My friends often accuse me of having the natural story telling talents of an Oriental Jew, so by way of reviewing this book, I will tell a few stories about how it came about. I was very surprised when I was asked to come and review this book because the author and I have been quarrelling for 17 years since I first came into contact with her. Even now, as Editorial Board members of Daily Trust, we are still quarrelling, so it is a testimony to the confidence and large heart of the author that I was chosen to do this review.
I knew Hajia Ramatu many years before I ever saw her. As a devoted reader of the New Nigerian in the 1980s, I was fascinated by the by-line Ramatu Ali from Jos and the copious stories she used to file from there. I went to work for the New Nigerian in November 1995, around the time the then Managing Director Professor Abubakar Rasheed redeployed her from Jos back to the company’s headquarters in Kaduna. She was the Associate Editor of the Sunday New Nigerian while I was Deputy Editor of the New Nigerian daily.
The road to writing this book, which we are launching today, ( Monday May 28, 2012) began in January 2000 when the new Managing Director of the New Nigerian Newspaers Limited Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim reconstituted the Group Editorial Board and both Hajia Ramatu and I were among the 12 or so members. Not long after that, the MD directed that all the senior members of the Editorial Board should write weekly columns. Many of the board members were not happy with the instruction and thought it was an unnecessarily heavy burden, but we can all look back now and thank Dr. Farouk for his foresight and insightful leadership.
Following his instruction, we had to sit down and share the days of the week. Since there were only so many days in a week, some Board members were able to dodge the column assignment, but Hajia Ramatu undertook to write on Tuesdays while I undertook to write on Mondays. I was very happy when the MD made her to write columns, because I was also the Eeditor of the New Nigerian at that time and my office was right next door to her’s. She used to barge into my office to accuse me of all sorts of things, from marginalizing women to colluding with the high and mighty to “eating alone” and forgetting my colleagues with whom we struggled together. One day she barged in, stood in the middle of the office and said I was worse than Yakubu Aliyu, my predecessor in the editor’s office with whom she also had running encounters. It was some years later that I was able to find my voice when her uncle, the great Dr. Ahmadu Ali became the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman. Anytime he was quoted in the newspapers to have made a controversial statement, I will go and challenge her to write her column about it.
Writing a weekly column made Hajia Ramatu very occupied, in addition to our other work of writing editorials and editing opinion articles. As someone who has been writing opinion columns more or less regularly for 22 years now, I personally know the kind of personal discipline required to write a weekly column, because you must read your newspapers thoroughly, read books and other material diligently, keep your ears to the ground, marshal your thoughts carefully and discuss with colleagues before you throw ideas out to the public. This is because once published, the words cannot be withdrawn.
Hajia Ramatu turned out to be a very diligent, very dedicated and very prompt column writer. While I quite often failed to write my weekly columns, she almost never failed to write her’s. She always turned in her material well in advance, when some of our other columnists were struggling to decide on what to write on as the deadline approached. Although the MD tasked me to vet what columnists wrote before publication, I soon came to trust that Hajia Ramatu was not a trouble maker and I sometimes passed her column for publication without reading it. Her favourite themes were opportunities for women, contribution of women to national and international development and peace, family issues, family friendly social and economic policies, and also revulsion at the excesses and corruption of rulers. As you will see here, she discussed everything from politics to economy to health, education, women, children, people, science and international affairs and also paid tribute to several fallen heroes and heroines.
The book that we are launching today, which contains 118 Articles and nearly 400 pages, is obviously only a selection of the dozens if not hundreds of articles that she wrote in those days. I quickly got to find out that she was making an impact even in high places because in January 2001, when I accompanied the MD on a tour, we visited the Emir of Kazaure in his palace and he mentioned Ramatu’s column as one of the things he enjoyed in the paper. When I later discovered that she is a friend of his sister Hajia Amina Zakari, I thought it was all rigged, until other dignitaries that we visited during the tour all praised her work and said it was one of the paper’s selling points.
I don’t think their opinions were wrong, and I am very glad that Hajia Ramatu has found the time and patience to compile this selection of her works in book form for it to be available to a wide spectrum of readers and to preserve the work for future generations. I will particularly like to recommend this work to students, to school libraries, to working journalists, to gender activists, to young men and women aspiring to be writers, to politicians and policy makers, and also to the general reader. It is a very worthwhile work of rich perspective and insight by a very senior journalist and observer of public affairs, and I am sure its pages will enrich our national literature and public discourse for all time.
Jega is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Media Trust Limited
