More testimony concerning Garba Adamu

Garba became a Christian in around 1978. From 1979 I was his colleague teaching the Hausa language in Jos, Plateau State , Nigeria. I taught the grammar which is beautifully simple. He did the drills; essential when there are three consonants not in English, and vowel lengths and tones are not in the written script but have to be learned through drills. grab whose only education was koranic schooling is a natural teacher. he taught himself to read Biko, that is hausa in Roman script, a colonial invention. He read originally in Ajemi the Hausa Arabic type orthography.
  He is not baptised. Two wives mean no baptism in Nigeria. It he sent one away what would she become? The wife of a Muslim or a whore. No real alternative.
   When I discussed this with a senior pastor he told me that my missionary fathers had told his fathers to send away wives two and more and now they were not changing for these Muslims. They were the people who before the British came had spread Islam by the sword, enslaved and killed his father.
   So when Garbs visitors England around 1984 I offered baptism. he refused saying he would wait until there were others like him to form a congregation.  So far no such movement.
   I discussed with garbs a contextualised approach to worship after the writing of par shall et al. I said how will you confess your belief. he said the church uses the Apostles Creed. I said yes but it is not Hausa. Holy catholic church is iklisiya mai tsarki katolika. Only holy is Hausa. She gave us a shade for the Almasihiyya - followers of Messiah. It was, I believe there is no God but God and Jesus Christ is the Word of God, Spirit of God, Son of God.This parallels the Islamic, No god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. The first three titles of Christ here are in the Koran. I asked if son of God was not provocative. Garba said that without it it was not A Christian creed.
   He had an acute theological understanding. he always taught students to respect Muslim beef and their book. So I asked if when he read the Bible it was the same as when he read the Koran. he said that the Koran spoke about God. In the Bible God speaks.
   I said that told be two things. First the Bible is God's word from the Holy Spirit. Secondly, He, Garba has the Holy Spirit.
   We discussed more on contextualised worship. Man and women sis apart and on mats. Facilities for washing at the door. Clean]n premises, no animals, birds or bats. Sing Psalms antiphonally with a precentor singing the line. No instruments.
   There has never been a Hausa Muslim convert church since the first one in Zaria over 100 years Tat was from Isawa, Muslims who had learnt to honour Jesus from the Koran before any missionaries came. http://www.nairaland.com/3420665/isawas-zaria
   Garba's home was Mango, a village near Jos. His family had moved there from Katsina. So he was part of an ethnic hausa minority in a predominantly Christian village of a different people. For a century there was peaceful coexistence, Pax Britannia the independence. After 9/11 everything changed. Hausas had to leave Mango and migrate to their community in the city of Jos. So Garbs the Christian has to live among his Muslim fellow Hausas. He is now in his eighties.  The Plateau is no longer a peaceful place. Hausa/Filanis in Jos North want politics control. The nomadic Fulani cattle herders have killed many local Christian farmers complain they rustle their cattle. The local Christians say Fulani cattle ruin their crops and the Fulani have attacked them with the aid of Muslim mercenaries. This is not the Boko Haram conflict which is in the North east but people fleeing BH are in displaced persons camps in the area.