My Paternal Grandfather: Alhaji Barau Usman (1903-1985)
Few people knew his real name; not even his biological children knew his actual name. Barau is a Hausa name usually given to children who, prior to their birth, have had their siblings lost either at birth or not long after their birth. So, the name is not a Muslim name usually given at birth by Hausa Muslims.
Four of his children named their children supposedly after him, but only two of them got it right. His eldest child, Alhaji Abdulkadir Barau, my father, named my brother, Abdurrahman, believing it was my grandfather’s name, but he missed it. Then, my uncle, Muhammadu Dangwaggo, also named one of his children Abdullahi. He, too, got it wrong. When my grandfather heard the name, he smiled mirthfully and said, “They still haven’t got it right”. Yet he refused to tell them. Such was the culture of the Hausa people in those days. They considered it a virtue to conceal such things.
His real name only came to our knowledge when he was on his deathbed at Funtua General Hospital in Katsina State, about twelve kilometers from Bakori, our hometown, as there was no general hospital there. It happened that one of his relations from Madobi in Kano State, who heard that my grandfather was dying, had come to greet him and probably say a final farewell. On reaching his bed, and as their eyes locked, he uttered, “Abdulmumini, is that you”?
That was how we came to know that only Hajiya Indo, who named one of her children, Abdulmumini, and Kabir Barau, who gave one of his twins the name, got it right. And Hajiya Indo said it was her mother, Hajiya Umma, who told her the real name and she told Kabir. This was further confirmed when Hajiya Umma, was mourning his death and uttering, “Oh Abdulmumini, may Allah have mercy on you”. It was the only time she - or anyone else, for that matter - was heard calling his name publicly. Every one of us his grandchildren, his children and everybody addressed him as “Alhaji”.
He was born in 1903 in a little village called Tandama in Danja Local Government Area of Katsina State. Before his mother, Asma’u, gave birth to him, she had three other children; two boys and a girl from another man, not his father, Bawa, whose real name was Usman. And from his father, he had an elder half-sister, who was born by his father’s other wife. Barau was the only child born by his mother in his father’s house. So, he had two half-brothers and a half-sister from his mother, and another half-sister from his father. He was the youngest of all his siblings.
The eldest among his siblings was his elder half-sister with whom he shared a mother. Her name was Hauwa, but was also called Tagudu or Yaya as was the Hausa culture of giving children a cultural name. Yet, she was also known as Gwaggo, whose name was attached to one of Barau’s children, who came to be known as Dangwaggo, meaning, the son of Gwaggo. But Gwaggo was actually Dangwaggo’s aunt, not his real mother. Next to Gwaggo in seniority was Musa. He, too, had a cultural name; he was called Dodo. Probably because he, Dodo, never had a child of his own in his whole life, Barau named one of his children Musa, after his half-elder brother, Dodo. The child so named, my uncle, had a cultural name, Mairiga, which became more prominent than his Islamic name, Musa. His second half-brother from his mother was Abdullahi, whose Hausa name was Sambo. In his later years, Barau came to be known as Sambo’s brother, especially when praise singers were praising him during ceremonies. They coined a praise that became very popular and was often repeated during such occasions. It was in Hausa, “Barau na Sambo jikan Galadima, mai gari ba ya daren tuwo. Kadarkon mutan Bakori, ba don kai ba da ruwa ya ci su”.
Those siblings he shared a mother with came together with his mother and lived in their house when his mother married his father. When they grew up, his half-brother from his mother, Sambo, married his half-sister from his father. Her name was Fatima but was known more with her Hausa given name, Nanne.
Barau was, from his father’s side, a Tuareg, and a Fulani from his mother’s side. As he grew up in Tandama, he was enrolled into a Qur’anic school in the house of one Malam Muhammadu Lawal, Galadiman Tandama, in 1915, at the age of twelve. He memorized the Holy Qur’an in four years. He then turned to other Islamic education books, which he spent about five years studying.
Armed with this Islamic knowledge, Barau tried his hand in business by buying and selling kolanuts, which was a popular and rewarding business at the time. He quickly became prosperous and well known in the locality. He spent about five years in this business before switching to tailoring in 1929. It was around that time he relocated to Bakori on the advice of his best friend, Ibrahim Namowa, whose business was buying cash and food crops such as cotton, groundnuts, hides and skin for French and Italian Multi-National companies like CFAO, L. Ambrosini, UAC, etc. It was Ibrahim Namowa, my maternal grandfather, who suggested that Barau should join his kind of business which was more rewarding. So, together, the two best friends relocated to the nearby town of Bakori where that major economic activity was taking place. And they prospered so much so that they were the first to own motor vehicles in Bakori town. Barau was also the first to own a gramophone, a musical instrument, in the whole of Bakori town.
Although he never had formal education, he was literate in “Ajami”, that is, using Arabic letters to write. Later, he learnt how to read and write using English alphabets and numerals. This was probably in the course of his business transactions with white men. He recorded all his business transactions in books.
As he got richer and more prominent in that locality and even beyond, Alhaji Barau, could not help but join politics. In the 1964 elections, he contested for a House of Assembly seat as an independent candidate against the District Head of Bakori, Makaman Katsina, Idris Nadabo, who contested under the platform of the Northern People’s Congress, NPC. Unfortunately, Alhaji Barau lost the election.
He died in 1985 at the age of 82, leaving behind three wives and twelve children.