About fifteen years ago, I chanced upon his phone number and an idea struck. I had completed a book and, in my bid to have it published, I drew up a list of potential sponsors. Each of the listed names was a major character in my community and my childhood models. He was third on a list that began with Alhaji Ahmadu Abubakar Muye, Minister of Finance in General Ibrahim Babangida’s military government, and Alhaji Abubakar Gimba, a renowned writer and banker. But, unlike the first two, he was in government, a part of the nation’s Cabinet at the time, and I wasn’t unaware of the security protocols to endure in reaching out to a serving minister.
One weekend night, after days of contemplating the contact, I composed a carefully-worded text message identifying myself and why I wanted to see him and hit the “send” button. I wasn’t too hopeful of a response and had no idea he was in Minna for the weekend, so I went to bed almost immediately. He would be right to hiss after reading the text and dismiss it because I had, at that point, not had a noteworthy media presence and was unknown to him. When I woke up, my Nokia phone had run out of juice, and it took a while to get it charged. “Meet me at home at 9 am,” said a terse text message on the screen when the phone came on. It was Barrister Abdulrahman Hassan Gimba, the fabled A. H. Gimba. My heart sank. It was already a few minutes to the hour, so I asked a friend to drive me to his hilltop residence. We got there about a quarter to nine, my anxiety growing along with my mental rehearsals of how to market my art to him.
He was standing outside the gate of his imposing mansion in a simple Oxford shirt and light trousers, arms folded behind his back, when we got there. I rushed out of the car to meet him. He checked his watch as I introduced myself, and blurted: “What time is our appointment? This is past 9 am.” I thought it was an attempt to unnerve me, and that he would let up. It was just a quarter past nine. He never did. He asked us to reschedule, and that he would get back to me. When he returned to the house, I waited outside, hoping he would send an aide to fetch me. A few minutes later, I saw a cousin approaching the house. When I recounted what had transpired, he burst out laughing. He won’t see you, you should’ve known that, he said. He too had come to see him and arrived ahead of his appointed time. I left, half-disappointed and half-amused.
I wasn’t in the dark about Gimba’s principles. I just had taken them for legends. Even though I grew up hearing fantastical tales about him, a lawyer with strict adherence to “alien” social etiquette, I never thought he would care much about punctuality in such a fashion. He was fondly characterized as a “bature”—a white man—in Minna for those unusual principles and no-nonsense approach to life. Once, a relative found a reason to fault this lifestyle in a conversation. He had gone to ask him for money for his kids’ school fees and Gimba simply asked for the names and schools of the kids with the assurance that he would settle the fees. The problem was that my relative had no outstanding fees to pay. He just needed money for a purpose other than his claim, and he couldn’t get to forgive Gimba for refusing to participate in his lie.
And when, a few weeks later, I got a second appointment to see him at home during another of his visits from Abuja, his response to my quest wasn’t any different from my bitter relative’s experience. I came with a manuscript, a random boy he knew from nowhere, and who got to meet him through no intermediary, and he listened to what I had to say—a request for support to have my book self-published. He would take it up with Abubakar Gimba, he promised. “He’s my brother,” he said. I had yearned for direct dealing with him but, for him, going through Abubakar Gimba, whose oldest son had married my oldest sibling about a year earlier, was the realistic channel to have my claims fact-checked.
Abdulrahman Gimba and the late Abubakar Gimba were not blood siblings, but their bromance was well-established. They were the most famous Gimbas I knew, both highflying-professionals, and theirs somewhat made the name seem special. I got to meet Abubakar Gimba and secured support to publish the book. None of the top three names I had approached disappointed me, including Alhaji Ahmadu Abubakar Muye. The latter, who was the most renowned person from my place when I was a little kid, passed my manuscript to the cerebral Daily Trust columnist, Muhammad Al-Ghazali, whom I had only known on the back page of the newspaper to review, and his assessment was flattering and heartwarming. I got to tell Al-Ghazali that I was the boy whose book he reviewed for the ex-minister when we met for the first time last February.
A few days ago, when I shared a report that Abdulrahman Gimba had obtained the nomination form to run for Governor of Niger State on my Facebook, a curious legion of Facebook friends parked under the comment section to seek the reason for my excitement. Most of the curious ones were either not from Minna or too young to pay attention to his brief public service records when he served as Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission between July 2007 and October 2008
In his 2016 think-piece on Nigeria’s disappointing participation in international sports tournaments, which was republished last year to lament another of Nigeria’s disastrous outings at the Olympics, the Daily Trust columnist, Sonala Olumhense, remembered how, around 2008, “the prospects for Beijing (Olympics) were so grim that the Minister for Sports requested President Umaru Yar’Adua to consider withdrawing Team Nigeria from participation.” The minister in question, which my younger Facebook friends didn’t seem to know, was A. H. Gimba, and that decision was a validation of Mr. Olumhense’s premise—that a “correlation exists between investment and achievement.” It’s also the classic A. H. Gimba!
In his recent interview on Badeggi Radio, Minna, Gimba revisited his reason for asking President Yar’adua to reconsider wasting Nigeria’s money on the Beijing Olympics, emphasizing that Team Nigeria was tragically ill-prepared. Even though the recommendation wasn’t heeded, the tragic performances of Nigeria’s athletes in Beijing were as predicted. The excelling countries, Gimba revealed, had specialized academies for training their contingent to take part in l such distinguished tournaments and that four years are long enough to be duly prepared for these glories instead of humiliating one’s country progressively on the international scene.
Why Gimba’s recommendation to Yar’adua was shocking and unusual was that tournaments, especially one as grand as the Olympics, are a money-making enterprise for the political class, and it’s unsurprising that Gimba was resisted by the Sports establishment in the country. He was out to take away their feeding bottles, prevent an expensive jamboree that would cost the country fortunes, and yet with nothing but embarrassing defeats and losses to show for the billions “spended”—as once said by Solomon Dalung who, as the Minister of Sports in charge of the 2016 Rio Olympics, came under attack over misappropriation of funds meant for the Olympics and had to appear on TV to give this grammatically embarrassing excuse: “The funds spended were properly spended.” The 77 Nigerian athletes on which Dalung’s funds were “spended” returned from Rio with a single medal, a Bronze medal!
So, for a state as poorly-run as Niger state, having an unconventional politician like A. H Gimba in the race to govern it is an exciting development. Gimba may be a brutally honest “Bature,” and a non-conforming public servant, but his uncomfortable truths and no-nonsense dispositions are missing in Nigeria’s policy circles—at least to prevent Nigeria’s taxpayers’ money from being “properly spended” on our politicians’ wild goose chase.
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