Why Abdurrahman Haske must be supported not exploited
By Dr Dozie Frederick
My path and that of Abdurrahman Bashir Haske crossed about a decade ago while on a trip to London. Our meeting instantly sparked an instantaneous relationship built on respect, trust and an overarching desire for promoting our individual and corporate interests.
Abdurrahman Haske was one of the few persons who changed my perspective about the north. Being born and nurtured in England, most of the information I hear about the north is outrightly nerve wracking. It is always about destitution, insecurity, out-of-school syndrome and debilitating poverty.
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When I saw Haske, the first impression I had of him was that he is another Igbo young man, being tall and fair complexioned. As usual, I tried to engaged him by extending pleasantries in Igbo language but to my dismay, he said he is not an Igbo man but a Fulani man from Adamawa State.
So right there we hit it and instantly started conversations. Immediately we started discussions my mind and perspectives about the north instantly changed because here is a northerner who speaks the Queen’s English with a resounding command and communicate with ease and clarity.
He is also urbane, cosmopolitan and thoroughly well mannered. He seems to have exceptional knowledge about education, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and almost everything under the sun with remarkable aplomb.
While discussing, I get to know that Haske is from a humble background who lost his father in a fatal air accident when he was just a toddler. For someone with such a gaping early life disadvantage, struggling to survive the contemporary challenges of everyday life in a country that offers almost nothing is in itself a tough challenge.
From my preliminary discussion with him, I came to understand Haske as a shrewd, prolific, down-to-earth, well educated and easy going business minded young man who is set to conquer the world.
He is a young man who sees opportunities where others have lost hope, who believes in the power of education and critical thinking in the midst of despair and a man with a strong inclination to use what he has to carve a niche for himself.
Since our meeting, I had decided to keep a tab on the trajectories of Haske which serve as my own template for peer review because of the convergence of our life desires and interests.
But to my dismay, no matter how I tried, Abdurrahman Haske is always ahead of me. For a man from the north, the most disadvantaged part of Nigeria who lost a father at an early stage of his formative years, I’m always wowed by his sterling and immeasurable successeses in the entrepreneurship world.
But as relationship between me and Abdurrahman Haske waxed by the day and while at London, I saw another personality, who was a carbon copy of Abdurrahman Haske. Upon enquiry, I was made to know that the person is also a successful businessman who cut his teeth in oil, real estate and manufacturing. In fact, my curiosity made me to hit the internet where I discovered that Abdullahi Haske is one of the most successful young businessmen in Nigeria today.
I instantly called Abdurrahman to intimate him about the personality I saw in London who shared striking resemblance with him and lo and behold, he told me Abdullahi Haske was his elder brother, same father, same mother.
It was then I protested why he never mentioned his successful brother to me so that I can tap from the wealth of his experience and connections but what he told me shocked me to the marrows.
Haske told me his elder brother who started from the scratch despite the death of his father succeeded by dint of hard work and he also wants to carve his own success not through his brother but through the instrumentality of hard work and critical thinking.
He said the fact that his brother succeeded against odds makes him to put extra effort to succeed himself adding that he never allowed himself to be lapped by his successful brother and he is even working hard to surpass him.
So when he told me that he has ambition to lead Adamawa State as governor, I remembered Abdurrahman’s vows to surpass his brother.
I know politics in our part of the world is capital intensive in nature. In one of my conversations with him I enquired to know whether his brother as I have heard is the one who will bankroll and oil his campaign machinery. Abdurrahman told me far from it. He told me that he and his brother have different destinies and he would not even contemplate asking him to sponsor his campaign drive.
“I’m independently taking charge of the expenses of my campaign. I didn’t task my elder brother who is strictly a businessman not a politician or anyone to help me. But since I started this endeavour, even without prompting I have received a lot of goodwill from family, friends and associates who believed in me and my mission to serve Adamawa State and it’s people to the best of my ability.
“I want to bring my business acumen to bear in leading Adamawa State so that I will make it a first class state,” Haske told me.
It is on this note that I want to disabuse the minds of Adamawa people who think Abdurrahman is vying to lead Adamawa on the prompting of his elder brother. And I also want to state that Abdullahi is not responsible for bankrolling his campaign machinery.
I have heard that because of the belief that Abdullahi is behind his aspiration, many people are thinking that Haske’s ambition is a gold mine waiting to be tapped.
But as young people, instead of high expectations, we should also explore avenues where we can form and organise structures we can use to mobilize funds to assist him to replicate what is happening here in England and other democracies.
Despite being from Anambra State, I’m rallying my friends, family and associates to mobilize funds for the success of Haske’s ambition. I want to call on my Adamawa brothers and sisters to follow suit. Abdurrahman’s leadership promises to be a turning point for Adamawa. Let us invest in it.
Frederick writes from England.
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