It was another breaking news throbbing the media waves, furiously, last Sunday morning (September 20, 2020), to announce the demise of another frontline Nigerian Monarch.
The announcement was that of the obituary of the Emir of Zaria, Alhaji Shehu Idris, who was famously known as Sarkin Zazzau.
The demise of His Royal Highness was a case of a falconer flying away and leaving the falcons behind. He had been briefly ill and was taken to the 44 Army Reference Hospital, in Kaduna, where he had the final breath with which he departed the world without bidding his family aurevoir.
With the bewildering news of his demise from the media, the scroll of history was forced to replace its phase with a new chapter that may soon become a reference point in Nigeria’s 21st century.
Life is a passage from the unknown to the unknown. The knowledge of whence one emanated or whither one is bound is unknown generally in the presence of death. But the testimony to the functions of this ephemeral passage that we call life is a matter of two visas.
One visa is for an entry into it in the name of birth. The other is for an exit from it in the name of death.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the slipperiness of this passage knows neither distinction between male and female genders just as it recognizes neither royalty nor aristocracy.
We are all from Allah, and to Allah alone, we shall all return.
To the master womb in which the human palace called grave is based, all human corpses are guests waiting to be received without any luggage.
When death comes to strike with its invisible icy hand, all the corpses that become its victims are dumped in that permanent palace in the mega womb beneath the earth albeit in different manners and in different styles.
Now, coming to the turn of a bridge building Royal father, without restraint, who else can escape the dragnet of that mysterious agent of destiny called death?
With a heavy heart of sorrow and a cloudy mood of mourning, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), under the leadership of its President General and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa‘ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, hereby commiserates with the family and the Emirate of the late Sarkin Zazzau, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Shehu Idris, as well as other Royal Fathers and the entire Nigerian Muslim Ummah, praying the Almighty Allah to repose his soul in perfect, eternal bliss and grant everybody the fortitude with which to cope with any entailed agony. Inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raji‘un.
Femi Abbas,
Chairman, Media Committee, NSCIA
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