This week, there was a flurry of activities to commemorate ‘Fifty Years Since 1966’. One of the most prominent events of the anniversaries centred on the fact that yesterday was exactly fifty years since the assassination of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria. Killed at the same time were SirAbubakar Tafawa Balewa, the nation’s First and Last Prime Minister, as well many of the North’s leading lights in the military. Similarly murdered was South West’s Premier Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, an ally of the Sardauna and who, in fact,was reported to have visited the latter in Kaduna only a few hours earlier. This Columnist didn’t know Sardauna. The first national bereavement inhis comparatively ‘young’ memory was that of late General Murtala Muhammad in 1976, ten years after the Sardauna and forty years this year.But now that fifty years have passed since Sardauna, this Column feels that enough has been said about the great soul and his immense goodness (and may Allah continue to rest his soul, amin). Continuing on this path of annual eulogising his achievements and ruing his loss after half a century is not only escapist, but an indictment of the generation of leaders that came after him who, by implication, have always been portrayed as great failures (which, it must be said, many of them really were and are).

Perhaps more than anybody else, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III hit the nail on the head when he challenged leaders of the northern region to stop hiding under the shadows of the lateý Sardauna, and rather live and work and live like Sardauna did. The Sultan spoke Thursday in Kaduna at the 50th commemoration of the demise of late Premier and continued to remind the leaders that there are a lot of problems in their hands and there wasneed to begin to find lasting solutions to the challenges bedeviling the northern region, rather than looking up, apparently, at the Sardauna’s halo. According to the Sultan, with bad leadership (which is the lot of the current - or immediate past - crop of the North’s helms-people), nothing good can be achieved. He stressed that northern leaders need to take up the mantle of leadership and the challenges, and stop hiding under the Sardauna’s legendary success as though they themselves can never achieve anything. “Fifty years after Sardauna’s death, let’s work with his blueprints and the ethics he left for us,” said the Sultan. For example, said the Sultan, northern leaders particularly Governors must rise to address the menace of unemployment in the region. Yes, indeed, the Sardauna was a great man, especiallyconsidering the time and the resources. He was more than a legend, and can be said to have been extra-legendary. In a pre-emptive note, one of this Columnist’s readers from Maiduguri wroteto remind us that if we were to write anything on the Sardauna this week, let us remember the apocryphal tales about him - for example he was once said to have returned a rather short and stout boy who was refused enrollment in the army back to the recruiters with a message: “Let them add a little of my height to his”. And the boywas enrolled. (And how we wish he hadn’t). Or the story about the Sardauna replying then ceremonial President Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who had said “Let’s forget our differences…” with “No, let’s understand our differences…” Apparently, those who killed our version of Mahatma didn’t understand those differences; they wanted to forget them. And now they have on Nnamdi Kanureminding us all over again. Perhaps the Sardauna’s greatest feat was his ability to cement the North’s considerable religious and ethnic cracks. He had a reputation for religious toleration. On Christmas Day 1959, he had stated in a broadcast: “Here in Northern Nigeria we havepeople of many different races, tribes and religions who are knit together by common history, common interest and common ideas. The things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us. I always remind people of our firmly rooted policy of religious tolerance. Wehave no intention of favouring one religion at the expense of another. Subject to the overriding need to preserve law and order, it is our determination that everyone should have absolute liberty to practice his belief according tothe dictates of his conscience.” That was prescient! Still on Fifty Years, another important event to mark the milestone was the Annual Trust Dialogue that is hosted by this newspaper. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, as Special Guest at this year’s event, assured Nigerians that the country has been rising since the sad events of January 1966 which terminated the First Republic, but it needs consensus among its elite on what needs to be done in the years and decades ahead. The Vice President said he was saddened when he recently received in audience a delegation representing a small part of one state, and it included some retired top civil servants as well as university professors, yet theycame to advocate for their small, tiny community. He wondered aloud why such eminent persons should be championing the cause of a small community. Osinbajo also narrated the story of a small exchange he had with President Muhammadu Buhari while they were campaigning in Zamfara State just before last year’s elections. He said as they rode in a bus, dozens of eager young supporters stuck their faces onto the bus’ side glasses, overwhelmed by sheer ecstasy and excitement. Buhari then asked Osinbajo what he saw in their young faces as they pressed on the bus’ glasses. According to Osinbajo, he told the then APC presidential candidate that what he could see was excitement in their faces; but Buhari said that was not the main message. “What I can see in their faces,” Osinbajo quoted Buhari as saying, “is that they expect all their problems to be solved on the second day after our inauguration, if we win this election.” Osinbajo said he told the General, “Well, it is you that they expect to solve all their problems on the second day after your inauguration.” So, there! The Dialogue itself was preceded the previous night by the 2015 Daily Trust African of the Year Award Dinner. This year’s winner, Mr Gregoire Ahongbonon from Benin Republic, who had excelled in his work of rehabilitating the mentally ill, had said his recognition was for the forgotten mentally-challenged persons in Africa. Speaking after receiving a $50,000 cheque, a plague and a certificate, Mr Ahongbonon said the honour donehim was also for the poor and the voiceless. “It touches me. I don’t know how to express myself. I thank you, thank you Daily Trust and the members of the selection committee, who chosea simple person like me.” An unsung Sardauna in his own right! Now returning to the Sardauna story and the fact that he was killed alongside hisSouth West ally Premier Akintola, perhaps it is now time to move on as we now with a similar alliance fifty years after - history seems to have come full circle with the current alliance betweenthe North (Arewa) and the South West in the All Progressives Congress, APC, and between Buhariand Tinubu. May they live long and deliver us to where those young Zamfara supporters want the country to arrive at. And may the soul of our colleague and friend and Editorial Page Editor of this newspaper Alhaji IbrahimAuduson rest in perfect peace, and may Allah forgive his shortcomings and admit him to paradise, amin.