In this concluding part of his interview with Weekly Trust, Abdullahi Edward Tomasiewicz speaks about his journey to Islam, his family, his relationship with Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero, understanding of Nigeria, and many other interesting experiences.

What happened from there?
When I returned in 1971, I went to the ministry of trade but they said they could not hire me because I came to the country looking for a job. That I had to go out of the country, get the job and come back. So they arranged for me to teach. I waited a year and three months and finally the contract came and I was instructed to go to Washington DC, where I finished finalizing my paper work and collected my ticket and then I flew back to Kano to teach. That was when the new Nigeria started to hit me in the face. Nobody knew I was coming because of poor organization. How can you hire somebody, fly him half-way around the world and still not know he was coming?

After all the formalities, I was posted to Teachers Training College Gumel. I was qualified to be an English teacher even though I didn’t study English. Now I was in Gumel to teach English to people who do not know more than 10 words of English and they were in secondary school. I decided that I really had to treat every student as a case study. Friday was our short day and what I did was I told them that every Friday they would teach me Hausa. So they told me things in Hausa and I asked them to translate to me what they said to me in English. I remember going on like this for two three weeks and one day the principal came up to my house and confronted me over the students teaching me Hausa language.
I told him that was true but what I was really doing was teaching the students how to speak English. Ironically the students understood what I was trying to do but the principal did not and did not make an attempt to.

So you had to change your teaching method?
No, that was how we continued. Then an incident happened in Gumel around 1973/74. (Late former governor and renowned politician) Sabo Bakin-zuwo and his boys as well as his contractors decided to have their yearly meetings in Gumel. They had the meeting and afterwards they took over the filin dambe and they had electric music in Gumel for the first time. We then told our students that they could go. Those who could afford to go went, paid for their tickets and got in. Those who could not afford to pay remained outside and obviously there were more outside than inside. It became chaotic when those outside started making trouble. So the organizers sent message to the principal to come and stop these people. In the end we had to intervene.

Did you intervene in Hausa or English?
I spoke in both languages. Everything calmed down and they all walked back to the school. The following morning the emir (now late) sent for me and thanked me for what I did. I then told him that was just the tip of the ice berg because there was no discipline in the school. The head boy then was more less the one running the show and he was political. So there was absolutely no discipline in the school. He then sat down and wrote with his own hand a letter to the commissioner of education and put it an envelope and asked me to take it to the commissioner.

Did you find out what was the content of the letter?
No, only much later. He wanted me to be the principal. So, what happened was the next gazette that came out, I and Johnson Attah as well as the principal were transferred out of Gumel. This was the best way they felt they could deal with the problem.
Now I am out of Gumel and was going to be sent to Wudil. I went to Wudil and it was a British principal who rejected me out rightly. He said he was sorry but he did not need me that he had more teachers than students. I went back to the board and they put me in Kano Educational Development Center. The school was about fifty percent British and fifty percent Nigerian teachers.

Then they had WASC and I never knew what it was. No one gave me a syllabus to teach from, when these kids were taking their WASC, they looked up to me and we did our best. Before I came each class normally had 6 as their WASC pass mark but after this WASC that we did together, the average for these kids was 12. This was not bad for somebody who did not know what WASC was or someone who did not know how to read and comprehend English. After that I resigned and was offered a job at Hadejia to do an agricultural survey.
Why did you resign if you were happy with the result?

I resigned because I could not be at loggerheads with the people I was working for. First of all there was a minor incident when I threw a text book into the waste bin. These text books were printed in 1954 and I was now teaching in 1973/74. I cannot give my students a book praising Mungo Park and all those colonial heroes to study.

I then got a query questioning who I was to throw an accredited book in the dustbin after it had attained Ministry of education vetting. I then told them that was a colonial book written for a colonial classroom, this is 1973, people tend to think a little bit differently than they did in 1954. Those were some of the kind of loggerheads we had.

Were you already married to a Nigerian at that time?
No, I was a bachelor.
You came to Nigeria as a Christian, how did you find your way to Islam?
The first time that I saw Islam was during the civil war. On a Friday I went to the Kano Central Mosque, the one behind the emir’s palace. When I went there I saw tens of thousands of well disciplined people observing their prayers. I did not know what they were saying or doing but I had to respect them for the way they did it.

Was that the first time you saw the Muslim prayer?
Oh yes. I had no business with them before then, but I went there out of curiosity. And this was during the civil war. I began thinking if I was a Biafran pilot and I wanted to drop a bomb in Kano where I would drop it would be the Friday prayer. I stood and watched and asked myself how people could be this organized, no one was talking by the side, no one was laughing or doing otherwise other than just listening to the Imam reading. I then told myself that this was amazing. Despite the fact that they could have been a target for any bomb from Biafra they were still amassing in one place to do their prayers. So that was my first encounter with Islam.

