Honoring a True Gentleman (Sa’ad Zungur 1915 -1958)
Sa’ad Zungur was born into a noble family of Islamic scholars. His family held and I believe still hold the Imam (leadership) of the Central Mosque title in Bauchi. Though a man of deep Islamic scholarship, he was a smart and hard working student and the first northerner to study Pharmacy, according to Mallam Aminu Kano, his political student. Despite his humility and unmaterialistic personality, Sa’adu was also described by Mallam Aminu Kano as a man who fears no one.
Born in 1915 at Ganjuwa ward of Bauchi city, Ahmad Mahmud Sa’ad Zungur, popularly known as “Sa’adu” completed his early education in Bauchi, and proceeded to Katsina for teacher’s training. He later attended the Kano School of Hygiene and also Royal School of Hygiene with matriculation in London, England. He graduated with distinction.
The influence of his scholarly family and the knowledge he acquired early, influenced his life significantly. His father Muhammad Bello spoke not only the local city language Hausa, but also Fulfulde (a regional language of cattle herders of West Africa) and Arabic fluently. Gifted with something of photographic memory, Sa’ad was described as a brilliant student of Quranic interpretation (Tafsir), grammar (Nahw), Jurisprudence (Fiqh) and theology, and had a great appetite for learning. Mallam Salman, a cousin of Sa’ad, once told this writer that Sa’ad thinks and ponders a lot over issues, and the family was concerned that he would always be either reading, writing or in deep thought. He has a favorite tree in Zungur, Mallam Salman described, a Giginya tree (an unusually tall tree of the date palm family), where he would sit to contemplate.He used both his formal western and religious knowledge to confront the wrongs in his society. With his western education, he became the thorn in the flesh of the British colonial administration, to the extent that they practically banned everyone from giving him an employment. At that time, an employment ban by a colonial administrator practically means a hopeless unemployment situation, as there was virtually no “private sector.” Zungur was not deterred. It was later that he formed the first political forum for northern youths and then for grown ups, the first ever recorded up north. He not only initiated activism against foreign control, he led it with a lot of courage and resolve. His greatest assets were his intellectual gift, his poetic gift, and his convincing writings.
On the social level, Sa’adu’s campaign against practices he saw as hindrances to social and economic development was felt. He fought hard to eradicate injustices against the general population by local African leadership. Some of the problems were devoid of colonial administration’s influence and some he saw as resulting from the local leadership’s connivance with colonial administration against the general interest of the nation and its people. In this arena, he used his Islamic knowledge base to attack what he described as injustice and tyranny by local leaders. Among the common theme he addressed was the growing passiveness and insensitivity to matters of social justice and governance, sold to the community as “respect for leaders.”
Writing in August of 1954 for example in relation to a permit sought for a political rally, Sa’adu’s letter to the City’s leadership council reads:
“NEPU (a political party) in Bauchi will support competent people whom it sees are sincerely committed to promoting the rights and welfare of the people of Bauchi. NEPU would care less about their organizational affiliation or place of origin. The only condition they would satisfy is competence and commitment to honestly improving the welfare of the people.”
Though an effective campaigner for social justice, Sa’adu’s mode of operation however, was not devoid of respect for his elders and leadership. He was assertive, and appeared never to give up on what he believed to be right. He continued to follow a path until he attained success in the most peaceful way he could. He was assertive without being unduly rash and disrespectful. An example of this was displayed in the following letter also written to the Bauchi Native Authority Council in April 1956.
“ We take courage to renew our faith in, and to demonstrate our unflinching loyalty to the Bauchi Native Authority in spite and despite the mortal injury inflicted on our traditional political faith by the recent attitude of the Native Authority towards our progressive political organization NEPU, and its youth wing RSS. Although such attitude has not affected our loyalty to the established authority. We were however extremely disappointed.”
Sa’adu was genuinely a man ahead of his time. In a speech he gave at Kaduna in 1948, twelve years before the realization of Nigerian Independence from colonial rule, Sa’adu described the situation before the nation. He drew analogies to wake the people up from their slumber, that self-government by any name is way ahead of a vote for control by foreigners in one’s land.
In presenting his ideas at Kaduna, Sa’adu drew the analogy of the propaganda that fanned slavery, where the European establishments were telling the world that the “negro was not educatable, because he was not a complete human being.” And now, he said, to maintain a grip on their colonies in Africa they are telling the world that African colonies are not ready to govern themselves. If anyone should buy that ridiculous idea, he suggested, it should not be the Africans themselves.
Sa’adu demanded a government which should be sensitive to and answer to the people living on the land, not one that should answer to a foreign government situated thousands of miles across the ocean. At an honorary event in Kano in 2007 to remember Zungur’s contribution to Northern Political awareness, Professor Dandatti Abdulkadir was quoted by the Daily Triumph praising the vision of the man, also attributing to Sa’ad Zungur “The initiator of the first Northern Political Party.”
As for the need to establish achievable goals people will love and commit to as a target of the struggle, (used as quote of the week on this magazine), Sa’adu described how among any group of people, the good and the bad exist. Among the imperialists living on African land, he said, there are a few officers sent by the Imperial government who see the reality of the nature of the average African as sensitive, hospitable and embodying every other virtue anyone could have anywhere else in the world. Likewise among the activist for freedom, there are those who do not have any genuine interest for freedom, either out of weakness, or greed. Africans with such self-defeating attitude, he concluded, are usually used to deter other Africans with genuine interest in freedom.
Sa’adu was a writer, who did not relent until he breathed his last. His appeal across religious and ethnic lines provided him with opportunities to write columns, articles, and serialized publications for both northern and southern publications. He described himself as a thinker whose faculties for thought and expression were out of his control. He believed it was his calling to live for justice and spread it as far and wide as he could. His passion for writing instead of speaking, he says, is borne out of his ill-health on the one hand, and also his personality of humility and soft speech. In his own words to the Bauchi Divisional Officer (head of the colonial administration in Bauchi):
“I prefer to write rather than speak. If I sit in a place with you I am sure to be overpowered by your personality; and I must out of obedience and politeness listen more and speak less. I write because I feel these things so passionately that I must cry out. I have tried not to write this letter. I tried to put the thought of the destiny of Northern Nigeria behind me...I cannot. I go to bed with these thoughts; I get up with them.”
Sa’adu suffered from a suspicious undiagnosed ailment that some later described as possibly asthma, others as tuberculosis. Being a thorn in the sides of both colonial and local leadership in his struggle for justice and fair treatment of his fellow beings, neither of the authorities, native or foreign, bothered to provide adequate treatment. At a time when private treatment was expensive and out of reach for the common man, it sealed Sa’adu’s fate. And he remained unemployed for a greater part of his adult life, most of the services he provided were voluntary and free. He offered free service wherever he got the chance, and later succumbed to his ailment in his midlife (reported as 43 years).
Ref: Mahmud Yakubu, (1999) Sa’adu Zungur: An Anthology of the Social and Political Writings of a Nigerian Nationalist. Kaduna: Nigerian Defense Academy Press
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