How Musa and Asabe Gwabin Nurtured a Chief of Defence Staff in the Sokoto Caliphate

By Samuel Aruwan

Behind every accomplished leader stands a deeper, often untold story of origin. For Nigeria’s 18th Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, OFR, that story begins not in the corridors of the Nigerian Defence Academy or the battlefields of the North-East, but in the quiet Christian home his parents built in the heart of the Sokoto Caliphate more than six decades ago.

To truly understand General Christopher Gwabin Musa, the 18th Chief of Defence Staff of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, one must travel far beyond the marble corridors of Defence Headquarters in Abuja or the dusty battlegrounds of the Sambisa Forest where he once orchestrated the surrender of thousands of terrorists.

The real origin of the man who today commands Nigeria’s military lies in a modest Christian compound along Ahmadu Bello Way in old Sokoto, inside a home where Hausa, Tyap, and the ringing cadences of ECWA hymns mingled daily, where prayer was as regular as the five daily adhan echoing from the Sultan Bello Mosque nearby, and where a little boy born on Christmas Day 1967 learned that true strength is forged first in patience, rooted in faith, and proven in service.

That home belonged to Elder Musa Sukwai Gwabin and his wife, Mrs Asabe Mallam Sabanet Gwabin, two young people from the hills of Zangon Kataf in present-day southern Kaduna State who, against every conventional current of their time, chose to plant their lives and raise their children in the very seat of the Sokoto Caliphate.

Their story is not merely the backstory of a four-star general; it is the living illustration of how deep spiritual conviction, stubborn courage, and quiet endurance can shape destiny across generations.

Musa Sukwai Gwabin was born on 13 May 1939 in the village of Masukwai, at a time when the Second World War was just breaking out across the seas and the Atyap hills were still ringing with tales of warriors like Marok Gandu, the legendary Jei clansman who, mortally wounded in the Battle of San-Tswuan, asked only for one last puff of tobacco before breathing his last. Asabe Mallam Sabanet came into the world six years later, on 25 November 1945 in Samaru Atyap, two months after the war ended.

Both were children of the late colonial era, born under the long shadow of British indirect rule and the Emir of Zazzau, Ja’afaru Dan Isiyaku, whose reign stretched from 1937 to 1959. They grew up hearing stories of tax revolts, of women forced to carry crushing loads of guinea corn on their heads all the way to Zonkwa railway station, some collapsing and losing unborn children under the strain of wartime requisitions.

Yet amid those hardships, something else was growing in the Atyap landscape: clusters of mud-brick schoolrooms bearing the crest of the Sudan Interior Mission. It was into these classrooms, built and staffed by Scottish missionaries led by the redoubtable Rev. Thomas Archibald, that young Musa and Asabe walked as children.

There they learned not only to read and write in Hausa and English but to kneel, to sing “Yesu na ƙaunarmu” with full throat, to memorise Scripture, and to understand that a life poured out for God and neighbour was the only life worth living. Those early lessons sank deep.

When Musa finished at the SIM school in Samaru in 1957, most of his peers pointed themselves toward the bright lights of Kaduna or the tin mines of Jos. He did something different.

After brief stints in Zaria and Kano selling Raleigh bicycles, he packed his few belongings and headed northwest to Sokoto, a city whose very name evoked centuries of Islamic scholarship and authority. A young Christian from the “bush” walking into the Caliphate to seek his fortune was not a common sight in the late 1950s, but Musa Sukwai carried the fear of God like armour and the discipline of the mission school like a compass.

Meanwhile, back in Samaru, Asabe completed her own studies in 1961. Word travelled along the family network that the young man who had gone to Sokoto was doing well and was looking for a wife who shared his vision. Introductions were made, letters exchanged, prayers offered.

On 18 August 1962 the two stood before God and the little ECWA congregation in a simple Christian wedding and, instead of returning south as almost everyone expected, they turned their faces back toward Sokoto together. A new chapter began.

