends and the under-privileged. I can attest to that. In 2002, even as a Senator, he offered me a house in Kaduna, valued at 30 Million Naira at the time, for the 1.6 million Naira he bought it many years earlier. There were many of such.

His philanthropy went beyond individuals. He provided basic amenities like schools, medical clinics and such like infrastructure to several communities. He also built so many mosques to cater for the spiritual means of members of communities.

When the Muslim Students Society leader of Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, came to pay condolence to his family, he said the University authorities had informed them that it was Shinkafi who built, furnished and equipped the Juma’at Mosque in the University, some 30 years ago. This was to the surprise of family members because Marafa had never mentioned it to anyone.

That was Marafa. He gave for Allah and there were many such examples.

Marafa also had the capacity to forgive, to a fault. Even when he knew somebody had cheated him in a business relationship, he would still put up with the person. In the more obvious cases whenever he was advised to end the relationship, his standard answer was always: any person in a position of prominence in any society should know this came with the territory.

Politically, Umaru Shinkafi was, among other things, an apostle of broad political affiliations. He believed that what united us was more than what divided us as a nation.

To a large extent, the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as the Presidential Candidate of the APP in 2003 was substantially a product of sacrifice by Umaru Shinkafi. That year APP Governors and the leadership of the APP in states not controlled by the party resolved to field him as the party’s presidential candidate.

Former Sokoto State Governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, and former Kwara State Governor, late Mohammed Lawal, were delegated to intimate Shinkafi of this resolution. This was in my presence. He thanked them and appreciated their offer. He, however, courteously declined and asked them to field General Buhari. He assured them he would give whatever support he could muster to ensure General Buhari won.

There are, as one political sage once observed, some men who lift the age they inhabit till all men walk on higher ground in that lifetime. Umaru Shinkafi was such a man. He bestrode the security, political and humanitarian world and was acknowledged for his patriotism industry, depth of knowledge, discipline, empathy and competence.

May Allah grant him peace in Aljanna Firdaus.

Re: Exit of a spymaster (July 13)

Thank you for a wonderful epitaph in today’s Daily Trust back page on my biological father, Marafan Sokoto. It was concise and captured his politics and career.

I would have liked a mention of the total number of states won by the APP/AD alliance as it was an excellent challenge to the military gang-up of money and might in the other party and that feat was never replicated till Buhari’s victory last year which was also due to the partnership again with the Yorubas. The embryo of that relationship was the AD/APP alliance. Fatima Shinkafi, +2348036009838.

Shinkafi’s death was greatly felt in my home town, Ikirun, Osun State, where he used to humbly sit outside with the late mother of his late friend, late Hammed Kusamotu, in their residence long after Kusamotu’s death. May ALLAH (SWT) grant him Aljanna Firdaus. Ameen. Alabi Tajudeen, +2348055952747.

The opening remark in your article was most unwarranted, unnecessary and a disservice to the late Shinkafi in whose distinguished memory the article was purportedly made. The allusion you drew between the motto of Niger State and your so-called “effective propaganda weapons of the South” exists only in the realm of your fertile, albeit mischievous, imagination. I challenge you to point to one such “evidence”, either electronic or in the print. Who even told you that Shinkafi would have beaten Olu Falae in a primary election?

It is a pity that you would use the sad demise of the elder statesman to fester your notorious jaundiced views. I blame the print platforms given you by The Nation and Daily

Trust that you have abused serially. Please act as the statesman that age, experience and exposure has bequeathed to you. S. E. Irabor, Esq. Makurdi. +2347035680060.

How could Shinkafi be a spymaster when all his life he had been involved in internal security? The Police, NSO & later DSS are in charge of internal security. I believe it is the NIA that deals with external security, where spymasters dwell. Shinkafi of blessed memory never served there. May Allah have mercy on his soul. Barrister Buhari Bello, +2348037881004.

I used the word in the broad sense of “someone who directs clandestine intelligence activities” as it is defined in my online Advanced English Dictionary. MKH. The late Gen. Hassan Usman Katsina did not participate in Babangida’s transition. It was Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’adua, equally a formidable member of the establishment, who did. Umaru Shuaibu, Suleja. +2348033110505.

Umaru Shuaibu was one of several readers who wrote to say my mention of Major-General Hassan Usman Katsina among leading Northerners who stood up for “June 12” was in error. It wasn’t. General Hassan Usman was, of course, never a politician and I did not say he participated in Babangida’s transition programme. But as a leading Katsina royalty, the first and only military governor of Northern region and a former army chief, his standing up for “June 12”, just like Malam Adamu Ciroma’s, belied the propaganda about a grand Northern conspiracy against Chief Abiola.