Alhaji Lawal Idi Bagiwa spent all the 34 years of his career in the Nigerian Customs Service. He joined the Service in 1965 as a preventive officer Grade 3 and rose through the ranks to become an Assistant comptroller general. He served at nearly all the borders in the country, as well as many state and zonal commands. He is presently the village head of Hamcheta and one of ten councilors in the Katsina emirate council.

One thing I noticed in your curriculum vitae is that you identified yourself as Fulani. Most of us in this part of the country tend to call ourselves Hausa-Fulani; why do you prefer to be identified as a Fulani man, rather than Hausa-Fulani?

I think the coinage, Hausa-Fulani, is a recent development. Initially, when we were identifying ourselves by tribe, one was expected to identify oneself with a single tribe. Naturally, because of my background and the origin of both my father and mother, I chose to be identified as Fulani. Although I was born into Hausa setting and couldn’t even speak the Fulani language, I still preferred to be seen as Fulani, not Hausa-Fulani.

And your traditional title is Sarkin Fulani Hamcheta?

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Yes. We have Sarkin Fulanis in Katsina, like Sarkin Fulani Dambo, as well as many other places, including Sarkin Fulani Hamcheta. We also have Sarkin Fulani Dangin and Tumaki – several Fulani settlements.

You are the village head of this largely Fulani settlement up to now; how Fulani is it now?

Initially, it was a Fulani settlement, but with time, it is now more cosmopolitan. You can find many other Nigerians – Igbo, Yoruba – everybody is there, but predominantly Hausa-Fulani.

Tell us about your childhood and education.

I was born and raised in Katsina because my father was a civil servant. Initially, he was a teacher in Katsina Primary School, but was later relocated to Mani, where he was an education officer. In those days you called them education organisers, under the late Alhaji Ahmadu Coomassie, who was the main coordinator of adult education in Katsina. My father worked under him as organiser for Mani District, from where he was eventually appointed Sarkin Fulani sometime in 1957. From there, we started going to Hamcheta, up to my adulthood and the time I entered public service.

Did you join the Nigeria Customs Service after your secondary education in Katsina?

Yes, in 1965. I completed secondary education in 1964. I visited a relative in Kano, the late Ibrahim Indala, who was also married to my sister. It was from there that I joined customs.

Coincidentally, there was a recruitment drive by the Service, and as destiny would have it, I approached the recruiting team and was recruited.

So it was an opportunity that offered itself and not something you planned to do?

It was purely coincidental and somehow providential because I just walked into this thing without even knowing what it was. When my host said there was recruitment in Customs Service, why not try it; I asked what it was.

He explained: “It is a federal government job. You wear a uniform and have prospects.” He felt it would be a good job for me.

I had no aversion to the military and uniformed services right from my boyhood. I can vividly recall an incident when Katsina Radio interviewed us in primary school. We were in primary two and they were asking all the children what they would want to become when they grew up. That was in 1954. I said I wanted to be a dan doka

A policeman?

Yes. Asked why I wanted to be a dan doka, I said I wanted their uniform. When I got home, everybody was blaming me, asking why I could not pick any serious job. I kept quiet.

I joined the Boys’ Scout right from primary school; and later, in secondary school, we were doing cadet corps. So, I was sort of obsessed with uniform. But it was a coincidence that I joined Customs, not because I planned it.

You were the best student during your recruitment and even cadet training?

I would have said it was a coincidence, but naturally, I am always very thorough. I apply myself to anything I really endeavour to do. When we were in the police college, it was my first introduction to that type of thing in 1965. I emerged as the best recruit.

I can remember that during our passing out parade, the then governor of the Northern Region, Kashim Ibrahim, came to present a baton of honour to me as the best recruit. From then, I had chains of such successes.

Didn’t that require physical stature?

I think it was zeal and charisma – what you have in mind, not necessarily the physical stature.

At that point, why didn’t you think of the police, which was one of your early dreams, rather than Customs?

Certainly, I thought of the police. Initially, I filled a form to join the Air Force when I was in primary school, but my grandmother intervened and said no. Because of her influence, my form was withdrawn and the application dropped.

Later, when I was almost at the end of secondary school in 1964, I applied to join the police. I still have the letter replied to me by the staff officer, Katsina, stating that they had received my application but there was no vacancy. He promised to contact me whenever vacancy was available.

