By Lasisi Olagunju
Alhaji Baba Ahmed, a Mauritanian cow seller, plied his trade from his country to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and to Dahomey (now Benin Republic). Business was very good but at a point, his customers in Dahomey, with impunity, refused to pay for his cows. Is it not the law that every seller must collect the proceeds of his sale? This was not the case with the cow seller who was not a son-of-the-soil in Dahomey.
The options before him were very limited. My people say if the landlord offends the tenant, it is the tenant who must go; again, if it is the tenant who has wronged the landlord, it is still the tenant who must go. This trader from Mauritania had to move out of Dahomey, leaving his money behind. And he moved, crossing over to Nigeria; first to Sokoto and later to Zaria. He entered Nigeria all alone but soon found Zaria a very conducive environment for his business, for his Islamic scholarship and for raising a family (See Daily Trust of Saturday, January 13, 2018). The Mauritanian finally settled in Zaria around 1920 - that was about 100 years ago - and died on November 5, 1987 in Zaria, reportedly at the age of 104 (see Facebook post of Abdulrahman M. Baba-Ahmed of 9 July, 2021).
