MAGACO, the acronym for Marriage Guidance and Counselling, has always been mind-blowing and always the most cherished session in every MSSN programme.
Looking back at how we met, the memories are still fresh. We first met when we attended a leadership training programme organised by the Advisory Committee of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN), Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, branch in January, 2022. While I attended as a participant, he was the secretary of the committee. It was a two-day event and we never interacted or noticed each other until the second day when I met him to complain about my misspelled name on my certificate. Little did we know how much impact we were going to have in each other’s lives that would change us forever.
As Allah would have it; that short conversation was it. We never saw each other till we met again at the programme’s Conference for Higher Institutions Muslim Students Umara (COHIMSU) organised by MSSN (Zone A) still hosted by the ABU branch. I was also a participant and he was the amir and chairman of the zone. We spoke; recalling how I laid a complaint about my misspelled name and we exchanged numbers.
It was still 2022, the year ASUU had a year-long strike. Three days after I went back home, my would-be husband took the pain of coming to visit my parents when he was returning from Lagos through Ilorin. He and my dad got talking and along the line they discovered that my dad and his uncle knew each other from our hometown during the times of the Young Muslim Mujtamiah (YMM) and both had come a long way and were old mujtamiah brothers. They were also products of MSSN Bayero University Kano (BUK). While his uncle, Prof Adam Ahmad Okene, was the amir of BUK in 1988, my dad, Ismail Sulaiman Obosi, was the secretary. My dad always referred to his uncle as his mentor.
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Alhamdulillah, we got along and we kept talking and things got serious between us. Shortly after Eid al-Adha, he stated his intentions through his twin brother and friend, Muhammad Saeed Suleiman, alias MSS1, and my father accepted and handed me over as a wife. Alhamdulillah; that was it.
Things progressed between us. We bonded over our shared love, differences and interests. We encountered certain challenges, crossed a lot of hurdles that came our way and overcame every criticism and browbeating. We knew what we had and wanted and worked towards it. We attended a series of beneficial MSSN programmes together, one of which was a MAGACO retreat, where Dr Bala Muhammad and other scholars spoke extensively about marriage, polygyny and other eye-opening topics. That programme served as a marital counselling to both of us and it triggered our official Walimatul Nikah on July 15, 2023.
Alhamdulillah; it has been a beautiful and blissful journey. Not only did Allah bless me with a husband, Allah also blessed me with an elder sister I never had, my husband’s first wife, Fatimah Mazai. Mama Sabira, as we fondly call her, has been nothing short of support, love and accommodation. She has taken me as a younger sister and is someone I can easily run to for help and advice. She is also an MSSN sister and used to be the sisters’ columnist for the Radiance magazine.
In my husband I have found the best friend, companion, partner and confidant; and he is my pillar. And in Mama Sabira I have found an elder sister, a friend and a companion. Alhamdulillah!
MSSN @70 still stands strong and has been a platform through which many families have been built. I am proud to say I come from an MSSN family and got married from MSSN.
Hind Ismail Sulaiman and Muhammad Isa can be reached at MSSN (A Zone) headquarters at the Islamic Trust of Nigeria premises, Zangon Shanu, Zaria.
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