June 20, (THEWILL)- The First Regular Combatant: Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari by Haruna Yahaya Poloma, Abuja: Warp Nigeria Ltd, 394pp
The story of Nigeria may just have been different if, by any chance, the subject of this book had survived the first military coup in January 1966. For one, he was “a tough customer” – especially professionally – as one of his subordinates found out during an unscheduled and unequal match that morning in mid-January.
Party guests had since departed the Ikoyi residence of Brigadier Zakariya Hassan Maimalari when he heard gun shots at the gate. Sensing trouble, the Commander of 2nd Brigade, Apapa left his home by foot in his pajamas. Getting to a filling station, he saw his protégé, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, then a major under his command, driving by in a military jeep.
As any boss will react under such circumstance – especially in a profession with a rigid command structure – he motioned for Ifeajuna to stop unknown to him the major was one of the ringleaders of the coup whose duty was to take him out.
Instead of taking orders from the commander, the major turned his gun on his boss who was said to be fond of him. In the encounter that followed, the first regular combatant soldier in the Nigerian Army did not go down without a fight.
Without his service pistol and staring down the O from the muzzle of his subordinate’s machine gun and quite defenceless, Ifeajuna would have had the first draw at Maimalari. Still, he neither put his hands up in surrender nor kneel to beg: post mortem results showed there were bruises on the plucky commander’s body suggesting aggressive resistance and intense struggle with his assailant.
Second, Maimalari was a thoroughgoing professional as attested to by dozens of army brass interviewed in this first bio about a career military officer who inspired and influenced many of them to join the Nigerian Army in its nascent years. At least five former heads of government from Olusegun Obasanjo to current president, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdusalami Abubakar, and dozens of other senior officers have glowing recollections to share about an individual who, unquestionably, contributed immensely to building the modern Nigerian Army.
Though General Yakubu Gowon is not among those interviewed, he gladly volunteered a deferential foreword, insisting he was “honour and duty bound” to do so, considering his closeness to Maimalari.
“His smart appearance, comportment, forthright manner, carriage and charisma” bowled the former head of state over. Those “were some of the lasting influences that motivated many of us to eventually join the Army.”
Even before independence, the world already recognized and acknowledged Maimalari’s professionalism. Serving with the Royal Nigerian Regiment under the Queen of England, an American journalist gushed about Maimalari thusly: “I met Capt. Zakariya Maimalari, a lean, tough Kanuri with a British accent so broad you could drive two Cadillacs abreast across it. Maimalari who is in his early thirties is Nigeria’s first pro, its first graduate from Sandhurst…”
In one of the most telling interviews in the book, Brigadier Abba Kyari, former military administrator of North Central State and an alumnus of Barewa College, Zaria, where Zakariya himself had his secondary education, noted thus: “The very day an officer picks up a gun and shoots another, the Army can never be the same again.”
That observation might not apply to every country that has had one or two violent take-overs through coups. In the case of Nigeria, however, nothing rings truer: things have never quite been the same since then, either with the military as an institution or the country itself.
However much any ancient or contemporary historian or chronicler of Nigeria’s history may want to deny it, the imbalance in Nigeria’s political structure today has a direct link to that first coup: cries of marginalization by some sections of the country sound almost like a refrain now; the mutual resentment, ancient animosities and suspicion among the various ethnicities at a low-boil then have flared up in carefully calibrated or spontaneous acts of violence and belligerence that have dominated the front pages for decades.
Which brings up the question: What might have been if Maimalari had had just a little more time to nurture and shape the Nigerian Army to the professional standard he wanted it to be? What might have been if he had survived the coup and even quelled it and subsequent ones? Though never pursued by the author in this book, those questions niggle the mind.
Even so, The First Regular Combatant: Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari by Haruna Yahaya Poloma, a graduate of Political Science from the University of Jos, is a great service to a most remarkable and distinguished army officer who would have remained a footnote or an aside despite his invaluable contributions to the Nigerian Army. He also shaped and influenced the professional lives of those who came after him.
President Buhari, for instance, remembers meeting Maimalari for the first time in June of 1963 during a mortar course in Kachia under late Major General James Oluloye. Maimalari had successfully completed his training at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and was one of the instructors at the mortar training at Kachia Range. Buhari’s path and Maimalari’s would later cross again, this time in Lagos where the former was head of the Transport Company of the 2nd Infantry Brigade in Apapa.
Apart from his immaculate appearance, discipline, comportment and vast knowledge of most things military, Buhari was awed by Maimalari’s Sandhurst training. “We remember him as a very, very competent professional…the Sandhurst-trained officers of that era were the elite of the Officer Corps, not only in Nigeria but in the UK itself and most of the other British colonies. As far as you were a Sandhurst-trained officer in those days, you acquired an almost mythical quality as the military elite of the world.”
Abdusalami’s personal experience was in 1962 when he enrolled in the Army. At the selection board chaired by Maimalari, Abdusalami saw him “as a no-nonsense officer. He was thoroughly professional, straightforward and strict.”
As for Babangida, he heard of Maimalari much earlier at Bida Provincial Secondary School when already serving army officers like Maimalari, Kur Mohammed, Abogo Largema and Yakubu Pam (all of them killed during the January 15 coup) were used as role models to “encourage and motivate” students in schools in northern Nigeria to join the Army.
Premier of the Northern Region, Sardauna of Sokoto Sir Ahmadu Bello and Prime Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, were the driving forces behind the early recruitment. Maimalari was, IBB states unequivocally, “a rare officer and an outstanding leader of men. He was a very bright and intelligent individual who everyone wanted to emulate. He was a strict disciplinarian, but we all respected and admired him. He was very kind and jovial and assisted many of his subordinate officers in their careers, regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations.”