So I tried to join more serious formations, starting with the Air Force, then Police before I landed in Customs. All along, I was a Boy Scout; I even rose to the position of scoutmaster for Katsina Province before I finished secondary school.

Would you say you are happy to have remained in the Customs rather than any other security organisation?

Absolutely. Eventually, I saw that it was God’s wish, so I made the best out of it. I applied myself thoroughly to the job. I was really a very successful Customs officer.

I am proud to say that even now in the Service, we have become role models of sort. Even young trainees are always told (to) emulate good officers like so and so.

If you go to the Customs training school now, you will find a hall, street, barracks named after Bagiwa. So even Customs are proud of the achievements and standard set up by people like us.

Didn’t you attempt to change job at any point in time?

There was a time I wanted to leave the Customs Service, especially when the atmosphere or public opinion was very much against them. Everything was dumped on Customs.

One day, I decided to approach one of my mentors when I was serving in Lagos, telling him that I wanted to leave. He asked why I wanted to leave and I told him that I didn’t want the bad publicity attached to the Service. He listened to me very well. Because of the bad publicity, in most cases I introduced myself as working in the Ministry of Finance.

Would you like to mention his name?

The late Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who later became president. He was the federal minister of finance under the then military government. He asked if I thought I would not have bad publicity if I were a teacher, saying that even in the teaching profession, people are harassed, cajoled and blamed.

He said, “If it is because of that bad publicity, I would advise you to keep your job; otherwise, I already have a line of jobs I can easily recommend you and they will pick you. But you will not find anything different. What is important is for you to satisfy your conscience that you are doing the right thing and put your God first. Don’t bother what other people will say about you.”

I took that advice seriously. That was in 1973. And from then, I had no regret. I just closed my eyes and did my job.

But some people say the Customs Service deserves such bad publicity, as you call it, because of their activities – officers and men of the Service focus on what they can get and not really what the country gets.

That was really the problem with jobs like the Customs. Essentially, a Customs job is about tax administration and collection. There is no time a tax collector is popular. Every time, a tax collector is called names – he is blamed and never appreciated until he is out of the scene.

Right from biblical days, we read stories about Jesus and tax collectors. He said, “Give what belongs to Caesar to Caesar. And what belongs to God, give it to God.” So naturally, the Customs job is never popular because nobody wants to pay tax.

Along the line, they blame you. I have been trying to cope, right from the time I retired till date. And I had every cause to thank God because I was getting job satisfaction, which is what is very important.

You mentioned your appointment as the village head of Hamcheta, Sarkin Fulani, then councillor (to the Emir). Are you a councillor by virtue of you being the Sarkin Fulani?

No. I think that in the emirate council, there are a group of councillors. Some are hereditary councillors, like the four king makers in the emirate council. But there are other six councillors that are usually appointed by any governor in power on the recommendation of the emir.

You served for a long time; is there no tenure?

There is no tenure; it is subject to the pleasure of the emir and the governor. I was appointed village head in 1999. In 2010 – 11 years later – I was given the councillorship of the emirate council, in addition to my substantive appointment as village head.

What do you do as a village head?

The moment you find yourself being a village head, you are a sort of community head of the lowest college that forms a district. So, in any district, you normally have village areas. Some of them get 10, some get 5, some less, depending on the village. In Mani we have up to 18 of them.

So you are technically the father and administrative head of the local administration system of that village. You are directly responsible to the district head for their welfare and whatever.

And you supervise very important jobs for the progress of your people, like education, health, security and other things. So, naturally, with my background, I find it very enjoyable and good. It is like a large laboratory experiment with my experience and what I learned all along.

Do you sit in court?

Of course. We have what you call alternative dispute resolution. So, all those petty complaints from your subjects, like marital and heritage complaints, other minor petitions, which somebody cannot easily go to the police, Alkali or higher authority, are easily solved by the village head. You sit in court and do that type of thing.

So, whenever I am around, especially on weekends, I always hear cases that will normally wait for me. I also have a wakili or somebody who represents me, who handles cases when I am not in. And those of them he finds difficult he refers to me, either on phone or he waits until I get to the village and handle them.

When people hear about rural Katsina they think of insecurity. Is it a problem you deal with in the Mani area?

