Founder of Isyaku Rabiu & Sons and leader of Tijjaniya Movement in Africa, Sheik Isyaku Rabiu is dead.
Sheik Isyaku Rabiu
We gathered the prominent businessman and Islamic scholar died on Tuesday May 8th, 2018 in London after an abrupt illness. Family sources disclosed that he will be buried according to Islamic rites as soon as his body arrives Nigeria. He died at the age of 90.
For those who may not know, Isyaku Rabiu was born in October 9, 1928. He founded a major holding company in Kano State, Isyaku Rabiu & Sons. He was a supporter of Ibrahim Niasse’s Tijaniyyah brotherhood.
He was born to the family of Muhammadu Rabiu Dan Tinki, a Quranic preacher from the Bichi area of Kano State who led his own Quranic school. From 1936 to 1942, Rabiu attended his father’s school learning the Quran and Arabic. He then moved to Maiduguri, Borno for further Islamic education. After spending 4 years in Maiduguri, he returned to Kano prepared to be an Islamic scholar.
In 1949, Rabiu was an independent teacher of Arabic and the Quran who had among his audience, Ibrahim Musa Gashash. In the early 1950s while still a teacher, he began to engage in private enterprise and established Isyaku Rabiu & Sons in 1952. Originally the firm acted as an agent of UAC and was trading in sewing machines, religious books and bicycles. In 1958, the firm had a breakthrough when Kaduna Textile Limited was established and it became one of the early distributors.
Rabiu emerged the leading distributor of the company in Northern Nigeria. In 1963, he joined a consortium of businessmen from Kano who came together to form the Kano Merchants Trading Company. The establishments continued to survive withstanding competition from foreign products. In 1970, he established a suit and packing factory.
He was a supporter of National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and likely benefited from sate patronage as a result.