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A REVIEW OF HATCHING HOPES
TITLE: Hatching Hopes AUTHOR: Bukar Usman REVIEWER: Khalid Imam PUBLISHER: Bookcraft & Klamidas EDITION: Second YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2018 PAGES: 287
Not all nonfictional accounts are strictly personal. A good number of autobiographies, memoirs and biographies not necessarily of notable political figures, religious leaders, heroic military men or great warriors, famous entertainers, erudite intellectuals, preeminent poets and novelists have the magnetic force and valuable information to tell splendid public stories. This is largely so, because there are many personal stories of other people such as leading technocrats, journalists, economists, bankers and teachers which may also reflect significant epochal occurrences in their lifetime or during their public service years. True, a great number of major national histories, transformations and political events, their twists and turns don’t just happen, there are personalities behind them. And knowledge and history would surely be incomplete without reading from such persons’ narratives being drivers of change, events and transformations. It is not hard to understand that the wellbeing of all nations is radically shaped or moved by the lives of individuals as drivers or participants. And whenever such persons narrate their tales, their personal stories reveal quite a number of major public stories. Why is it so? It is simple to accept that people who had the rare privilege to be active participants in formulation or implementation of intricate or key national policies or reforms are the true architects with hands behind most of the socio-economic life, political, religious and multi-cultural experiences of their countries, continents or the world as a whole. “Hatching Hopes” is a thrilling story of one of such influential but utterly invisible architects named Dr. Bukar Usman. This gripping autobiography starts by narrating a captivating tale of a Babur/Bura speaker born at a time the inhabitants of his northeastern birthplace Biu town were still sharing with hyenas the neighborhood hills and plateaus surrounding their agrarian village. The hyenas, as the narrator would recall were then living in the nearby hideouts in the mountains sitting by the foot of their huts and farms. The boy Bukar, like most of the few school going children of his generation, was not enrolled in Western education by his parents. Rather, he was “arrested” in 1951 by a man “wearing a dull, multi – coloured gown.” (p. 25). The brave boy showed no fear or resistance to the strange man who picked him on the street while he was playing. Eventually, the man turned out not to be a kidnapper, but one of the emir’s messengers taking to the palace children old enough to enroll in school. The man immediately arraigned this boy before his royal majesty. And the emir wasted no time instructing that Bukar and one other boy named Mamman Tukshil should be taken to school. And “nobody sought the permission of my parents nor was that required” (p. 26). Since the emir’s power was absolute, the boy Bukar and the other boy were straightaway taken to school. It was that very singular royal instruction that set him off on the path of a new beginning – a beginning that culminated into a glorious public service life to the adult Bukar Usman decades after his life at the King’s College, Lagos (pp.57-66) and graduating from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. (p. 67). It is not out of place to note that, at that material time Bukar was first taken to primary school, in the Muslim northern Nigeria, parents not only preferred enrolling their children into Qur’anic schools, but considered Western education as a serious taboo partly out of fear of the activities of foreign missionaries in most of the major traditional African societies. The Western schools, to the Muslim natives were nets set to trap new converts to the Whiteman’s religion. “Hatching Hopes” is a true-life story segmented into twenty chapters. In each chapter, the storyteller offers detailed accounts of his life. From chapter one titled “Biu”, one reads about “the plateau among the plain lands of Borno” (p.1). One also sees the picture of a school boy taught not only the Whiteman’s alphabet, but trained on proper “personal hygiene” not only because team of health inspectors from the regional administrative headquarter Kaduna regularly visited their school, but because teachers then discharged their duties more diligently. (p. 29). In chapter three: “Biu Routes,” the narrator recalls his many exciting journeys outside Biu to Maiduguri, and plying the roads linking Biu with other towns helped his young mind appreciate the beauty of nature not minding whether “the heaven has fallen” as