I watched, yesterday, as Katsina State Governor, Mallam Dikko Radda (PhD) indefatigably stood on his feet, from morning till night, receiving mourners and being the major protocol chief, at the funeral of former PMB. By the time he stood beside the shroud of the late President, he was drenched in sweat, and tears. Tears, not necessarily due to the loss of a mentor, but from the thought of what follows death. The body of late PMB lied there, drained, completely, of the sole component that made it human, the “ruh”. It is the “ruh” that would either be rewarded or punished, by Allah’s will, for it’s utilization of the free will to do good or bad; to indulge or moderate; to engage in primitive accumulation or obey the rules of striving. So the Governor wept, for while President Buhari was honored in life and death, none of us knew what the ruh was going through at that moment and forever.
We have seen this before. When General Shehu Musa Yaradua died; when President Umaru Musa died. The world came to Katsina, honored them, cried, commiserated with us and left us, bereaved.
Katsina and Daura must however continue to count our blessings. We gave Nigeria two Presidents: Umaru Musa Yaradua and Muhammadu Buhari. Each of them symbolized a strong character *based on faith.* Each of them was acclaimed, at home and abroad, as upright; each of them remained honest, sincere, incorruptible and patriotic, till death. These were the *values* that our parents inculcated in us - the continuation of the *values* that our society had been known for over the centuries.
It was this discussion, of the *values* that made them the world stand up for them, in life and in death, that appeared absent from the TV commentaries and online discussions that I watched yesterday. A pertinent follow up question that I expected is whether we are breeding those values among politicians today. It is those values that transform a common politician into a Statesman - a position that Shehu, Umaru and Buhari enviably enjoyed. It is those values that created the epithet “Katsina Dakin Kara”. It is those values, and the faith that originates and kindles them, that made our society give Nigeria our best - and which Nigeria and wage world show appreciation for.
Those values are the function of the whole of society - parents, ulama, traditional leaders, school system and societal administrators - working simultaneously. They imbued in us the empathy and self pity that make us visualize how the “ruh” of the most powerful, the richest, the most learned, all, without exception, ‘await alike the inevitable hour’ to account for their deeds, piece by piece, one after the other.
As he stood beside the grave of FPMB, drenched in sweat and tears, Governor Dikko Radda, unintentionally displayed those values and showed how human he was, and how conscious he was of death as the ultimate neutralizing force.
My brothers and sisters. We must return to the drawing board, change our course, and make our children and grandchildren imbibe the values that made Katsina what it was. We must again make Katsina the symbol of the values that produced - and should continue to produce - what the rest of the world acclaim - the best.