Luckily, as God will have it, we don’t have such insecurity yet. But as the Hausa man would say, when the beard of your neighbour catches fire, you should try to douse your own with water or avoid getting into the fire line.

So definitely, we are learning from what is happening in our neighbourhood, especially the western part of Katsina. The eastern part is relatively safe, including Mani.

So you are able to go to Hamcheta and sleep comfortably without worrying about personal safety?

Based on my professional training and hobbies, I have always been adventurous. Right from childhood, as a Boys Scout, up to the level of scoutmaster, we could pick children and go to the bush and sleep; even as primary school children. From there, a sort of psyche sharpened.

Similarly, my type of job is paramilitary; we were trained to do all those types of things, from training for leadership etc. We had military training; we passed through all sorts of things.

Naturally, I feel quite comfortable. Somebody who can sleep alone in the bush will feel very comfortable when he is sleeping with all his subjects around him.

I am not very worried that I don’t have a policeman guarding me. I don’t have a Customs officer guarding me. I don’t have any special firearm to guard myself, except my personal firearm, which I still have, which I believe is purely cosmetic; not that it can do anything.

You described yourself as a courtier and counsellor to the emir. What does that mean? In real life, what do you do in the council or the emirate?

Well, in the council, as a courtier you are a member of the palace. Naturally, no king will simply sit alone; he will sit with courtiers and advisers and people to contribute to the management of his portfolio. That is basically what a courtier does. That is what we do on a day-to-day basis.

But principally, what we do is a sort of continuation of what I do in the village: settlement of disputes between people who will approach the emir palace or the emirate council for one grudge or another. Sometimes emanating from the districts when they are not satisfied with what happened to them at their district headquarters, they come to the palace.

Those are the cases we sit and decide on – what we call alternative dispute resolution – which is now adopted legally by the government. We have instructions on how to deal with such matters. That’s what we do on a daily basis.

We always attend meetings, sometimes with the state government, sometimes with the federal government, sometimes with non-governmental organisations, and sometimes as directed by His Royal Highness. Sometimes we meet up to regional level at Kaduna or Sokoto, or wherever, to discuss important issues like health.

For example, there was a time some epidemics became a problem. People were very reluctant or not willing to accept vaccinations, especially things like poliomyelitis; so it was referred to the emirate through his eminence, the sultan.

That was how we embarked on a campaign against polio. When we came in, because of the confidence people still have on emirs and other traditional rulers, they accepted these things. So, right now, they are under control.

It is the same thing with leprosy, which was so rampant that people were calling it Ciwon Muslimi (Muslim Disease). But now, leprosy is no more; it is very rare to see leprosy.

Those are the salient things that emirs still do. And they do it with the assistance of their council.

How do you see emirate politics when compared to the politics in service? Coming from a professional service background, is this something you easily deal with?

As I pointed out, my background from service as a paramilitary officer sort of assisted me, and is still assisting me in my present assignment or portfolio. Paramilitary service is essentially obedience to constitutional authorities.

Similarly, if you apply them to a situation like this, you won’t fail. You are expected to obey the government of the day, constitutional authorities and hands off partisan politics because your primary interest are your subjects – the generality of the people.

We have no problem with the government as they do in other places. When you confront a government you have problems, but if you obey constituted authorities, you will succeed. We have basic principles of Islam you are expected to apply.

Are you to obey, whether they are right or wrong?

No. When they are wrong, you advise them accordingly; and when they are right, you apply it with all your zeal. In most cases they respect our pieces of advice because we don’t give them wayward advice. In most cases, when we give such advice, they are well researched and presented; and people readily accept them.

Did you try politics after your retirement as most senior civil servants do?

I tried. As you saw in my curriculum vitae, I was appointed a caretaker chairman for the then Muduru Local Government – one of those local governments that were created and later disbanded by the federal government. I started politics from that point. I even attempted to contest for a seat in the Senate. I wanted to represent Katsina North senatorial district, which they called Daura zone, but the gatekeepers didn’t allow me to contest. I couldn’t succeed from there.

You couldn’t scale the party level?

I couldn’t even go through the primaries to defeat my friend and classmate, Senator Kanti Bello, who was more experienced. I wanted to contest against Kanti at the primary election, but the party and the then government and gatekeepers couldn’t allow me to scale beyond that point.

