My Father Hid My Hausa Identity For Almost Three Decades — Olawepo-Hashim

Presidential candidate of the Accord Party, Dr Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has revealed the extraordinary family secret behind why his Hausa and royal identity remained concealed from him for almost three decades.

Olawepo-Hashim, grandson of the 40th Seriki of Yauri, said his late father, Alhaji Hashim Abdullahi Yauri, deliberately kept his royal heritage from him as a child after receiving a warning from an Islamic cleric about possible dangers within the royal family.

According to him, the cleric advised his father against exposing the child’s identity prematurely, prompting him to make what was ultimately a life-changing decision: to protect his son by keeping his identity secret.

“He chose protection over inheritance,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

As a result, Olawepo-Hashim was relocated and raised in the Borgu Emirate under a different identity.

Although he was named Abdulmalik at birth, he grew up within a Yoruba cultural environment, largely removed from the Hausa traditions, royal connections and family history of his paternal lineage.

For almost 27 years, he said, he lived without knowing the full circumstances surrounding his identity.

The extraordinary story is detailed in Chapter 13 of his forthcoming autobiography, Sunrise at Midnight, scheduled for publication soon.

The chapter provides an account of his childhood, his father’s decision and the eventual discovery of the heritage that had been deliberately kept from him.

Olawepo-Hashim has previously spoken publicly about his unusual childhood. In an interview with THISDAY, he disclosed that he was born in Yelwa, Yauri, in 1969, while his father was a young police officer. He subsequently grew up with the family of his stepfather, Julius Bamidele Olawepo.

Olawepo-Hashim also paid tribute to his late father, whom he described as a highly influential police officer who rose to become a Police Commissioner and Commandant of the Police College, Kaduna.

Popularly known as “Zaki,” the Lion, Alhaji Hashim Abdullahi Yauri was widely respected across Northern Nigeria.

Olawepo-Hashim said the nickname reflected his father’s courage, discipline, strength and commanding personality.

Olawepo-Hashim and his siblings recently marked the 30th anniversary of their father’s passing with commemorative advertisements in major Nigerian newspapers.

For him, the story of his father is inseparable from the story of his own identity.

The father who kept his royal lineage secret was also a man who, in Olawepo-Hashim’s account, carried a formidable reputation in public service.

Olawepo-Hashim’s account also takes him further back into the history of his paternal family, to his grandfather, Seriki Abdullahi Jibril, popularly known as Maiy Yauri.

He described his grandfather as one of the prominent traditional rulers of Northern Nigeria in his era and part of a generation of educated Northern royals who combined traditional authority with modern education, administration and commerce.

According to Olawelo-Hashim, Seriki Jibril, the 40th ruler of Yauri, was particularly distinguished by his knowledge of finance and trade, financial prudence, transparency and commitment to education.

He described him as a prominent royal of Hausa ancestry who was honoured with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) during the colonial period.

He further recalled that British records portrayed his grandfather as an unusually independent traditional ruler who, during the Second World War, exercised a degree of administrative autonomy that distinguished him from many of his contemporaries.

But for Olawepo-Hashim, the story is ultimately bigger than royalty.

It is the story of a father who chose secrecy as an act of protection; a child who grew up between cultures without knowing the full story of his origins; and a family history that eventually returned to him decades later.

“For 27 years, I lived without knowing the full story of who I was,” Hashim said.

He said discovering his Hausa and Yauri heritage did not diminish the Yoruba cultural environment in which he was raised. Rather, it gave him a deeper understanding of the different cultural and historical strands that shaped his identity.

His story, he said, is ultimately about family, sacrifice, identity, heritage and the strange ways in which history can remain hidden for decades before finding its way back into a person’s life.