Obasanjo did not know and had not met Maimalari when he attended his selection interview in 1957. But he recalls a smartly dressed Nigerian Army Officer, a Captain among members of a selection board who were mostly British. They later met in the Congo during the UN Peace-keeping mission in “B” Company. Maimalari was the Company Commandant. There in the Congo, Obasanjo confesses that he began to observe Maimalari “more closely.” And what was his verdict? “He was a true officer and a gentleman. That means he was well-trained, disciplined, very honourable and an officer who clearly had his own mind.”
Interviewed independently over a period of seventeen years beginning from 1999 in different cities, towns and villages across Nigeria at different times, the senior citizens scoured the deep recesses of their mind and what emerges is an engaging trove of previously unknown facts and unpublished information on and about a man who has been left in undignified and undeserved obscurity for far too long.
Poloma’s use of oral history to present the subject makes him come alive more from the mouth of those who had familial ties or professional association with him, all of them giving a blow-by-blow account of his early years as a student in primary and secondary school, then the army, first in Kaduna, Zaria, Enugu, London and finally in Lagos.
Other senior military men, from service chiefs to military administrators and senior civil servants have all lined-up, parade-ground style, to share their fondest memories of this “soldier’s soldier,” as another described him.
Besides these fond remembrances, Poloma has also availed readers with details of Maimalari’s family life, his marriage, children, friends and relations, complete with rare photographs. Indeed, Maimalari’s eldest son also became a distinguished soldier, Lt. Col. Abubakar S. Z. Maimalari, former military administrator of Jigawa state. Also included as appendix are correspondences on, about and by Maimalari, from school reports to army evaluations.
Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Sule is another one of the oldies spoken to. He first met Maimalari when they were both students at Barewa College, Zaria. Maitama Sule was the senior and smaller while Maimalari was bigger physically. Both of them struck a friendship that outlived their student days at Barewa College.
After countless meetings and interactions with Maimalari – social and official – Maitama Sule concludes that “I have never seen a soldier like him since his death. Perhaps, I shall never see another like him.”
Hear him, for instance, on one of his past experiences with Maimalari. The British colonialists were just on the cusp of handing over command of the Nigerian Army to Nigerians. General J. T. Aguiyi Ironsi was the oldest Army Officer at the time. Maimalari was the best trained and most qualified. Nigeria’s former Permanent Representative at the UN maintains that Maimalari remained neutral, only suggesting that Balewa’s government should “consider not only seniority but also the loyalty of the officer to occupy the position.”
Justice Mamman Nasir, a retired Supreme Court Judge and another senior citizen interviewed recalls those giddy days of finding a suitable replacement for Major General Christopher Welby-Everard, the last British GOC of the Nigerian Army. Some Nigerian officers lobbied indirectly but not Maimalari. Justice Nasir remembers vividly how “Ironsi became very polite and deferential towards us on account of the impending appointment of a Nigerian as GOC of the Army. Ironsi would come and greet the Premier of the North, Sir Ahmadu Bello and the rest of us. But Zakariya Maimalari never, never displayed such behaviour.”
From the different accounts in this book, the impression readers get of Maimalari is someone who lived, slept and dreamt military. A former head of state claims he was apolitical. Several more testify to Maimalari’s indifference to ethnic loyalties while a former protégé, Brigadier David Bamigboye, who was military governor of old Kwara state, insists that “having worked with Maimalari, I can state unequivocally that he never discriminated against any person.” Bamigboye was in the same class as Theophilus Danjuma, Alani Akinrinade, Godwin Alabi-Isama, Ignatius Obeya, Ben Gbulie and Pius Iromobor, all of who Maimalari not only influenced to join the military but also mentored.
Strict and disciplined though he was, Maimalari never passed up any opportunity to put others in a lighter mood. On one memorable occasion, a female visitor was at the mess. Asked her preference, she said “I would love a Shandy.” There was a soldier named Shande around at the time. Maimalari immediately called out to Shande, telling him there is a lady around who has just declared her love.
Born a first child on January 17, 1932 to Abubakar Sadiq, the village head of Maimalari in present day Yobe state, and Amina (Iyawa) Ali, a daughter of Fulani nobility, Maimalari was a reluctant soldier at first. It was his childhood friend, Lawan Umar, who invited him to join the Army based on advice from Mallam Ibrahim Imam, a Kanuri aristocrat and senior staff of Bornu Native Administration then. Needless to say that Umar and Maimalari passed their interview, from where they reported at the Nigerian Regiment Training Centre in Zaria. They got enlisted on March 10, 1950. Their soldierly career would take them to Teshie in Ghana, and then Officer’s Training School at Eton Hall, Chester from where they went to Sandhurst.
If, as they say, that sometimes bad things happen to people on their birthdays or close to it, Maimalari was dealt a bad hand by the younger officers who terminated his life. Such was the shock and disbelief after his death that some of the respondents suffered depression.
An intimate, childhood friend of Maimalari, late Dr. Musa Goni, who was the first Nigerian president of the Veterinary Council of Nigeria, intimated that he was in Kaduna when he heard of his friend’s death.
“His death depressed me immensely,” Goni told Poloma. In his words, he had a special bond with Maimalari. Goni was a student in London when Maimalari was at RMA, proudly declaring that he had the privilege of being the only Nigerian to attend the passing out ceremony of Maimalari and Kur Mohammed.
As for Lieutenant Sunday Zamani, Maimalari’s orderly at 11, Thompson Road, Ikoyi, and the last man to see him escape from home on foot, recalling the event of January 15 to Poloma became such an emotional burden that he stopped midway and broke down in tears. The interview was never completed, an eloquent expression of grief – more than words – over an unfinished life.
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