native Biu people put it upon hearing news of the demise of their king (p.42). Chapter four subtitled, “Biu Roots” discusses the beauty of Biu’s “arts and culture” with graphic details and deftness (p.44). Chapter seven which runs from pp.70-78 captures the author’s exploits in sports as an outstanding athlete during his youthful school days. “Civil Service Destiny” is the title of chapter nine. In this chapter the reader would come to the inevitable conclusion that the storyteller was quite a lucky civil servant not just for enjoying a steady rise from 3rd Class Clerk position in 1965 to the post of permanent secretary in the presidency, the position on which he meritoriously retired in 1999. He is truly blessed being regarded as one of his country’s finest, gifted and well informed public servant who worked, in different ministries and the cabinet office or the presidency with some of the best hands in Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service. It was his destiny to tap from the wealth of knowledge and experience of the likes of Prince Solomon Akenzua, P.C. Asiodu, M.O. Feyide, F.R.A. Marinho, Abdul-Azeez Atta, C.O. Lawson, Allison Ayida, A.L.Ciroma, Grey A.E Longe, Shehu Musa, Olu Falae, Aliyu Mohammed, Mustapha Umara, Aminu Saleh, Gidado Idris, S.B Agodo and many other seasoned public servants most of whom rose to the pinnacle of their careers as heads of service and secretaries to the government of the federation before their retirements (p.89). The narrator, was either a witness to or an active player in all the reforms or policies of all the governments from Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to General Abdulsalami Abubakar who finally handed over power to civilian government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in May,1999. This rich book, to say the least, is an invaluable reference material that chronicles not only the story of Nigeria’s public service, but also with mastery and dexterity aptly captures the country’s history and rich cultural diversity not forgetting its chequered socio-political life especially during it’s dark days of military juntas. For instance, in the book, the author, who was at the Cabinet Office (The Presidency) since 1972, highlights how the People’s Bank of Nigeria was conceived and the role he played (p.141). Still in this book, one reads about the strategy and deft skills involved in negotiations with NLC, ASUU, NUPENG and PENGASSAN from an active player on the side of FG during the heightened days of many strikes that rocked the nation. Being an autobiography, the author takes the reader through all the various segments of his fascinating life in one chapter or the other. For instance, one reads about his “early role models”(p.115), his “Lagos lifestyle” (p.123), his days working at the “Cabinet office” (p.133), his “public interactions” (p.147), his “family beginnings” (p.153), “entrepreneurial spirit” (p.167) and “marital healing” (p.171). At home and at the regional level, the narrator shares with a reader his roles in rights campaign and Nigeria’s leading role in watering the tree of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) in 1996 which he served as a delegate (p.179). While in chapter nineteen, the author invites the reader to read about his “different feast” (p.185) and in chapter twenty, he reveals to the reader his journey “back to the familiar” serving in numerous Presidential panels and committees such as Presidential Panel on National Security (p.193). And the book which opens with “about the author” on page 7 and “notes on the second edition” on page 9, concludes with a “postscript”(p. 201), “second edition postscript” (p.207), “appendix”(p.213) and index” (p.269). In the final analysis, this is a book about Bukar Usman and about Nigeria’s journey to democracy and its leading role to bring lasting peace and democracy in Africa from Balewa to General Abdulsalami days when the author finally exited the scene into a new life in retirement. This is a rich material for students and scholars interested in public service, politics and history of Nigeria. Khalid Imam, a bilingual poet, an author and a playwright is based in Kano and can be reached via his email: [email protected]
Bukar Usman’s Hatching Hopes (2nd Edition) By Henry Akubuiro (The Sun, January 1, 2019)
Title: Hatching Hopes
