How I lost my first love while in Germany —Abdulsalami

Former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd.), said as a young soldier in Germany in 1964, he was unable to reach the woman he loved back home in Minna because no single family in the entire town owned a private telephone line.

Abdulsalami disclosed that he had been engaged to a woman before departing for military training abroad, deliberately delaying the wedding because he did not want to leave a new bride behind, only for her father to give her hand to another man.

The revelations are contained in Chapter 25 of Abdulsalami’s 264-page, 27-chapter autobiography titled ‘Call of Duty,’ obtained by our correspondent at the public presentation of the book at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.

Abdulsalami blamed the primitive state of telecommunications in the early 1960s in Nigeria for the loss of his first relationship.

“I desperately wanted to speak with her from Germany but it wasn’t possible. Telephone penetration in Nigeria at the time was very low. To make a telephone call, you had to book two to three days ahead. In any case, most homes didn’t have a phone.

“In fact, no single family in Minna had a private line. The only telephones in the whole town were at the Nigeria Police Charge Office, the Native Authority Police, the office of the Secretary to the Native Authority and the Divisional Officer’s Office. Not many people in Minna had seen a phone. I had only used it once. There was no way to communicate with her,” he wrote.

He recounted that the woman’s father had grown impatient and issued him an ultimatum to marry her immediately, with her remaining in his house, or lose her entirely.

Abdulsalami wrote, “Her father started hurrying me up. He gave me a deadline for the wedding, otherwise he would terminate the relationship. He gave me two options. One, to get married to her immediately and she would stay with my parents while I was away.

“Two, to get married immediately and she would continue to live in the family house with him. He said he could not allow his daughter to idle away at home since she wasn’t going to school any longer.

“I had yet to get back to him on either of the options when I learnt he had decided to marry her off. Even though I was pained, I didn’t take offence.”

The former Head of State said it was from that heartbreak that his courtship of his eventual wife, Fatima, was born.

He described how Fatima’s elder cousin, a mutual friend who knew of the failed first relationship, suggested he consider his own sister, a reserved young woman from the same Nasarawa Ward neighbourhood in Minna, whose family home was separated from Abdulsalami’s by only four to five houses.

“My life is full of Fatimas. My mother was a Fatima. My stepmother was a Fatima. The house of my future wife was not far from mine on Stadium Road, off the long stretch of road that leads from one end of the town to the other. We still have our family houses there.

“My father and her father’s elder brothers were very good friends. I would say she grew up seeing me as her elder brother,” he wrote.

Their relationship began in 1967, he revealed, conducted largely through handwritten letters while Fatima attended Queen Elizabeth Secondary School and Federal Government College, Sokoto.

Abdulsalami recounted one occasion when he stopped by her school on a trip from Benin to Minna, only to be turned back by the principal who refused him entry and ensured that a note he left for Fatima was never collected by the school’s secretary.

“I left disappointed. But we later found other means of communicating,” the former Head of State wrote.

He recalled waiting for her at the train station each time she returned home on holidays where they could talk before they parted.

“Everyone liked her but I was the one who won her heart,” he said.

However, Abdulsalami revealed that the path to marriage was not smooth.

Fatima’s father, Alhaji Balarabe Audi, a civil servant who had served as the first indigenous administrator of Kaduna Capital Territory in 1961 and later as a Resident in Ilorin, initially refused to give his consent, fearing that marriage would end his daughter’s education.

Abubakar said he visited the father personally for a frank discussion, scarred by his previous experience and determined not to allow history to repeat itself.

“I told him: ‘Sir, I love your daughter and I give you my word: she will surely continue her studies after we get married. I won’t stop her. But if you’re not ready to allow this marriage, please, take a decision so that I can go and look for another wife.’

“I then enlisted an uncle, who was his friend, to put pressure on him. He reluctantly agreed. His ‘yes’ carried as much weight as my bride-to-be’s ‘yes’. It was a done deal,” Abdulsalami wrote.

He disclosed that the wedding took place on June 30, 1972 with the reception following on July 2, 1972. He was 30, while Fatima was 21.

Among those who attended were Steve Okoh, Anthony Ukpo, Dayo Popoola, Kola Adeleke, and Victor Malu, who later became a prominent military general.

Abdulsalami, however, wrote that most of his military colleagues from his brigade could not attend, being away on a mission.

“Getting a military pass to attend a wedding ceremony didn’t quite come easy. Back then, marriage ceremonies were still done modestly and had not become the huge industry that it is now,” he wrote.

The ex-Head of State described the traditional Hausa wedding ceremony from that era which involved the two rounds of “knocking at the door” by the groom’s female relatives bearing gifts, to the henna decorations, the nightly music and money-spraying at the bride’s family house, the counselling sessions in the days before the wedding, and the wedding-day prayers led by Imams and Mallams on a mat, at which the bridegroom himself, by custom, was not even expected to be present.

He explained, “Until recently, even the bridegroom did not attend. It was his family members who attended on his behalf and paid the bride price. There were witnesses who would step forward to confirm that they were there when you were marrying your wife, that you paid the bride price and satisfied all the necessary customary requirements. The ceremony is usually very short.”