For family members, there is a self-evident reason for joy about this lady getting married: she is not just a graduate, she is an activist in her own right. In a vainglorious society such as Nigeria, that is something to celebrate because it is a serious transformation for the individual female as well as for the society. But, more than that is she also being a testimony for the family side of that generation of Nigerian youths who fired national imagination in the early 1980s with a tradition of struggle for expansion of democratic rights under the banner of the National Association of Nigerian Students, (NANS).
The wedding card says it all
This is not the first time that a daughter of one of the activists of that generation is getting married. What is, however, emerging is the conclusive proof that, warts and all, the comrades of that generation would have turned Nigeria into what they promised. This is because it is evident in the quality of their daughters, whether one takes Awazi Abashi or Zahra Y Z Yau, the two of them who happen to be in the news now. Abashis and the Y’aus were the classical cadres of the NANS of that generation as opposed to what passes for NANS today. Interestingly, Zahra Y. Z Y’au’s marriage is taking place a week after that of Awazi Chris Abashi. Although Abashi did not live to see the children mature, he had a wife formidable in coping with the task of bringing up children in that tradition, however the tradition is defined. And, as mentioned earlier, Zahra Y Z is an activist in her own right. There is a message in all that: the qualitative nature of their daughters suggests the image of the society these cadres would have built if Nigeria’s leadership recruitment had taken note of them.
Intervention, therefore, wishes Zahra Y Z Y’au and Awazi Abashi and their husbands the very best of marriage and of life. Intervention also looks forward to the marriage of the children of many other cadres, both male and female, particularly of Chima Ubani, Bamidele Aturu, Anselm Akele, Hassana Garba, Abubakar Momoh and so on and so forth who are no more with us on earth.