But I continued and tried to join other parties. I joined the Action Congress (AC), together with the present head of state (president Tinubu ), Alhaji Atiku( Abubakar) and others.

You wanted to become governor?

No. Even under the AC, I contested for a senatorial seat. After that, I realised there wasn’t much one could do in politics without being well grounded. In order not to throw away everything, I rather came back home. I was well advised to come back and settle for community job, which I did.

Do you mean you spent too much money and didn’t want to continue that adventure?

Really, I should say that money was one of them, but another more important thing was goodwill. You would end up losing your friends and goodwill, which you were able to gather for over 40 years. I weighed those options and felt it was better to round off and continue with home service.

Who were those people that determined Katsina politics as you said? You referred to them more than once. Is there a group we can call “the owners of Katsina”?

In what sense?

In the sense that they determine who becomes what in politics.

As I told you, in any setup you will usually have people who are playing the role of gatekeepers; who will really determine who would likely succeed in one thing or another. And naturally, they will make a choice.

So, if you were able to get your psychology right, it won’t bother you much because at that time they felt the late Kanti Bello was a better material because he had already been a senator for some time, so it was better to continue with him since he was still around and willing.

Tell us about the private Alhaji Lawal Bagiwa. How big is your family?

I would say that my private life is not much different from my official life, because my preoccupation, community life is basically private life.

I have a very successful family life. I have been married all my life. When I joined the Customs Service in 1965, I got married to my first wife in 1966, barely a year later. And since then, I have remained married and successfully have a number of children that I have succeeded in training, relatively very well, by the grace of God.

I can boast of my children – at least four of them are PhD holders. They are already lecturing in various universities. One is in the University of Abuja, one is in the Ahmadu Bello University and another one is in Katsina here.

I have two of them that are judges already: one in Katsina here and the other in Kaduna. She is in charge of Funtua zone. She always comes there for her cases and so on. I have a medical doctor here.

So I would thank God for giving me the opportunity to see the fruit of my labour because I singlehandedly trained those children. And by the grace of God, all of them have succeeded. At least I can boast of over 10 graduates.

You are still active, such that you drive and engage in farming, as you said; what is the secret?

That is the good thing. I have a reason to thank God that I am healthy. I still drive myself to Hamcheta. You can see my pickup truck there – a four-wheel drive. I drive all roads and have no problem.

Sometimes they ask why I still drive myself and I will say I am enjoying it because before now, they were always driving me about with sirens and flags, but now, I am incognito. I drive myself and enjoy everything.

I have a driver, but I use him when I want. I stop whenever I can’t do it. I enjoy it. It is part of the hobby I enjoy.

What other hobbies do you have? I noticed that in your curriculum vitae you mentioned game hunting.

Do people still do hunting?

That one is no more. In those days, I had a farmland around Safana district. I have a farm in the neighbourhood of Rugu forest, so I used to go and camp there and hunt.

You stayed there in the bush?

I have a cottage in that place.

When you were in service or after retirement?

After service. I would go there and camp and hunt. I still have my rifles and so on. But these days, they are no-go areas.

What else do you do for fun besides farming and your duties in the emirate council?

Tending my animals and fisheries. Sometimes I engage in small time buying and selling of grains, which I encourage members of my family to do. I give them small loans and small finance. Then they buy some produce like groundnuts.

Right there in the Mani area, I have a large plantation of gum Arabic, which I pioneered. Right now, I am also the chairman of Gum Arabic Producers of Nigeria. So we encourage the production and marketing of gum Arabic, which is an international product.

In terms of social life, do you still have friends and classmates you meet and socialise with?

Really, most of our classmates are gone.

Gone where?

Most of them are no more. We get together whenever there is a function. If you are engaged in my type of assignment you always go to the palace for one thing or another. You are not always available for social life. Over the weekends I go back to Hamcheta, where I handle local matters.

But there are still some friends we relate very well with, like some classmates, especially in secondary school, like Sani Daura in Abuja and Alhaji Lawal Sani. We still have very few of them around.

Inherently, old age is a lonely period for people; do you agree?