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The circumstances of Bukar Usman’s admission to the prestigious King’s College, Lagos, in 1964,was more of destiny than desire. He didn’t know much about the school, needless to say, lobby for the admission. He was just one of the two students selected from his school, Borno Provincial Secondary School, Maiduguri, for higher school certificate course at the college. Thatopened a new vista in his life. Bukar Usman’s autobiography, Hatching Hopes (first published by Klamidas Communications in 2006), is more than the chronicler’s recollections of his life from cradle to coming of age and the present. From his Biu hometown to Maiduguri, Lagos and abroad, Hatching Hopes takes us on an inexpensive trip into the life of the seasoned bureaucrat, prolific author, historian and folklorist, Dr. Usman,even as it offers a peep into Nigerian history from the precolonial to postcolonial, with each epoch playing a major role in the trajectory of his fulfilled life. Setting the tone for the recollections, Usman, in the first chapter, situates the land of his birth –Biu – “the plateau among the plane lands of Borno en route to the Sahara Desert” (p.13). Usman recalls that when he was a child, much of Biu’s sorghum was of the red variety used in making the mildly intoxicating burukutu drink, unlike today. From the plateau where his family lived, he could hear laughing hyenas from the surrounding hills: “So loud and clear were their growls and hoots that you were sometimes sure they were around the corner,” he writes. Growing up, Biu was a pastoral beauty, he recalls. But, today, it has been supplanted by urban concrete layout. The story of a hapless woman’s encounter with a leopard in the forest of Biu, which left her scalp torn from the nape of the neck and the native doctor who came to her rescue using incantations and herbs sounds like the stuff of fiction; but, for the young Usman, who witnessed the sudden transition from anguish to joy, it was a sight to behold as the leopard’s hair gradually came out from the native doctor’s black cloth. The manner in which Usman went to school was dramatic, somewhat fortuitous. One day, he was summoned by the emir to appear before him. “Well, child, you are now ready to go to school, and you should proceed,” said the emir when he got there. From then on, he had an unbroken educational career, from 1951 to the year of his graduation from the university in 1969. How lucky he was!In those days, in his part of the country, western education was meant for those who couldn’t toil and moil in the farm, yet others were sent to school only as a punitive measure. Even among the princes, it was the less favoured whowere sent to school. They were derided. Hatching Hopes regales us with the autobiographer’s life at King’s College, Lagos. As a result of the location of the school close to Race Course and the main road, noise was a major headache for young Usman. Sometimes he had to cover his ears with cotton wools to save his ear drums. After his studies, he worked briefly with the Federal Savings Bank as a third class clerk before proceeding to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, for university education in 1966, on a study leave, where he studied Public Administration. Extramurally, he excelled as a sportsman. On his return from the university, he joined the civil service, still, as a third class clerk in the Ministry of Communications. He grew in the job become and eventually became an Admin Officer 1 in 1983. One of the septuagenarian’s guiding principles is: “There is time for everything under the sun.” In this regard, he doesn’t believe in lobbying for positions. Having noticed his hard work over the years, he, on May 24, 1988, was appointed Director-General, Special Service Department, by the Babangida regime. On the 15th of September, 1997,he was appointed Permanent Secretary in the Presidency by the Abacha regime, from where he retired in 1999. This autobiography puts you in the know of how the Lagos of the 1960s was and how the later Lagos took shape. Usman also tells the story of his spell in the Cabinet Office, which he joined in 1972. In the course of his civil service job, the autobiographer was engaged in public interactions, which he details in the fourteenth chapter. The book contains the entrepreneurial spirit of his late spouse, Kemi. But, after that marital setback, Usman remarried Dupe Omole, with whom he has raised a family. In the second edition (jointly published by Klamidas Communications, Abuja, and Bookcraft, Ibadan), Usman notes in the “Second Edition Postcript” that his public service, post-service, literary and other activities have attracted commendations, awards and encouragements and testimonies from various quarters. To buttress it, he publishes some excerpts of such gestures. The book wraps up with appendices, from history of Biu to tourist attractions in the emirate and the list of Golden Ingots. Hatching Hopes teems with pictures –those of the author as a student, public outings, his numerous travels abroad, his family members and awards. There is no doubt that this well packaged offering will inspire everybody with dreams to keep it real. Glory will surely come at the end. |
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