In the years that followed, the Gwabins did not simply survive in Sokoto; they thrived. Asabe, warm-eyed, tireless, and fearless, became the beating heart of the women’s fellowship.

For thirty-three consecutive years, from 1965 to 1998, she led the Zumuntan Mata of the Sokoto District Church Council, earning the affectionate title “Maman Sokoto” that old women still whisper with reverence today.

Even after she stepped down from the chairmanship, she remained the quiet counsellor whose advice was sought by pastors and emirs’ wives alike. Musa rose steadily in the church as well, becoming an Elder in 1967, the very year Christopher was born, and later Patron of the same 1st ECWA Bishara Church that still stands on Ahmadu Bello Way.

Their home became a lighthouse. Young southerners arriving in Sokoto for trading or civil service knew they could find a plate of tuwo and miyan kuka, a mat to sleep on, and prayer cover under the Gwabins’ roof.

Northern Christians facing discrimination knew there was a place they would be defended. Muslim neighbours who fell ill or suffered bereavement knew that Mama Asabe would appear with soup and Elder Musa with quiet words of sympathy. In a city where Christians were less than one percent of the population, the Gwabins did not whisper their faith; they sang it.

It was in that atmosphere, saturated with morning devotions, night vigils, and the constant aroma of hard work and love, that Christopher Gwabin Musa and his siblings grew.

The boy who walked to Marafa Danbaba Primary School and later moved to Model Primary, then Federal Government College Sokoto, absorbing not just academics but the deeper curriculum his parents taught by example: that real power answers to God alone, that patience is a sharper weapon than anger, that integrity is not negotiable, and that service is the rent you pay for the space you occupy on earth.

Those lessons were tested in fire when Christopher chose the military profession. Of the 200 young men admitted with him into the Nigerian Defence Academy’s 38th Regular Course, thirty-four would never live to wear retirement uniforms.

Through postings, promotions, near-misses, betrayals, and the crushing loneliness of high command, Christopher carried what his parents had deposited: the same quiet endurance his father showed building a life far from home, the same resilient compassion his mother poured into generations of women, the same absolute trust in God that had sustained two young mission-school graduates daring to raise a family in the Caliphate.

The fruit became visible to the entire nation when, as Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai, he broke the will of Boko Haram through intelligence-driven operations and patient, methodical pressure that finally produced the largest mass surrender of terrorists in Nigerian history.

Elder Musa and Mama Asabe did not live to see their son decorated son sworn in as Chief of Defence Staff on 19 June 2023. Mama had gone home to the Lord on 29 March 2018; Baba followed on 6 October 2021.

But heaven, it seems, has perfect vision. The very next morning after the appointment was announced, the market women of Samaru Atyap poured into the streets dancing and singing in Tyap, “Allahn mu na sama, yana ji, yana gani”,  Our God in heaven, He hears and He sees.

They were singing for Asabe their daughter, telling her that the boy she carried on her back to Zumuntan Mata meetings in Sokoto had now become the man responsible for the security of 220 million Nigerians.

Today, when General Christopher Musa walks into the Council Chamber at the Presidential Villa or addresses troops on the front lines, something older and deeper walks with him: the prayers of a mission-school boy who left Zangon Kataf with nothing but faith, the tears of a young bride who followed him into the unknown, the hymns sung softly in a minority church in Sokoto night after night, year after year, the disciplined devotion of two lives that refused to be small.

Their names were Musa Sukwai Gwabin and Asabe Mallam Sabanet. They never commanded divisions, never wore stars on their shoulders, never sat in the National Security Council. Yet in the quietest way possible, in the unlikeliest of places, they raised a man who would one day command the entire Armed Forces of Africa’s most populous nation.

And that, in doing so, they proved that the most decisive battles are often won long before the first shot is fired, in the hidden places of prayer, in the daily choice to remain faithful when no one is watching, and in the patient nurturing of a child who would one day carry a nation’s hope on his shoulders.

Samuel Aruwan is a postgraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.