And many years later, in the 80s I lived in London which was back then N400 for a round trip. Kano- London, London- Kano, people used to come for the weekend to London from Kano. So I used to see my friends on a regular basis and most of them used to go to the mosque in London. I started listening to Ahmed Deedat’s sermons on VCR. Then everyone was asking about them, it was the in-thing then, so I decided to get one myself to watch and listen. Eventually when I came down to Kano I would hear Sheikh Isa Waziri on CTV doing the tafsir during the Ramadan. By that time I understood more Hausa and I concluded that this guy was fantastic because he would take something which was very complicated and make it ABCD. Isa Waziri used to come to London and stay at Gidan Galadima. After tafsir Isa Waziri will invite me for dinner and we would sit down and talk about general things in the world. Then on one of these dinners when I was leaving I told him ‘Mallam don’t be surprised one day if I come knocking on your door’ and he said I was always welcome.

A couple of years later when I arrived in Nigeria, I went straight to his house to knock on his door. So I told him that here I was and he smiled and said Bismillah. He then asked me what name I would like to be called and the first thing I said was ‘Abdullahi’ and that was how I became Abdullahi. In fact my son was named Abdullahi even before me because I like the name. That was how I became Abdullahi at gidan Isa Waziri. Bashir Tofa was with me on the same flight to Kano. Bashir Tofa was aware of my intention to convert to Islam. Along with a few other friends that I got we went to see Sheikh Isa Waziri.

You said your son was named Abdullahi before you? How is that?
My son in England was born in 1983. My son is not a Muslim but I named him that even before I became one because I was already in love with the name. I let my wife name our eldest daughter while I named our son.
How did your parents and friends take to your conversation to Islam?
First of all I did not live with my parents and they only got second hand information about my conversion to Islam. I often do not go to America and if I go I don’t have a problem with my name. But my grandfather was not happy because he was more religious than my parents in his own way. He told me that his parents were Roman Catholic and so were their children all their lives. That he did not see anything wrong with the religion and saw no reason why I had to change. On my mother’s part she long knew I was going to take my own destiny so she was not surprised when she heard I had converted to Islam. My father was less concerned.

When I was living in London, a Liberian friend he asked me ‘Why on earth do you want to live in Africa, you come from America and you keep talking about going back to Africa to serve?’ I told him Americans were the dumbest because they are well informed but yet do not know anything.

Secondly when I was twenty years of age, I learnt something about Africa, it was many years after that the word ‘Islam’ was even discussed in America. I was expecting questions like what you are asking now when I went back, instead of questions like ‘Do people live on trees in Nigeria’ ….
Were those the kind of questions you were being asked?
Of course….anybody that thinks like that and cannot get out of it and expand his universe, it is very difficult for me to live with that kind of person.

What was life like for you when you first came to Nigeria?
When I first came to Nigeria, water, electricity, telecommunications were not challenges or problems. But now they are all problems which simply mean whoever is looking after the store doesn’t know what he/she is doing. There is too much corruption. There is too much politics
Let me give you an example. They built a sugar factory in Numan called Savannah Sugar in the 70s with N347m, a lot of money at that time. Mistake number was that they built it with the capacity to grow 10 percent of the sugar required to feed the factory. Number two, Fidel Castro told then President Shagari ‘Let me send my people to fix your sugar problem’. You know what happened to that idea? America said ‘Don’t you accept anything from Castro.’ So today sugar is still being imported in Nigeria in 2013.

How did you meet your Nigerian wife, given the mentality most people had of White people back then?
By the time I met my wife, Hauwa – she is from Dandagoro in Katsina State– I already had two kids from my first Nigerian wife. So I told my foreman in Katsina then that I was looking for another wife to help me with my two kids. He told me of a girl who was about 15 or 16 years old but who she said will not marry until she had finished her secondary school education. He promised to talk to her guardian. After some days the foreman came and told me that he said I could come and talk to her. So a meeting was arranged for us to in a shop where quite a few people were hanging around to chaperone us. So we had our first discussion and a couple more after. She graduated in June 1996, we were married in April and after that I picked her up and brought her down to Kano. Since 1996 she has had seven of her own kids and the two that she adopted from me which totals nine. The foreman that I mentioned earlier gave us one of his daughters and she has been with us for over eight years now, so the total the number of kids we have under our roof is ten.

