*Defeat ignorance with education- Sultan
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
Anchor of globally followed Abrahamic Mission and Chief Imam, Al-Habibiyyah Islamic Centre, Abuja, Sheikh Fuad Adeyemi, has won the 2022 Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar’s award prize for peace building.
Adeyemi, who is the youngest of the six awardees at the grand finale of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo Week 1444 (2022) held at the International Conference Centre, Kasarawa, Sokoto State on Wednesday Rabiul Thani 7th, 1444 AH equivalent to November 2, 2022, was honoured along with great leaders including the late Islamic scholar and jurist, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi and 13th Emir of Kano, late Alhaji Ibrahim Ado Bayero, both of who were posthumously honoured.
Others included a former Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Alhaja Lateefat Okunnu, former Second Republic Minister, Alhaji Idris Koko, and Sheikh Sheriff Ibrahim Sani, who also made the list of few Nigerians that emerged from the strictly scrutinised process for this year’s award prize.
The DEFENDER reports that the award was commissioned and institutionalised last year by the Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar-led Sultanate Council, Sokoto.
Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar, while giving his speech and also concurrently ushering the session of the award prize, touched on what he wanted the public to know about the import of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo Week and which motivated the organisers to integrate the young ones in this year’s edition, adding that it is the fact that the future of any society is driven by education.
The Sultan said “you defeat ignorance with education” and that when you educate particularly the girl child, you educate the nation.
Speaking about the awardees, the Amirul Mu’mineen of Nigeria noted that the six of them were nominated from outside the locality of Sokoto as he opined that the Week is beginning to wear the look of global status especially as its main guest speaker this year, Dr. Abdullah Hakeem Quick, had to be invited all the way from the Americas city of Ontario, Canada.
Continuing he appreciated the Chairman of the Organising Committee and Permanent Secretary, Sokoto State Zakat and Endowment Commission (SOZECO), Mallam Muhammad Lawal Maidoki, for his doggedness and capacity as one that one can give assignment to do and go to sleep.
The Sultan listed the categories of the award prize nominees were selected for and how those that made the list of six actually emerged.
He said the first category is the Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo Award for Exemplary Leadership. He said nominations were taken and it was late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi who emerged, posthumously, in the category.
Sultan Abubakar reminded his listeners that late Gumi translated the Qur’an from Arabic to Hausa Language and that he was a great leader, scholar and jurist of Islamic Shari’a. Son of Sheikh Gumi, Dr. Ahmed Gumi, attended the all important event and received the award on behalf of his late father.
Second category, Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo Award for Knowledge and Scholarship went to Sheikh Sheriff Ibrahim Sani, who the Sultan said was as at the time of the programme abroad this having his daughter and wife of Prof Abubakar Sani Lugga on ground to receive the award on his behalf.
The third category, Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo Award for Good Governance went to late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ibrahim Ado Bayero, CFR, and the posthumous award was received on his behalf by his son, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, CFR, the 15th Emir of Kano, who equally had a top job as Chairman of the Dan Fodiyo Week grand finale of the Week.
The DEFENDER reports that the fourth category, Nana Asmau Award for Social Development went to Alhaja Lateefat Okunnu, a former Deputy Governor of Lagos State.
Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar Award for Exemplary Public Service went to Alhaji Idris Koko, a Second Republic Minister.
The sixth and the youngest of all he awardees, who picked the Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar Award for Peace Building was 56-year-old Sheikh Fuad Adeyemi.
Commenting further, the Sultan, “We have to recognise these people to encourage them”.
Delivering his speech as the Chairman of the occasion, earlier, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, described the sitting Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, with whom he said exists a close working relationship, as a workaholic in the sense of its tirelessly striving hard to ensure and uphold the unity not only ethnic and religious backgrounds in Nigeria but also seeing to unity of the cosmopolitan North as one entity.
Emir Ado Bayero noted the efforts by some mischievous elements, who especially choose as stock in trade by using attempted distortion of Sheikh Usmanu Dan Fodiyo’s Jihad of 1802-1803 as tool to destroy the peaceful co-existence and unity that used to exist among Northerners of the country.
Because history has a beautiful nature that makes its rewriting uneasy, citing several works of historians locally and globally, the effort of the mischief makers has failed upon arrival, the Sarikin Kano said.
The strongman of the Emirate of Kano State expressed dismay that some people here in Nigeria have been dominating the social media posting stories in attempt to mislead unsuspecting members of the society about the purpose of the Jihad led by Dan Fodiyo, who was the first Amirul Mu’mineen of the Sokoto Caliphate in the post-Jihad, and has continued to be succeeded by his descendants from Sultan Muhammadu Bello until now the current reign of His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, who is the Sultan of Sokoto and Amirul Mu’mineen of Nigeria.
To those mischievous ones Usmanu Dan Fodiyo’s Jihad was an effort by Fulani race of Nigeria to subjugate other tribes to his own but was quick to say such effort comes to futility because the Jihad of the great Islamic teacher and founder of Sokoto Caliphate was rather a reformist thing than talked about.
In his lecture, Sheikh Quick from the Americas, specifically Ontario, Canada, dropped a huge sledge hammer on the lies, distortions of the Jihad and slanders of against the Islamic reformist apostle, saying Sheikh, whose continues to rest in his blessed Hubare (tomb) in Sokoto, against the lies of the slanderers, was an advocate of pure undiluted Islamic practice as well as demand for fairness and justice for practicing Muslims and to be guaranteed that non-Muslims, who had received the message of Islam in the former Gobir Kingdom and had embraced or reverted to the religion, would no longer be attacked.
Sheikh Quick, who said he studied Usman Dan Fodiyo in the Americas, urged Nigerian people and those that were present at the Kasarawa’s International Conference Centre to study activities that happened in 30 years between 1774-1804 and that they would see all the truths that they seek about the time, life and Jihad of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodiyo against the slanders of the slanderers.
Speaking at the grand finale of the Ninth Sheikh Usmanu Bin Fodiyo 1444 (2022) tagged, “Societal Reform Through Effective and Visionary Leadership: Lessons From The Sokoto Jihad Triumvirate”, Quick left the audience with a duty to make up their minds on speaking the truth, standing for fairness and justice as well as making education as pivotal in their quest for better society as, according to him, these are the legacies of Sheikh Usmanu Dan Fodiyo.
The grand finale was preceded the day before, on Tuesday Rabiul Thani 6th equivalent to November 1, by a symposium where presentations were made including a paper titled, “Caliph Muhammadu Bello’s Legacy on Enterpreneurship & Economic Empowerment and Its Applicability Today” by Prof. Chika Umar Aliyu of Economics Department, Usman Dan Fodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS).
The second paper presentation titled, “Management of Religious and Ethnic Diversity: The Sokoto Model”, had three speakers namely Prof. Muktar Umar Bunza, Kebbi State Commissioner for Higher Education, who spoke first, Prof. Muhammadu Mustapha Gwadabe, a professor of political history in the Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, who was second speaker and then the third speaker, Hon. Bello Idris, Member Sokoto State House of Assembly.
Present at the Wednesday’s Grand Finale included the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, who was Chairman of the occasion, Emir of Gwandu represented by Wazirin Gwandu Abdullahi Umar, Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaila Mera, Emir of Anka and Chairman Zamfara State Council of Chiefs, Alhaji Attahiru Muhammad Ahmad, Governors of Sokoto and Kebbi states represented, medical doctor and Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi, Prof. Abubakar Sani Lugga, and several others from across length and breath of Nigeria’s North and South.
