How a hit-and-run driver nearly took our Suleman, By Yushau A. Shuaib

That gesture — that small, defiant raising of a hand by Suleman in pain just to reassure his father — tells me everything I need to know about the son I raised, and the son I intend to see fully recovered… We pray that Suleman will walk out of Cedarcrest Hospital whole after the next surgery.

“Daddy, Daddy — don’t be scared. Everything is under control. Suleman was crushed by a hit-and-run drunkard, but he is currently admitted at Cedarcrest.”

That was the message from my son, Saad, last Monday morning in Kano — a morning when I was preparing to open an executive training programme we were hosting with the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR). I had been in the city for more than a week, overseeing the PRNigeria Young Communication Fellowship. The days had been full and productive. The BPSR training was meant to cap the visit. I was in conversation with the Director General, Dr Dasuki I Arabi, making final preparations before participants arrived, when the call came.

I have been a father long enough to recognise the sound of a child carrying a weight he was never designed to carry. Saad is measured by temperament, and not easily rattled. The phrase “don’t be scared” told me — before any detail — that there was something to fear.

Dr Arabi noticed the shift in my expression immediately. He paused and asked quietly whether there had been a fracture. I was still on the phone, asking the only question a father in that moment knows how to ask: “Is he conscious? Is he talking?”

Saad replied, “Everything is in the hands of God. Continue your programme, Dad. We have it under control.”

He was trying to protect me. I am a hypertension patient. Since my traumatic experience at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) — an ordeal I have documented elsewhere — my family has maintained an unspoken protocol around how they deliver difficult news to me. They weigh their words before they give them to me. That morning, I could feel the weight of what Saad was not saying.

I returned to the training. The professional in me took over, as it has always done in moments of crisis — the body occupies the room, the voice delivers what it must, while the mind runs on two tracks. But the second track, replaying Saad’s call, was louder than I would have liked.

I had already sent the deposit money to Cedarcrest. Whatever was needed would be provided. That was the only action available to me from Kano, and I took it without hesitation. But action and peace of mind are different things, and I had only one of them.

Gidado gave me the first real breath. He sent a photograph — Suleman in his hospital bed, arm raised, making the victory sign. That image did something to me that no reassuring word had managed. A young man crushed by a vehicle, hospitalised, facing surgery, and his first instinct was to raise his hand in defiance of what had happened to him. I looked at that photograph for a long time.

But I had already decided, quietly, to take the earliest possible flight back to Abuja. I told the participants the next morning — without unnecessary detail — that I needed to cut my stay short.

They were gracious. I was on a Wednesday morning flight.

Nothing prepares a father for the sight of his child in a hospital bed after trauma. What I heard when I arrived broke my heart in ways I did not expect. Only then did I learn the full truth my family had deliberately shielded from me until I reached the hospital.

Suleman had been taking his early morning walk after Subhi and other morning prayers when a driver —appearing from nowhere — ran him over at top speed. Seeing blood gush from his body, the man had fled instantly, fearing that my son was dead.

A medical doctor, Chidi Umeokoli, who is a family friend, arrived just in time. I do not use the term “god sent” lightly, but in that moment, Umeokoli was exactly that. He assessed the injuries with the calm competence of his training, fully aware that the manner of evacuation in trauma cases matters enormously — that a spine moved carelessly can turn a survivable accident into something irreversible.

He secured help from a Federal Road Safety vehicle. With lights and siren  blaring, they beat the Abuja traffic. Suleman reached Cedarcrest — one of the country’s foremost orthopaedic and trauma centres — in time. In the back of the emergency vehicle, bleeding and in pain, genuinely uncertain, Suleman asked his brother whether he was going to die.

Saad answered with a courage only love can produce — steady, composed, refusing even to cry inside himself.

There are fractures. There are surgeries ahead. But his head is intact. His spine is intact. He speaks clearly, fully aware of where he is and what happened. In a road accident of this severity — crushed by a vehicle driven by a man too irresponsible to remain at the scene, too cowardly to face what he had done — these are not small mercies. They are the kind of mercies people of faith spend lifetimes praying for.

That gesture — that small, defiant raising of a hand by Suleman in pain just to reassure his father — tells me everything I need to know about the son I raised, and the son I intend to see fully recovered.

We pray that Suleman will walk out of Cedarcrest Hospital whole after the next surgery.

Yushau A. Shuaib is the author of NIPSS: MNI Versus MNIPR: Tackling Institutional Bullying. Email: [email protected]