Isyaku Rabiu

Isyaku Rabiu (born 1928) is a prominent Nigerian businessman from Kano. In 1984, he was one of the commodity traders arrested and jailed by the administration of General Muhammadu Buhari on charges of hoarding rice.

Life

Rabiu was born into the family of a religious scholar, Rabiu Dan Tinki. Isyaku's religious upbringing influenced his development as a young man, as a youth, he embraced Islamic scholarship and was popularly known as a Mallam. It wasn't until the early 1960s that Rabiu delved into commercial enterprise. As a close confident of Kano businessman Ibrahim Musa Gashash, he established a procurement agency for textiles produced by the Kaduna Textile Factory, a firm controlled by Gashash. After success in trading textiles, he established his own textile factory, and was also involved in selling sewing machines. In the 1970s, three economic events, the oil and construction booms and the movement towards indigenization, helped cement his status among Kano's industrious elites. During the 1970s and 1980's Isyaku Rabiu was one of top 3 richest Nigerian businessmen at the time. He capitalized on the favorable conditions by building housing estates. buying up shares of some foreign nationals in the country and going into business of all kinds from commodities and construction to beverages to real estate.

During the 1980s, Rabiu built for himself a palatial mansion near the Goron Dutse Mosque, and for the society, he constructed a Jummat mosque in Kano.

He is the Islamic head of the Tijjania Sect of muslims, who are believed to have brought islam to northern Nigeria in the early 1400s and holds the title of Khalifa. He has donated many sprawling mosque's and has many islamic schools in his home state of Kano.

Family

Khalifa Isyaku Rabiu has four wives . The head of this very large family, he has 75 children, including his first son Nafiu Rabiu, and influential Nigerian businessmen Abdulsamad Rabiu, Chairman of BUA Group, Rabiu Rabiu, owner of IRS Airlines and Naziru Rabiu, Director of BUA Group. Abdulsamad Rabiu, perhaps most famous of them, took over the family business at the tender age of 24, widely believed to have done so due to his father's jailing by then head of state General Muhammadu Buhari. He also has many grandchildren, all vying to live up to the great reputation of their grandfather.

Isyaku Rabiu still lives in his Gorun Dutse mansion in kano, the biggest single house in kano. He is widely loved and respected and known for his generosity, kindness and Islamic spirituality.

References

*Roman Loimeier, Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, (Series in Islam and Society in Africa). Northwestern University Press (February 2, 1996).