President General Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, has commiserated with President Muhammad Buhari and the entire family of the late Malam Ismail Isa Funtua over the death of the elder statesman.
A statement issued through NSCIA media committee chairman, Femi Abbas, Thursday said Malam Isa Funtua was a bridge builder and exemplary storm-calmer with a reverberating effect across the world.
Sultan Abubakar said Malam Isa Funtua was a “simply a quintessential socialite with abhorrence to tribal and religious discrimination. He was particularly renowned for ventilating harmonious environments for peaceful coexistence across tribal and religious divides with his natural coolness and simplicity.”
The Sultan said the deceased as federal minister in Nigeria’s Second Republic, practically demonstrated what the public conduct of a public officer ought to be in an African setting.
“In that office, his conduct as a minister was like a magnet that drew many Nigerians to him as friends and associates, irrespective of social status or faith professed.
“His simplicity became more prominent when he joined the media business as an acute administrator and Managing Director of The Democrat newspaper after his exit from ministerial post following the collapse of the country’s Second Republic.
“He was a skillful manpower builder and an ardent groomer of future leaders.
As a onetime President of Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), he tactically taught most of his colleagues and media executives the culture of humility and contentment with which only a few of them were then familiar.
“From his experience of managing and coordinating the diverse cultural attitudes of over 10,000 workers at Nigeria Textile Mills in Kaduna, where he once served as a Personnel Manager, Malam Funtua learnt the methodology of instilling confidence in workers as a precursor of patriotism.
“The most unnoticed secret of his wonderful dynamism in social mixture was his combination of Western and Islamic education on the template of the fear of Allah. He was innately religious without exhibiting it.”