How did you manage with such differences between you?
She is a high school graduate in Nigeria, I am an American, I am almost thirty five years older than she is. She was born in 1977 and I was born in 1942. We have understood our difference and we have learnt to live and respect each other and this is why we are still together. She is very knowledgeable Islamically, in fact when we got married I told her I had two rules. Number one, do not backbite others. And number two you must wake me up for Subhi prayers.
Why do you need her to wake you up?
I have always been like that. I grew up in a house with seven kids and they always have to wake me up. An alarm clock cannot do the job of waking me up. So right now our first three children have all sauke Qur’ani (completed their recitation of the Holy Qur’an).

Did any of your wife’s relations try to stop the marriage?
I had an accident and was admitted in Aminu Kano hospital for five months and had to be taken to America for another surgery where there where they messed up my right palm. So when they did not see me for some months some of her relatives said ‘You see, we told you that he was going to run away and leave you with his kids.’ That was about the closest resistance we had to our marriage.
Did you live in Kano city then?
I lived in Hausawa quarters, Zoo road in Kano. That was where I was when I had my first two Nigerian children. Their late mother was from Yalleman in Hadejia. But now I am in Kawo new layout where I built my own house, which is my first and only house in the world.
What exactly do you do now professionally?
I am with a Canadian company now though we have not had any business for the past two years. The last thing we did was in Ogoja.

The kids you have with your Nigerian wife, are they in contact with their siblings abroad?
They are always in touch with them. But you need to understand that I am not a rich person and cannot afford to go to England or America on a regular basis. I spent ten years before I can go to England to see my kids. So, when I went to America in 1999, it was a deal I had with the management of the company I was working for, that they had to send me to America to enable me see my family which they agreed. So I arranged for my two kids to go to America from England and we went to America to see them. I do not go very often.

This picture of your whole family with His Royal Highness, The Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero. Tell us about it.
It was in September 2011, that we went to visit the Emir, when my eldest children Abdullahi and Rebecca came to visit from England. You see I used to take them to greet him in England whenever he was in London. Then they were just little children. So when they came to visit me as adults, I phoned him and said Abdullahi and Rebecca would like to come and pay homage. So he invited all of us to the palace.

You and the Emir must really go back long way...
Yes we do. We first met in 1977. And he was the sponsor for my citizenship application back in 1991 when I initially applied. And my co-sponsor was the Turakin Gumel. Today I am a full Nigerian citizen. Though I had been repatriated from Nigeria a couple more times after that first time in 1967, for some unserious reasons, it was Colonel Halliru Akilu who, cleared me for return to Nigeria, with full VIP reception when I arrived.

Despite the challenges that came with conversion to Islam did the thought of quitting ever cross your mind?
I never thought about quitting; it never crossed my mind because I never gave it a chance to even cross my thoughts. I spent over twenty years as a good Christian and over twenty years as a nothing and now I am at my twenty years as a Muslim. There is more of satisfaction in Islam than there is in any other religion.

Have you been able to convert family members or any other persons to Islam?
I think so but I can’t remember. But many have said my case was an inspiration to them when they heard about how I converted and all that. I don’t want to go into that anyone who converts does so for their love of the religion. What I like about my conversion is that about five people have named their children after me. I have Abdullahis named after me in Kaduna, Kano and Katsina. The last one was just two months ago.

What do you think Nigerians can do to get their leaders to think differently in terms of development?
That is one hell of a question. All I can say is if the society continues on the path on which it is going now then we do not have a very bright future. Somewhere, somehow, some things have got to be done to make some changes necessary. And it can be done if the leaders are serious about it. And if we have the required level of discipline. If there is no discipline there is nothing that can be achieved. Discipline needs to be brought back to the psyche of the people. I remember that the Buhari years brought back some level of discipline in the people because they also displayed a high level of self-discipline. So they demanded it and got it back from the people. Not many people demonstrate self- discipline today, so they cannot ask for it from the people.

You have been in Nigeria for decades now, what is your favourite dish?
Tuwon shinkafa and miyan taushe with man shanu and jan yaji
Why did you name one of your sons Ghadafi?
He was born the year Ghadafi came to Kano, we did not meet but I have been an admirer of him for years and I decided to name one of my sons after him while my son Abdullahi (Anis) was named after Audu Lukat.
Thanks a lot for your time
You are welcome.

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Interestingly i read the whole stuff without blinking. But where is the picture? It looks incomplete without any images of the man, the emir, his 10 kids etc. i have always had a special kind of respect for converts to any religion and the reason is simply because they usually have the same story which is leaving their comfort zones and searching for God on their own. Whether it is right or wrong, let God be the judge.

you can view the pictures in the link provided- weeklytrust of today