The passing away of a great journalist

Two Saturdays ago Nigeria lost one of its most illustrious journalists. Malam Rufa’i Ibrahim was 66 on the very day – April 2 – he died, a victim of a rare form of leukaemia. As a close friend and professional colleague from the good old days of New Nigerian, I knew he was ill. Even then the news of his death which first came to me from his brother-in-law and Sarkin Karshi in FCT, Alhaji Ismaila Mohammed, shocked me no end.

Unsurprisingly, since then several tributes have been paid him, notably by two of his oldest and closest friends, Professor Mvendaga Jibo of Benue State University, and Malam Shehu Othman, formerly a teacher at Oxford University, UK. The tributes have all highlighted Rufa’i’s high intellect, his courage, simplicity, loyalty and integrity, among his many virtues.

News of his death reminded me of an open letter I wrote to late Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari’s second-in-command as military head of state, and the enforcer of the infamous Decree 4 which criminalised the embarrassment of government officials in the media even if what was said of them was true. As is well known, two journalists with The Guardian, Tunde Thomson and Nduka Irabor, were jailed under the law for their exclusive story on the politics of the appointment of a Nigerian High Commissioner to the UK.

Rufa’i was detained without trial for nine months under the same law. My plea for his release, entered partly because he had just married his first wife, Amina, from whom he later separated, fell on deaf ears like all the others. He gained his freedom only following the palace coup against Buhari by his army chief, Major-General Ibrahim Babangida.

My open letter was published in my New Nigerian column of Friday February 15, 1985. By way of paying tribute to a great colleague and friend, I am reproducing the letter hereunder, especially as it seems to hold lessons for Buhari in his second coming to power, albeit this time in mufti.

May Allah grant Rufa’i’s friends, his relations and immediate family, especially A’isha, his wife of so many years with whom he had an only child, seven year old Adda’ullahi (Gift from God), the fortitude to bear his loss. May Allah also grant him aljanna firdaus.

And now my 31-year-old letter to Idiagbon:

Sir,

LAST week The Guardian and Concord, and this week the New Nigerian carried the story of a plea for Rufa’i Ibrahim’s release from detention. The plea had been entered by, among others, his brothers and his wife, Amina. I wish to join them to plead for his release too.

Rufa’i Ibrahim, as you probably know, was the first editor of the Kano-based weekly Triumph when Haroun Adamu, also in detention, was its managing director. Rufa’i was abroad studying for a masters in Journalism when the army took over. He ran out of cash before he could complete his studies, so he returned home to replenish. Poor Rufa’i, he came back only to lose his job (he was studying with pay) in the wake of a purge at Triumph.

Whatever the justification for the purge, Rufa’i’s sack was certainly inexplicable. A first class analyst, he had helped nurture Triumph into one of the country’s best in both news and views. It was under his editorship that the paper, for example, scooped others on the Abuja contract scandal.  It was also under him that the paper broke the news of the scandalous multi-million Naira debt owed Bank of the North by yesterday’s men of “timber and calibre” – a debt under which the bank is now groaning.

Again, I recall hearing from the grapevine that Malam Adamu Ciroma thought the paper was excellent. When a former Managing Director of the New Nigerian Newspapers and one of the country’s best communicators says a paper he is ideological opposed to is excellent, you better believe it.

You can see then, sir, that it is difficult to explain Rufa’i’s sack from Triumph. But the easy-going fellow that he is, he took it all in stride. He accepted that he could not finish his masters anymore and started looking for a job. The Guardian quickly obliged him.

The rest of the story, I believe, is familiar. He edited the Sunday edition of The Guardian for barely several months, before leaving for another editorial job in Jos. At The Guardian he wrote articles including his “Letter to Balarabe Musa” which was rather unflattering of your government, and which is reportedly the reason for his detention.

Sir, if I may state the reasons for my plea, there are two. First, he was still honeymooning with Amina, his wife, when he was taken away. This may sound trivial, but you will agree with me that it is a cruel thing to deprive husband and wife, not to talk of newlyweds, of the warmth of each other’s arms in this cold harmattan when no case of crime, treason or whatever, is established against either of them.

Secondly, no less than the Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, has now in effect corroborated the thrust of Rufa’i “Letter to Shagari.” In the letter he drew parallels between the state of the nation since the coup and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” This comparison is what may have incurred the government’s displeasure. Rufa’i’s parallel may be “cheeky” but after the warning by General Buhari to soldiers and police during his tour of Lagos State last week, that “We can’t lock so many people and ourselves do what we detained them for,” the parallel can hardly be dismissed as a hyperbole.

Sir, there is speculation abroad that Rufa’i has been taken in the spirit of federal character – that is, to balance the federal character of the victims of Decree No. 4, which, alas, you have just reiterated is here for good. I am inclined to believe this speculation is nonsense. Rufa’i’s detention may give (cold) comfort to the Tola Adeniyis who argue, tongue-in-cheek, that federal character must be stretched to such logical conclusions to make sense.  However, the absurdity is so clear that the speculation simply cannot be true.

While I am at it, may I, at the risk of sounding rapacious, also plead for Haroun Adamu and Tai Solarin to be brought to trial or freed, if there is nothing against them?

The case against Haroun Adamu appears to be a simple one; he reportedly gave Punch newsprint and did not properly account for it.  At least the governor of Kano State, Air Commodore Hamza Abdullahi, has said as much.  Surely it does not take forever to gather evidence to prosecute him on those grounds. But then may be there is more to it than newsprints.  In which case, can there be a better way for your government to show Haroun for the villain that it thinks he is by simply making his crime public?

As for Tai Solarin, the man ceased to be a hero for me since he degenerated into writing his slanderous series of “Letters to Shagari” (these infernal “Letters”!) in the Tribune during the last political era.The letters heaped abuses on Shagari, whose crime was mainly that he dared snatch Nigeria’s leadership crown from Solarin’s infallible idol, Awo. Worse, the letters also insulted whole sections of the country. So full of bile was Solarin that he would write thus: “Looking back today at the amount of sabotage that has been unleashed on this country by Hausa/Fulani oligarchy, incarnated in the NPC (1960-66) and NPN (1979 – 82) I REGRET BIAFRA BECAME A LOST CAUSE.” (Emphasis mine) (New Nigerian September 21, 1982).

A Hausa/Fulani oligarchy there may very well be and its ways may be self-serving. Yet it is a distortion of history to blame only it for the sad fate of this country.  The truth is that leaders, genuine or self-proclaimed, of every section of this country – certainly leaders of all the three major tribes – have not only participated in running this country, they have also participated in ruining it. What is more, it is arguable that the so-called Hausa/Fulani oligarchies, their political visibility notwithstanding, are the worst villains among the cast that has ruined the country.

A man who can distort history as Solarin has done because he fails to get what he wants, does not deserve to be put on a pedestal or lionized the way the press has done. He certainly does not deserve the sympathy of anyone who belongs to the sections of the country he so loved to chastise unfairly.

Still his continued incarceration is a hardly cause for joy. As far as the public knows his crime is that he defied the law and gathered people in order to call for return to civilian rule barely several months after the coup. His amazing faith in Awo as the country’s only redeemer may blind him to the foolishness of a hasty return to civilian rule, and he may be punished for defying the law, but I would have thought he was entitled to his views on return to civilian rule even under a military regime which, despite D4, has not abrogated the constitutional provision for free speech.

These then, Sir, are my pleas and I suspect those of millions of other Nigerians. They are pleas made in good faith and I sincerely hope you will grant them.