Well, it depends on the way you look at it. If you look at it from the perspective of socialising, like when you were younger, naturally you would feel that there are things you can no longer do. You can adopt the lifestyle of the aged and the elderly like engaging in small scholarly activities with your background. You can see my library. You always go to school to get yourself engaged. And when you come home, you have your grandchildren to always give you some comfort. When you go to the village, it is the same thing.

You have to change your approach and lifestyle to suit the circumstances you find yourself. So, definitely you have to adopt things your age. That’s what we are doing.

Are you able to exercise? Do you watch your diet or it is something that doesn’t bother you?

Of course farming gives you a lot of time to exercise. And sometimes I walk up to 5 kilometres; and it is a routine. I do this every weekend. Those are the types of exercise I engage in that suit my local circumstances, unlike before when one could start going about to jog or go to a stadium to start exercising. I can’t even do that kind of thing now because of the security situation in the state.

Look at what happened to another of our colleague recently, who is even an army General. They came all the way to his village and picked him.

Is the security situation in Katsina getting out of hand?

I wouldn’t say it is getting out of hand given the circumstances the country finds itself now, especially the North. The northern part of the country has been divided into three sections – North-East has their peculiar type of problems, North-West is here with its own problems, as well as the North-Central. So, given the setup, I wouldn’t say that Katsina is the worst.

I will say it is an average security-prone area. But the government is doing its best and the local people are doing their best. So, if at least we start sitting down and talking on the same page, I think we would make some progress.

Are you talking about peace deal with bandits? All the communities are now taking the initiative.

Essentially, people misunderstand it when they say you are making peace with the bandits. They feel that you are sort of bargaining and whatever. The basic problem of the bandits is exclusion; so if you try to bring in inclusion, you are solving the basic problem. You can build on the rest. These people are neglected.

Are you talking of the Fulani?

Not only the Fulani but the lower strata of the society. If you check, you will discover that it is the same people that have the highest number of out-of-school children; they have nothing to do with the government. For example, the schools and clinics of most of these nomadic people in the bush no longer operate. Nobody vaccinates their livestock. Nobody looks at where they are going to feed or water their livestock.

Is the peace deal a way of bringing them in?

Inclusion. The moment you realise that they have been out in the cold for long and tell them to come so that you listen to their problem, at least you are starting somewhere. It is better to start talking with them instead of fighting and following them to the bush to kill them.

But people are surprised that leaders of these bandits come to the so-called peace deal heavily armed with their guns. They also go back with those arms and nobody does anything. Why is it so?

As we pointed out, it starts with the condition of approach. You have to start from somewhere. If we are starting with a step, our main problem is excluding these people from the system. We want to bring them back, whether they are in the bush or town; wherever they are. How do we bring them in?

So inclusion is necessary. If you start giving them a cause to feel that you are trapping them, they won’t come or even talk to you. The first condition should not be for them to surrender their arms but talking and hearing their problems. Surrendering of arms can come later.

Even if it is livestock farming, we want to encourage and expand it to them. We even have a ministry for that now. So we will expand and make sure they are all incorporated into one useful thing or another. The moment they are included, I think we are solving most of the problems.

As a councillor in the emirate, are you involved in these peace deals?

No, we are not involved. We have been advising governments on the way to go about security matters but they are doing the implementation. There is a ministry through which they are implementing those recommendations we are rightly giving them. At least Katsina is getting somewhere now.

Are you happy with the performance of the government of Bola Tinubu, your former leader of the Action Congress?

Definitely; as a citizen because I left politics right from that time we were pushed out of it. I am doing something else and we can’t engage in partisan politics. As a citizen, I will say the present leadership is quite honest. He is quite experienced. But somebody may make some mistakes. For example, there are some policies or decisions that were rather hasty. I feel that on those decisions, we should have done more consultations rather than jumping into them. The Hausa man will say that it takes one leap to fall into a pit but you can make a hundred leaps without coming out.

But since the whole country is already in the pit, we have to try to come out together. Since they are making some efforts – giving some palliatives and making some consultations here and there to at least come out of the pit, we have not lost hope. As they rightly pointed out, it is a government of hope, so we are hoping that we shall come out of the pit. But definitely, by those hasty decisions, we are in a pit.

Being in Katsina here, you must have noticed the deep poverty level in the city and outside. Don’t you think this is a serious threat to democracy?

That’s the point I was making. It takes a leap to fall into a pit but many more leaps to come out. (Daily Trust)