The life of a Soldier: Kabir Salisu, a Candle in the Wind

I don’t recall when I first met Kabir Salisu. It is very difficult to put dates to when you met people that you encountered when you were a kid. For Kabir Salisu, I could mention any date in the late 80s and it would be true. This is because at the time I was a student of Army Children School, New Cantonment ‘A’, Kabir was in Government Day Secondary School, a school that shared the same land with Army Children School and Command Children School. However, the more definite meeting came later when he was courting the lady that later became his wife. The then Miss Ofuoma Obruche lived at EB 2 Dutse Close, Angwa Shanu, Kaduna, the same house where I and my siblings were raised and which tend to find ample mention in my fiction and nonfiction.

I still recall, like it was yesterday, the group of dashing cadets that hung around the compound waiting to see Miss Obruche—I think a friend of his was at that time also courting another lady in our rather large tenement building.

I also recall that we danced all night when Kabir and Ufoma finally tied the knot in a simple ceremony that rightfully took place in Eb 2 Dutse Close.

So celebrated was the love the 2 couple shared that even when many of us moved away from Kaduna as life happened, we still kept in touch, still looked out for news of births, of marriages and… deaths.

With the coming of gsm and social media, keeping in touch became easier and one by one we all somehow reconnected on Facebook. Of the several success stories that this rekindling of contacts highlighted, Kabir’s growth as an army officer was the least surprising. A man whose humility and intelligence was obvious as first glance, his high flying career was no fluke.

I recall communicating with Kabir on Facebook when he was serving in Sudan and jokingly requesting for a Janjaweed scarf and him laughing and telling me: “ok, if that’s what you want, you will get it”. I recall him sending me his phone number when he returned to Nigeria, without my asking, and asking that I come and see him. It is to my eternal regret that I never took up that invitation, that I stayed away, luxuriating in the semi-closeness that is social media connectivity.

I can’t claim to be close to Kabir Salisu—his wife, family, colleagues and a host of others rightfully holds that distinction—but I knew him and followed his career keenly and fully expected him to reach the pinnacle of his profession.

I believed him to be one of the bright lights in a nation fighting to beat the encroaching dark. It is this light that has now been extinguished.

The much I know about him tells me that this humble man was a patriot and if we had more like him in Nigeria, we will do better as a country.

Kabir Salisu was killed fighting for his country on Monday, April 7 2014. He was a Colonel in the Nigerian Army. The last post under his name on Facebook was on the same day he died, it read: ‘The life of a soldier’.

Achebe and the Igbo narrative: not a single story

“Shege Inyamirin, arne kawai!” the man screamed at me as I sprawled on the red earth, my 20 litre water container, which a few moments ago was balanced on my head as I hurried across the railway track, was not too far away. I looked from the container,  which jerked as it expelled the water I had just fetched from Isa Kaita’s Dutse Close home, to the snarling man that had just pushed me, wondering why my being Igbo merited that much callousness. I looked towards my father’s chemist shop a few metres away, more worried about what he would do if the container was broken than going back to the long queue of people waiting their turn at the tap Alhaji Isa Kaita (CBE) had graciously provided for the public inside His expansive compound. Yes, the man had pushed me, and beyond his expletives that can only be summarised as "Igbo infidel", he offered no explanation and people around did not ask. Surely, why he pushed me, hampered as I was by my large container, was a question that should have been asked, especially as I had not impeded him, or brushed against him. My crime was having tribal marking beside my eyes that identified me to be Igbo, an ethnic group that everyone not Igbo seemed to hate—at least that was what my young mind felt then.

The event above happened about two decades ago in Angwa Shanu, a town in Kaduna North LGA, Kaduna state. It was one of several instances where my siblings and me were singled out and abused because we are Igbo. I recall it here to buttress the point that the Igbo have not had it easy in post war Nigeria and that the hate for the Igbo runs deeper than many care to admit. However, we do not need anyone to admit anything, that we know this fact is what is important, to us that is.

Growing up, I can’t recall my father telling us to be cautious, or to deny our Igboness, but we knew the ability to survive in a society hostile to our kind is our only defence. So, we learnt Hausa, learnt to recite the more common Islamic creeds and learnt to deny our Igboness. To avoid the Igbo stigma, we became Southern Kaduna, Benue, Cross River, Bendel or any other grouping, but never Igbo if we could help it.

The North burns: can we talk about us?

Once again, like uncountable times in the past, the north is in the throes of ethno-religious crisis. As usual, the security agencies are caught napping and aside from accusations of complicity in the crisis, seem to be all thumbs, with little or no idea of how to handle the situation – besides their age-old ‘shoot on sight’ solution that is.

In a previous article, written some years ago, I dwelled on the nature of the north and after examining the numerous crises I witnessed and luckily escaped while living in the north, concluded that ethno-religious crisis and the north of Nigeria are Siamese twins that may forever remain conjoined, unless the drastic is done.

I warned then that the north would blow up again way before the Boko Haram clash and the first Jos affair. My forecast was not based on any form of prescience, but as a result of a brief study of ethno-religious clashes in the north.

In the north of Nigeria, from Jos and beyond, the truth about Ethno-religious crisis is not if it would occur, but when it will occur, again.

Holding a Nation to Ransom

As has become customary, the murderous Islamist group, Boko Haram, attacked three churches in Kaduna state on Sunday, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Also, in what is becoming a saddening routine, youth affiliated to the Christian faith carried out reprisal attacks on nearby mosques and many innocent Muslims got caught up in the ensuing violence.