A former Director-General of Nigeria Security Organisation (NSO), Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, the indomitable Marafa Sokoto, is five years today below the surface of the earth.
He transited to the great beyond on 6th July, 2016, and was interred at the Hubare, in Sokoto, where Usman Dan Fodio and other great men of the Sokoto Caliphate were buried.
During his lifetime, Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi was a household figure in the Nigerian body politics and therefore cannot be easily forgotten. He had stints as a Police Commissioner, Federal commissioner, Board Room Guru, Great Politician, ideologically a little to the right, then a centrist and a little to the left, before he took the final bow.
The indomitable Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi probably had the widest network of friends in Nigeria, trailing, maybe, behind Alhaji Shehu Musa Yar’dua.
He was truly loved, and he equally loved immeasurably Nigeria and Nigerians. I was at his burial on July 8, 2016; the quality of the people and mammoth crowd that witnessed his burial attested to his popularity. In his lifetime and after retirement from public glare, he headed several Security committees and proffered viable solutions.
It is apparent that majority of his suggestions have not been considered or taken seriously, or both.
This is evident in the quagmire of grave security challenges we are encountering in the country presently. We must also accept the lucid fact that in the last five weeks or so the government has come hard, in fact very hard, on the bandits, kidnappers and Boko haram. The President, therefore, deserves commendation and encouragement.
Last year, the first in the series of Shinkafi Security Summit was held virtually. It attracted the presence of ranking Security experts from within and outside the government. The second in the series of Summit will again hold, this time, physically in Abuja on July 13.
Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi invested heavily on the unity and security of this country. He loved every part of the country, and he treated every Nigerian equally. Here, at the University of Ibadan, he raised substantial donations to Sultan Bello Hall from the governments of Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara states.
He attended social functions across length and breadth of Nigeria as if he owned a personal private jet. He fought poverty and unemployment (the twin major causes of endemic insecurity) head-on among his people and made workers around him happy.
The benevolent and committed life of Marafa Sokoto easily finds expression in the words of Uthman Dan Fodio in his book, Bayan Wujub al Hijra:
A man was asked why the Sasanid dynasty had degenerated to the extent it had. He said that was because they had appointed low men to high posts. Concerning this, the sages said that the death of one thousand men of high rank is less serious than one man of low rank being elevated (above the station he is fit for), and it is a proverbial saying that states decline through giving preference to men of low rank
( Tr F. H. El-Masri).
Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi was an exemplar of great ideas and of a nation endowed and gifted to be one of the greatest in the world.
May the redoubtable soul of our departed patriot, Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, continue to rest in perfect peace (Aljanah Firdaus).
Ire o!
Gani Adeniran, Department of Veterinary Pathology, University of Ibadan
