Tribute to Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sokoto, Premier of Northern Region

“…but with one person in particular out of all the actors, either major or minor, acquaintance had developed into friendship and friendship into an enduring affection which was reciprocated. This was Ahmadu Rabah, better known as Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello KBE, M.H.A., Sardauna of Sokoto, and his was the principal role of all.

The dichotomy of address that is employed above is no starker than the dichotomy of the character of the man himself. To some – even to most – he appeared vain and arrogant, dictatorial, and devious: someone to be feared and appeased, to be crossed only at direst risk and imminent peril; a magnet for sycophants: a Caesar whose attitude would necessarily conjure up an inevitable Brutus.

To others, more perceptive perhaps and closer to him, he was a man of strange moods and stranger inconsistencies of magnanimous impulse but sometimes of ferocious mien: one who could be served with pride and who responded with dignity, but whose reactions could never be predicted with certitude.

To few – and they are very few –  who earned his trust and confidence, he was a simple man of warmth and affection, open and giving, generous and fair, compassionate and loyal. Children adored him.

Like Churchill, whom he greatly admired, his vices were as large as his virtues were enormous. Quick to affront, he was no less quick to repent: proud of his ancestry, he was no less humble for his failings, which only too clearly, he fully discerned. He had a peculiar sense both of an underlying inadequacy, which was reflected in an intense gaucherie and shyness and of a manifest destiny which carried with it an enormous presence and a commanding appearance. He hated public functions unless they brought him into contact with the common people: he was wooden and awkward in formal company, abrupt, even brusque, and stilted in his official conversations. Only when alone and among friends would he relax and be himself.

But, he was honest! He hated phonies.

Above all else, he was deeply religious and intensely pious, conscious always of his duty, as he saw it, to his God and of the place in society to which his fate had projected him. In a sense, this piety was his undoing, for over the last two or three years of his life, as the circle of those he could trust diminished, and he became more lonely, his urge to fulfill his mission in life rose to something of an obsession. It forced him into paths, which one wiser or more worldly than he would have trodden more warily. He seemed to be driven a great deal by his conscience?

He believed he was right in everything, and his conscience to do what he saw to be right drove him hard. As a result, he was getting difficult to get on with.”

Most clearly of all, however, was the Sardauna ill at ease in the presence of academics. Nor did he suffer fools gladly. Despite his extraordinary command of the English language – far in excess of that of most of his contemporaries – either in delivery or depth, he remained acutely conscious that he had no paper qualifications of his own academic attainment, no degrees with which he could match the formalised, certificated erudition of the Azikiwes, Nkrumahs or Awolowos of this world, and he despised both himself and them; himself for his lack and them for their possession.

With this diffidence and doubt as to the certitude of his own attainments went also a modesty in decision making. Only too often, he failed to act in a manner ŵhich would have signalled his motives beyond question or doubt. As a result, these motives themselves were frequently impugned. He had yet one further characteristic that served him ill. Irrespective of his reputation for ruthlessness – which was utterly unfounded  – it was often very difficult to induce him to take any decision at all, which would involve damage to another person or the diminution of status or reputation of a third party…

Much of his reputation for firmness and decisiveness was thus unfounded and was in effect merely the reflection of the leadership exercised on his behalf, by those in whom he trusted. It was the appreciation of these negative aspects of his own character more than any other single factor, which confirmed him in his steadfast refusal to consider his own translation to the political scene at the Federal Centre – Lagos. There, he felt, he would be exposed primarily to people who did not understand him, whom he in a way despised and who, in turn, he was certain secretly despised him…

Snippet from the book LET TRUTH BE TOLD (the coups d’etat of 1966), by D.J.M. Muffett, a British citizen, formerly of the Nigerian Administrative Service, a research fellow of the centre for International Affairs, Harvard University, and Professor of African Studies, Duquesne University, Pittsburg, USA.

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