It was 1:06AM, I had taken a bath and switched on my computer to continue my writing on the life of Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio and the rise of the Sokoto Caliphate. It was cold, so, I needed a cup to tea. I was about to enter the kitchen when I paused for a moment, looked in the mirror-door and admired how soon the child has become a man.
I looked back at how fast time had gone and the very many persons that have gone with it. I remembered my Father and his smile some years ago and now, he’s gone. My paternal grandparents with whom many of us lived with in our early years flood my thoughts too. Aged but gone.
Oh! Baba Muri whose wife we would sometimes buy lunch after school, Iya Ìjẹ̀bú who was the mother of boys, Baba Baale who would chase us with his cane when we play football at his backyard, the handsome Azeez who died after he was hit by a motorcycle about 12 years ago, Osagie whom we would sing with his brother, Osabu. We would sing, “ntere bom, ntara bom, ntere bom bom bom tere bom(sic)”.
What about our dear tall and beautiful Yetunde that everyone in the office loved and Balinga, the man who designed ACADIP stage. Ah! Time has gone and with it have people gone too.
This gone me really thinking. While we can debate what happens after death, is there a hell or paradise, death itself leaves us with no debate, “every soul shall taste death”, says the Qur’an.
The argument of the Atheist came to mind. I looked closely in the mirror and said to myself, “you, you too will die, most certainly”. If men do not know themselves, how would they know Allah?. Looking at myself, I knew it! I knew I do not belong to the Apes, I looked at the man in the mirror and was convinced that he is not just going to die and vanish like smoke.
The way men pass away with the passing of time, it is very true that our world is like a marketplace and everyone will go from whence they come. Indeed, from Allah we come and to him is our return.
While it is common to see people tag religious people and those who engage in religious debates as retards, I have always argued that men of intellect would make a balance between the pursuit of this World and the Hereafter. How can he claim to be intellectual when he only lived to work, eat and sleep and never questions his existence and his end.
Death is scary. Thinking about it is scary, facing it is scarier and bringing oneself to that reality is the scariest. As a human being, I have been in very critical situations that I am convinced that people do not escape death, their time is not just yet. Once I asked a group of close friends, who is dying first? Very few wanted to have that discussion.
It is time everyone started to look at their priorities. For some, the mutual rivalry of piling up the good things of those world has diverted their attention from the more serious things like worshipping Allah till they visit the graves and they shall KNOW (Surah at-Takathur) and late shall it be when they would know.
Death does not need your consent…
Bashir Lucas Samson Lukman
English 
