By Mobolaji Sanusi
“We live in a society of imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.”
— Angela Yvonne Davis (1944 – present)
Sometime last week, news filtered in that the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, had passed away. He was a model bureaucrat whose three names begin with the letter ‘A’, hence his media-coined moniker during his heyday and throughout his lifetime as the man with the triple As, or simply Alhaji Alhaji. One of the ‘Alhajis’ in his name was included because, like his father, he was born on Sallah Day.
In every sense, he was royalty personified. A true scion of the Sokoto Caliphate and a proud descendant of the Islamic reformer, Uthman Dan Fodio. In an interview he granted in the late 1980s, he said the greatest inconvenience he ever suffered was having to trek home from school one day because his father did not arrive as scheduled. Despite his privileged upbringing, those who follow the socio-political and economic evolution of Nigeria cannot easily forget his hard work and governance exploits. From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, he played a prominent role in the nation’s political, economic and institutional history.
His expertise in political economy was honed at Bournemouth College of Commerce and later at the University of Reading in Berkshire, United Kingdom. He also attended the IMF Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. Unlike many blue-bloods and children of the nouveau riche today who detest hard labour but seek undeserved opportunities to become overnight multi-billionaires, Alhaji Alhaji opted to join the Nigerian Civil Service in 1964. He rose through the ranks in the Federal Ministries of Finance, Trade, and Budget and Planning to become Permanent Secretary. As Principal Assistant Secretary and later Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Trade (1975 to 1978) and subsequently as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, he acquitted himself admirably.
To further tap his wealth of experience, successive military governments appointed him to higher responsibilities. He served as Executive Secretary of the FESTAC ’77 International Secretariat, later as Minister of State for Budget and Planning in 1988, and then as Minister of Finance and Economic Development from 1990 to 1991. In 1990, he was turbaned as the Sardauna of Sokoto, succeeding Sir Ahmadu Bello. From 1992, he served as Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, a position he held until his retirement from public service in the mid-1990s.
He served Nigeria with all his strength when he had the option of idling away in unearned opulence. In the course of his duties as a technocrat, he became a constant feature in global institutions, including the Interim Committee of the International Monetary Fund, the Advisory Committee of Experts on Third World Debt under the Non-Aligned Movement, the Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Drafting Committee on Third World Debt, the Board of Governors of the OPEC Fund in Vienna, and the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning in Dakar, Senegal, among others. He served without blemish.
Some critics might denigrate his achievements by attributing his rise to opportunism, simply because he was a northern prince from the Caliphate. What these critics cannot take away from him is his intentionality and resolute conviction to join and stay put in the civil service, despite its routine and often boring processes, at a time when more enticing options lay before him as a Sokoto prince.
The question is: how many of today’s privileged children are willing to endure the boring routine demands of the contemporary civil service? Those who attempt to join today often do so at undeservedly high grade levels and know little or nothing about service rules and procedures. They rise to the pinnacle in barely a decade, unfairly outpacing experienced, tested and brilliant officers, even when they lack the requisite knowledge, training and experience to lead. No wonder the civil service in most states is a shadow of its old self. The toils of the likes of Samuel Manuwa, Simeon Adebo, Allison Ayida, Philip Asiodu, and indeed Abubakar Alhaji have become forgotten ideals rather than standards of service.
Shockingly, despite Alhaji Alhaji’s exploits at the highest levels of governance, it is doubtful if most young Nigerians had heard his name before or after his death. That is not entirely their fault. History as a subject, for no sensible reason, was unreasonably banished from classrooms across the country for over two decades by the civilian administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration only recently reintroduced history as a subject in schools.
Alhaji Alhaji was a prince with a difference. Born into royalty and having the rare privilege of living within the precincts of Buckingham Palace as a student in the United Kingdom, he could have, upon completion of his studies, returned to start parading himself as a businessman living off his family’s vast connections and the nation’s often fleeced public coffers, as many privileged children of power do today. Instead, he embraced hard work and dedicated himself to the civil service and to national development.
The fact that his name and legacy are largely unknown to the younger generation highlights Nigeria’s more fundamental problem of historical amnesia, which goes far beyond its numerous current challenges. We are raising a generation with little or no sense of history, yet it is a cliché that a people without a sense of their history and heritage will be obliterated. It was through the deliberate demonisation and distortion of our history that Western colonialists alienated us from our deities, norms, values, beliefs, traditions and heroes. Today, they troop to our country in droves to study and appropriate their once condemned African culture and values.
It is worth recalling that many remarkable scientific contributions were made by Black men and women who were forcibly taken to America and Europe as slaves. They were made to change their names to erase all traces of their identity and origin, barred from speaking their own languages and compelled to adopt foreign ones. They were brutalised, raped and tortured. Meanwhile, what is often projected in popular Western narratives is an image of Africa as a jungle inhabited by primates.
Sadly, we have left our own educational system in shambles and take pride in sending our wards abroad to acquire Western education to the detriment of our rich cultural and resource endowments. The country is now shamefully at the mercy of Western values and standards. This generation prefers to ‘japa’ and never look back.
Under such a forgetful atmosphere, if the new generation does not know a relatively recent and notable figure like Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, it is futile to expect them to know former institutional heavyweights like Dr. S. O. Wey, who was the indigenous Head of the Federal Civil Service from 1961 to 1966; Chief Simeon Adebo, Head of the Western Nigeria Civil Service; Chief Jerome Udoji, the famous technocrat who led the 1974 public service review commission; Alhaji Sule Katagum, pioneer Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission; Dr. Samuel Manuwa, the astute federal civil servant and revered medical doctor; and Mr. M. A. Ejueyitchie, who served as Head of Service and Secretary to Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa in 1960. Allison Ayida and Philip Asiodu are also outstanding Permanent Secretaries whose contributions future generations should not forget.
That is why, even as our leaders make deliberate efforts to address the nation’s socio-economic problems, a conscious effort must also be made to revive historical consciousness among young Nigerians.
Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji’s place in history is solidified by his commitment to national duty despite being a prince with numerous other options, including idling in unmerited opulence.
The fact that President Tinubu sent a high-powered delegation led by his deputy to his funeral underscored Alhaji Alhaji’s significance. In his tribute, the President described him as “an elder statesman, a first-class technocrat and one of the prominent figures in Nigeria’s democratic and parliamentary history.” What more is there to add? Nothing, as the President has said it all.
Yours sincerely believes that not only this Sokoto prince but also other tested bureaucrats who have passed on should forever be preserved in the country’s history books. Rest well in Al-Jannah Firdaus, Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji.
To Be Reasonable Is Tinubu’s Message to EFCC
Enough of this impunity, that is the message President Bola Tinubu has sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and by extension to other law enforcement agencies in the country.
The Commission obtained a court order on August 5, 2026, freezing the accounts of the Osun State Government just days before its governorship election on August 15, 2026, leaving many mouths agape.
The public considers the order, even if circumstantial, a flagrant erosion of public confidence in the democratic process. To this, President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, has said no, by directing the Commission to immediately approach the court to seek a prompt vacation of the order in the overriding public interest.
The President was right when he said he felt “deeply embarrassed, not by the EFCC’s exercise of its mandate backed by a court order, but by the timing of the agency’s action.”
On the Osun governorship election, the President is saying: let the will of the people prevail, even if the heavens fall.
- Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS. (WhatsApp Only – 07011117777)
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