In tribute to Hajiya Bilkisu

Due to my inability to personally visit and commiserate with the family of Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf, a veteran journalist and one of the over 1,000 pilgrims to this year’s Hajj who died recently in a horrific stampede after the symbolic stoning of the devil at the Jamrat in Mina, Saudi Arabia, I am obliged to use this medium to express my condolences. I knew Hajiya Bilkisu for 34 years or so. Both of us started our journalism career as pioneer editorial staff of the Triumph Publishing Company, publishers of the then-famous weekly, Sunday Triumph, the first broadsheet newspaper in the country. The company was established in 1981 by the first executive governor of Kano State, the late Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar Rimi.
At the beginning, we were in good company of great Northern journalists and academics like Dr. Haroun Adamu, late Clement Nda-Isaiah, Rufa’i Ibrahim, Dr. Jibrilla Muhammad, Isma’ila Muhammad (now Emir of Karshi, FCT), Aminu Mustapha Ibrahim, Haruna Izah, and Ujudud Shariff. By the fourth quarter of 1983 some of these people left and we were subsequently joined by ace journalists such as Abba Dabo, Kabiru Yusuf, late Dr. Rufa’i Madaki, Emmanuel Yawe, late Muhammad Musa-Booth, and two Ghanaians – Nii and Okon (late).
As my senior colleague, I have always appreciated Hajiya Bilkisu, having found her to be humble, hard-working and committed to her duties. Even though we reporters found her approachable and accommodating because of her warmth, she also proved to be firm and a disciplinarian when the need arose. When she became the editor of Sunday Triumph, her determination to keep to production schedule and maintain standards was beyond reproach.
However, I have marveled at the determination with which she pursued her career later; becoming the first female editor of New Nigerian (up to that time considered as a leading ‘Northern mouthpiece’), joining other Northern journalists to float a well-written news magazine called Citizen, and maintaining her weekly column ‘Civil Society Watch’ for years in the Daily Trust. Her last piece for the column was published on the very day she died, September 24, 2015, which was this year’s Eid-el-Kabir or Sallah Day. The second of a two-part serial, it was review of a workshop she attended in Lagos which was organized by the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) on the “Review and Validation of Training Modules for Political Parties in ECOWAS Member States.”
Hajiya was a devout Muslim who never allowed anything to prevent her devotion to the service of God and her dedication to the cause of Islam. I can testify to this as I personally observed in 1985 the energy and enthusiasm with which she prepared to attend the conference at which the Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN) was founded. It was a clear evidence of the extent to which the event was close to her heart.
I have since then watched with little wonder her deep commitment to the operations of FOMWAN, Women in Nigeria (WIN) – another organization she was very much involved in founding – as well as other Muslim women’s NGOs in the country. In a piece commemorating FOMWAN’s 30th anniversary, published on September 10, 2015, Hajiya explained that members of the group are women united under the banner of Islam to demand their religious rights, influence national policy and condemn state and federal decisions they felt to be detrimental to their well-being and progress.
She also described the federation, for which she was a two-time Amira (president), as “an umbrella organization for Nigeria’s Muslim women’s groups, whose aim was to assist Muslim women in living according to the tenets of Islam, as expressed in the Qur’an and the Sunnah.” She disclosed FOMWAN’s achievements to include building of 150 schools, 1,200 Islamiyya schools, five hospitals, three orphanages, numerous adult literacy classes, skills acquisition centers and income generation projects to sustain its activities nationwide.
Her involvement in other activities such as human rights and civil society organizations made it possible for her to attend conferences both in Nigeria and abroad, which she dutifully reported in her weekly writings for the consumption of the public. This attested to her commitment and concern for the development of women and the evolution of a non-violent and equitable society in which people live harmoniously with minimal conflicts.
As a mark of that commitment to peace and harmony, she made herself available as a member of the fact-finding committee on the abduction of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram insurgents. She was also an active participant in the efforts to rehabilitate the Internally Displaced Parsons (IDPs) ravaged by the war waged by the insurgents which devastated some areas in the North-eastern part of Nigeria.
That Hajiya Bilkisu died while serving as a guardian for other Muslim women on how to perform the Hajj rituals on the invitation of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), as revealed by her bereaved husband Alhaji Mustapha Bintube, is a befitting tribute to her life of service to Islam and yet another proof of her dedication to Islam and Nigerian women. Because of her devotion, I believe if the chance were given to her to choose how she would die she would have chosen the way she died.
I wish to join other Nigerians in commiserating with her family, co-workers and all the Muslim women’s organizations she was associated with in the country. I pray that Allah (SWT) will give all of us the fortitude to bear the loss, forgive her sins and reward her with Aljannat Firdaus, amin.
Muhammad, former Editor-in-Chief of Triumph Newspapers, wrote from Hotoro, Kano <[email protected]>