Mutumin Kirki

I kept delaying this tribute because of the emotions thinking about Abdullahi Kwales elicits. As I write this, I’m hiding in a dark living room trying to finish before my family wakes up, so that the children wouldn’t see my tears.)

Nda Kwales, as we called him, phoned to say he wanted to discuss something with me.

“Assalamu alaikum Malam, where are you? I will like to see you about something. But first I’m going to Lokoja today, then I will return to Abuja, then Minna and then Bida.”

I’ve always wondered how Nda Kwales could do so much travelling because I dislike travelling myself; but he was always on the road or in the sky.

We agreed that we would meet in Abuja before he would leave  for Minna. But that was the day he had an accident on Lokoja road.

Now I don’t know what he wanted to talk about. And didn’t ask of at least the topic of discussion as I do sometimes.

He probably wanted me to help someone as usual. Sometimes, he would drive early to my house in Minna to drop off somebody’s CV to see if I could get them a job.

I will reduce the story of my long relationship with Nda to two things my wife liked about him and two things I cherished about this childhood friend.

One. When I locked the car key in my wife’s car as a result of my usual absent-mindedness, he was the one who retrieved it.

Nda balked at my suggestion that a mechanic should be called. “I will do it,” he said.

Madam took my car to run some errands leaving us to struggle to retrieve the key. At a point, I got tired of helping Nda with the seemingly impossible task and took his car to go and pick up cooking gas for the kitchen.

He was now alone in the garage still struggling.

By the time I came back, he was sitting with satisfaction on his face: he had done it. I called my wife to proudly announce that my friend fixed her car.

The second reason why she liked him was because he counted among my two friends who pressured me to have a house in Minna, the other one is Adam Muhammad.

We were sitting in the living room last year when he discovered that the house wasn’t mine.

So he went into a long lecture during which I wasn’t permitted to talk.

“You need at least a house in Minna for your children so that they will have a place to live when you’re gone. Because those you help now – including your friends – will ignore them.”

“How do I build a house when I have no savings of any kind?” I asked.

“What do you do with your salary?”

“My salary doesn’t last one week. Sometimes it is gone in 24 hours. Not that it is too small. Alhamdulillah, it is okay. I can’t complain because I also earn a tidy sum doing other things. But they all go in the way of the salary.”

“Look my friend,” he said a little frustrated, “giving money to people is good and should be encouraged. But giving money to your family is also good.”

Then he told me of how he built his two houses in Minna from nothing. “The most important thing is to get started, then you would be forced to continue,” he concluded.

He was able to extract a promise from me to invest 100,000 naira every month into the building. He even went to a block maker to negotiate a discount for me.

I did as he advised and put down N100,000 for the first month. But in the second month,  I broke the promise and went back to my usual routines and avoided that topic when we talked.

However, during the week of his accident, I laid the foundation for the house. I was happy that I had good news to give him this time, not knowing that he was lying fatally at Gwagwalada hospital.

A mutual friend based in Kano, Baba, later told me that Nda was the only one who survived the accident because others in the car died immediately. So he was taken to the hospital. But he joined them a few days later.

One reason why I adored Nda was his love for education. He just defended his master’s thesis before he passed.

On 25 March this year, he whatsapped me this message:

“Salam. Need yr prayers; my external defense is scheduled to take place next tmr Insha Allah. I advise you to advice the governor to take 3 days off n visit Saudi for Ummrah to thank Allah [for the victory in the election] and seek for more guidance… you can also go with him. May we be successful fiduniya wa khahira Aameen.”

The second way he inspired me was how he nurtured relationships and was a link between friends – something I’m very very poor at. A former IG of police once told me: “Ibraheem, I am the only one maintaining this relationship.”

So I try to improve by following the example of people like Nda Kwales. Now he’s no more, leaving behind four children. The wife actually lost a pregnancy just before he died.

I read somewhere that when people die, we don’t mourn the individuals but the memories we created together and we are sad because we can no longer create such memories.

For Nda, I sometimes felt like sending him a Whatsapp message, with the hope that he may answer.

May Allah forgive Nda and grant him  Aljannatul Firdaus. The way he cared for others, may Allah provide and protect his children throughout their lives.