Written by Habeeb I. Pindiga     
Saturday, 19 December 2009 23:07  sunday Trust

I dont believed the man knows when he was born, do you thinks is true or false, read on

Alh.Abdul karim
A 279-year-old man with a rather sharp recollection of events and spiritual healing powers. This was what residents woke up to find among them in early September at Tudun Wada, a suburb of Pindiga, Akko Local Government Area of Gombe State. At least this was what the slender, fair-skinned, blind Alhaji Abdulkarim (the only name he provided) told them—and most people there believe him.

He came alone, with a small sack containing bags of medicinal trees, apparently to stay for a few days. But after dazzling the people in the area with history and stories, as well as claims of powers to heal, Abdulkarim settled there. He bought and moved into a three-room mud house and established a base for practising sorcery. He also brought in his wife.

Abdulkarim was invited by locals for a specific purpose: to identify the specific cause of perennial water scarcity in the area and also to help set up a weekly market that could attract traders from all over the region. He has not done any of those yet, for no clear reason.

Yet, he won the confidence of the people. He claimed to have  lived with octogenarians, who died several decades ago, when they were toddlers. He told of how Tudun Wada itself was founded over a century ago by people of Kano origin. He also related the history of Pindiga, and claimed to have stayed there during the reign of Sarki Hassan, who ruled more than a hundred years ago.

Soon, Alhaji Abdulkarim started giving herbal medicine and rendering ‘spiritual healing’ to people. He charges N50 or N100 for his services, and at first attracted customers from neighbouring towns and villages. Now, clients troop from neighboring Borno and Bauchi states to Pindiga to see this mystery man and, many of them, to receive ‘cure’.

By his own rather disjointed, incredible account of his life, Alhaji Abdulkarim was born 279 years ago at Mayafa in present-day Zamfara State. He grew up at Jada, near Alkaleri in Bauchi State, and later moved to Timbuktu in Mali from where he went to Saudi Arabia and stayed for many decades. He returned to Nigeria around the time when Head of State General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. Since then, he had stayed in a number of places: Garin Dadi, near Gombi, Adamawa State; Jada, Bauchi State; across several villages in Gombe State; and Kuran Mota, near Futuk, Bauchi State, from where he moved to Pindiga. He had siblings, all of them dead now, one having lived 303 years old. He also married several women over time, all but one are dead, and none had a child for him.


‘I will soon be 280 years old’

I walk into the courtyard of Abdulkarim’s mud house, led by a local. Around a dozen sheep and goats are tied to stakes at a corner, and some chicken are moving around. Apparently, these animals were brought for sacrifice by people seeking spiritual help.

I step into his dimly-lit room that reeks of concoctions. He appears a normal, Hausa old man, sitting on a tattered mat, dressed in traditional jumper and trousers with a not-so-matching cap. He has grey-haired moustache and beard, but the hair on his head is more of black than grey. As he throws a piece of kola into his mouth, I can see that he has a number of teeth still hanging onto the gums. He has a fully wrinkled face, yet he did not look to me like he is more than 90 years old.

But for the small sacks of herbs behind him, the room is virtually empty.

“I will be 280 years old by next year,” he confidently tells me.