FIRST MY LIFE HISTORY AND NIGERIA
I celebrated my 50th year anniversary last week Friday, March 16, 2012 to be precise. During my anniversary, I used the milestone to reflect on my life and my native Nigeria. I have been involved in the political history of Nigeria as far back as the 1970s while I was a young 17-year old high school graduate in my native town of Owo in Ondo State, Western Nigeria. I still remember my participation in the governorship election of the late Pa Michael Adekunle Ajasin, the first democratically-elected governor of the defunct Ondo State in 1979. I had just made a Grade A Distinction in my WASC and with my good friend then, Ayo Josiah, we were recruited by the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) as field organizers. We accepted the job because we had nothing to do but more so when Papa Ajasin, the UPN governorship candidate was from our home town of Owo. Our "duties" were to accompany Mr Folayan, the driver of one of the Volkswagen Vans in the campaign pool to everywhere he went and "jazz up" the Ajasin Governorship Campaign. We would compose songs and play music for our candidate and praise the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo the Presidential Candidate of the UPN and of course, our man, Papa Ajasin. We were also good at composing anti-Ogunlade political songs, and anti-Shagari choruses, the governorship candidate of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in Ondo State and NPN Presidential Candidate in the 1979 elections respectively. The period of our employment was between June and September, 1979. As I indicated above, we had nothing to do as newly-graduated high school students waiting for the release of our WASC results.
Later on, I left Ondo State for Lagos and later for Kano, Jos, Kaduna, Maiduguri and virtually all the then states of Northern Nigeria. Between October 1979 and January 1981, I had toured all the states in the Northern part of Nigeria as a 19-year old boy in search of adventure. I had lost my parents very early in life and had become a drifter so to say and in retrospect now, I tell my wife and two boys that those two years were my "two years of wilderness." But those "years of wilderness" have come to be highly beneficial in my understanding of power, politics and religion in Northern Nigeria. As I always tell my journalist colleagues in Lagos, you can't understand the complex web of the political complexities of the Hausa-Fulani and the dynamics of the inter-play of religious and ethnic forces that shaped them if you have not visited, lived and interacted with them. This is why I have an uncanny understanding of these centrifugal forces in many of the analyses of the politics of Northern Nigeria. My first lessons in these areas were fudged during those "wilderness years" that I lived in Northern Nigeria.
I was to go to the University of Lagos thereafter, had fun as an undergraduate student, played student union politics, became the president of the University of Lagos Students Union in 1985 and thereafter became a journalist. My journalism years afforded me the opportunity to travel once again across the length and breadth of Nigeria beginning from 1985 when I was a reporter and feature writer with the defunct National Concord Newspaper owned by the late Chief Moshood Abiola, the winner of the first and only freest and fairest presidential election in Nigerian history. Of course, Nigerians with firm grasp of history still remember my years as publisher and executive editor of the defunct Razor magazine, the struggle for the de-militarization of Nigeria between 1993 and 1998 and the concatenation of events that led to the second coming of Mr Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 and the meteoric rise of Mr Aliko Mohammad Dangote to a world class billionaire.
I have given a capsule summary of my first 37 years in life in such a brief spam while the rest should be devoted to my years in the United States and the West.
THE MANY TRAJECTORIES OF LIFE
Among some of my colleagues in those days at the university are those in leadership positions in Nigeria today. My non-involvement is deliberate and the reasons I will share with my readers in this blog if you continue to follow me. Since nearly fifteen years now I have been living in the United States, I have traveled more than half of the states in the Union and what I have seen and discovered about this beautiful adopted nation of mine are monumental. When you reach half-journey of your earthly life, it is necessary to do a mini stock-taking. I initially made up my mind to wait until the appropriate time to write about Nigeria and the "untold story" of that country but my American wife continues to advise me not to wait anymore. It is not as if I am going to die soon but many of the personalities involved in those landmark events in Nigeria that I want to refer to are dying so how about disclosing some of these historical narratives early now that some are still alive?
"I need to do this background in order for readers of the biography of Aliko Mohammad Dangote which I have just co-written to understand the angle we approached the man's biography. I am 50, Aliko will be 55 next month. That means the man is just 5 years older than me. That also means I have known this man at least for nearly 30 years. I had my first job in Northern Nigeria in his uncle's farm at Anadariyya Farm in Tiga, Kano near Lake Bagauda Hotel in 1980 which I referred to above as one of my "wilderness years." I did not know young Aliko Dangote as a billionaire in 2008 via Forbes magazine. I heard about him and his story at Anadariya Farm in Tiga in 1980 when he was just 23 years old. "
For any one to write the biography of a world class citizen and important man like Aliko, you must know him when he was "nobody." When I used the word; "nobody" I meant when no one knew he was a millionaire not to talk of when he is now as a billionaire. The Lagos-Ibadan press boys and girls came to know Aliko Mohammad Dangote in the New Millennium, precisely from 1999 when Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo was brought from prison by the Kaduna Mafia/Northern Military Cabal led by Gen Ibrahim Babangida and Adamu Ciroma to become president as a sop to the Yoruba's grief over late Moshood Abiola. I knew, heard and interacted with the maternal family members of young Aliko from afar as early as 1980. As a biographer, I have to establish my credential first as someone competent to write about my subject. Consequently,my going back to Kano in 2010 and 2011 to update information and facts about the rise of Aliko Mohammad Dangote to billionaire land was of a sort of home-coming. In 1980 when I arrived in Niger Road, Sabon Gari Kano, Northern Nigeria, I never knew that the interactions I had with people of that great and lively city would come in handy thirty years later. When Dare, my half brother convinced me to follow him to Anadariyya Farm in Tiga near Bagauda Lake situated along Kano-Jos Road later that year, I never knew the man I would work for was Mr Aliko Dangote's uncle. Mr Sanusi Dantata was always on the go and the British general manager who controlled everything was the person we as workers had to deal with most of the time. Mr Aliko Mohammad Dangote himself was only 23 years old and yours truly was just 18 years old. Being exposed very early to the Dantata family gave me a vintage opportunity to hear things,interact with those who knew the family well and what's more; I once worked for the Dantata Family at Anadaiya Farm in Tiga. TO BE CONTINUED
