SIR ALHAJI AHMADU BELLO, THE SARDAUNA OF SOKOTO: THE LEGEND (II)

      

ALH. SIR AHMADU BELLO kbe

     Hello dear Readers, I hope you all liked and enjoyed the previous episode which is the first episode and here comes the second episode, I hope you will also like it.

        In 1949, he made his debut in the Political arena and was elected a member of the Northern region House of Assembly. In quick Succession, he was a member of a constitutional Drafting Committee as one of the representatives of the North; a member of the Northern Regional Loans Board. In 1951, he joined the Northern Regional Government Executive Council as Minister of works and in a cabinet reshuffle in 1953, he became the Minister of Local Government and Community Development and was designated the leader of Government Business of the Northern Region. At the Nigeria Constitutional Conference held in London in 1953, he was the leader of the Northern delegation. In 1954, at the Party Convention in Jos, he was elected the President-General of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), the Political Party that was at the helm of affairs of the Government of the Government of the Federation up to the time our Independence. In the same year he assumed the Post of Premier of the Northern region. It was in 1955 that he first went on pilgrimage to Mecca, and thereafter the pilgrimage and the Umrah to the Holy Land became an unbroken annual event in the life of Sir Ahmadu Bello until his death. In 1957, there was another constitutional Conference in London and he led Northern Delegation. With the Achievement of self-Government in March 1959 he became the President of the Executive Council in the North. In the same year, he was knighted of the British Empire (KBE).

In 1960, he was elected Vice-President of the Ahmadu Bello University, the institution that he founded, nurtured and cherished. On 15^th January, 1966 he suffered martyrdom at the hands of a gang of dissident Army Officers, in a senseless and treacherous coup d’etat that sowed the seeds of Political instability and retrogression in Nigeria, and led the nation into bloody Civil war.

With the death of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Nigeria lost a great patriot, a great statesman national hero and the North lost what no adequate words can describe. Suffice to say that it lost a legend, it lost its beacon of light and has left wandering in the wilderness for thirty years now without pilot or guide or shepherd. But Sir Ahmadu Bello left outstanding legacies which if we the inheritors of those legacies can apply or mite only a small fraction, our Peoples and our nation can make giant strides forward.

The Sardauna had Sterling Qualities far too many to mention. But it will be height of injustice and disservice to talk about his life and not to mention anything about his qualities, his dreams, his policies and some of his achievements.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.    -Joseph Campbell.

A Devout Muslim and a Champion of Religious Tolerance

Witness: The motto he chooses for the North was “work and worship”. In his Christmas message broadcast in 1959 he stated inter alias: “Here in the Northern Nigeria we have People of Many different races, tribes and religious who are knit together to common history, common interest and common ideas, the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us. I always remind people of our firmly rooted policy of religious tolerance. We have no intention of favouring one religion at the expense of another. Subject to the overriding need to preserve law and order, it is our determination that everyone should have absolute liberty to practice his belief according to the dictates of his conscience…”

Michael Audu Buba, Jolly Tanko Yusuf, George Uru Ohikere, Pastor David Obadiah lot, Peter Simon Achimugu, Ignatius Durlong, Sunday Awoniyi among others who were in his Government or in the public Service and work closely with him had the same treatment from him if not better then their Moslem counterparts. With Sardauna, what earned you more favours was your hard work, dedication to duty and honesty.

In the Process of undertaking the legal reforms of 1959 that involve the Sharia law, delegations were sent to Sudan, Libya and Pakistan. Peter Achimugu, a Christian, was included in the delegation that went to Libya and Pakistan..

A Progressive Reformist

Witness: The reforms and the democratization of the Native Authorities which were carried out during his time; a giant stride from Emirs-in-Council to Emirs-and Council; with outer Councils having as members, elected representatives of the people.

Witness: The launching of the Crash training programme at the Kano Medical Corps mooted in 1952-53 to produce doctors at a time when the North did not have more then a few indigenous doctors like  Dr. Ahmadu Rimi who rose to become a Major-General and Director-general of the Nigeria Army Medical Corps; the mounting of crash programmes in law and accountancy and the assistant District Officers (ADO’s) training programmes at the Institute of Administration Zaria.