Senator Barau Jibrin
By Alhaji Shu’ayb Darki
To be candid with whoever is lucky to lay his or her hand or rather have his or her nose in this article, he or she will agree with me without any iota of doubt that Senator Barau Jibrin isn’t only representing his Kano North Senatorial District or his home State, Kano but rather, the whole of the Northern part of the country which consists of 19 States and has 57 senatorial districts.
There is no state in the North where you find people whose lives were not touched in one way or another by Senator Barau Jibrin through his humanitarian/philanthropic activities. In fact, I know of people who were knocked down by one deadly sickness or the other and students whose parents were too indigent to pay for their school fees in states like Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Zamfara State but through these humanitarian activities, thousands of lives were saved from the razor-sharp claws of death and thousands of the sons and daughters of the less privileged are now graduates courtesy of Senator Barau’s Scholarship Scheme.
When it comes to employment, Barau has so far employed not fewer than 785 graduates in various sectors and having been a business mogul all through his life, he has underwrote thousands of small businesses across the federation from the money he makes from his businesses.
He is now a political measurement scale used to measure the political worthiness of our senators and members of the House of Representatives by their constituents.
You could see that any Senator /Federal Lawmaker from Kano State who isn’t as public-spirited and hardworking as Barau was punished by his Constituents on the voting day. But Senator Barau Jibrin not only survived that electoral hurdles, but also saved the necks of almost all the federal lawmakers from his Kano-North senatorial district owing to his unrivalled popularity and the unflinching love his constituents have for him.
Hence politicians of Senator Barau Jibrin’s calibre are very thin on the ground. For he is such a helluva nice politician, you can pay top dollar to associate yourself with, for your association with him will make you have a heart for suffering masses who find it extra-much difficult to afford the three square meals.
*I came in contact with Senator Barau in 2001 when he was a member representing Tarauni Federal Constituency at the green chamber and it happened we brought one elderly person to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano on referral and luckily enough for us, that very day, at dusk we overheard people saying Hon. Barau was in the hospital to wish the in-patients a speedy recovery and render some medical assistance to them. When all of a sudden, he rammed into the door of our room, I tried to take away the badge of the APP which was later rechristened to ANPP from the left hand side pocket of my ash colour jacket beingtheLocalGovernment secretary of the defunct APP/ANPP, so that he will not see it because my expectation or rather fear was that if he sees it, he would not render any assistance to us and he might end up lumping us together with our deadly sick patient as card carrying members of the opposition party.
Unknown to me, the hawk-eyed lawmaker had caught a glimpse of me when I removed my badge and put into one black nylon which contained some of the drugs prescribed for our patient Alaramma Mallam Bello and when he came to our neighbour according to the arrangement of the sick beds, he pointed at me and asked “abokina kana siyasa ne?” Meaning; my friend are you a politician? I hesitated and I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights before I answered his question by half-heartedly saying yes. But why are you hiding the badge of your party away from me? Do you think I am here for any electioneering campaign? I said no sir! At that time, he was dishing out the sum of #10,000 to each patient but in our case, he footed the bill of our patient which was around #75,000 and this figure at that point in time wasn’t something anybody could dare take for granted. I can can tell you with aplomb that at that time a large chunk of the people currently working with him did not even know him.
Our relationship became much stronger when he joined us in the defunct and showed his interest to run for governorship. I could remember vividly, myself and one Idi Mashi from Takai Local Government used to be members of his little entourage that always accompanied him when he was going out of the city to attend some occasions such as paying condolence visits to people who lost their beloved ones, attending marital ceremonies, paying visits to commiserate with the people of a certain community, whenever there is a disaster or an outbreak particularly in the Kano-North senatorial district. So, I suppose, I need no any paper identification before I consider myself as one of his aides. I have always been acting as his aide ever since I got to know him twenty two years ago, because he is the type of person any serious-minded politician would want to associate with.
I can tell you that there was never a Senator from the first republic to date who was as hardworking and dedicated to needs of his or her constituents as senator Barau I. Jibrin. For more than any federal lawmaker, Barau has brought to his constituency laudable projects worth N234 billion and has empowered nothing less than 64,000 youths, businessmen and women both within and outside his senatorial district in his zeal to nip poverty and insecurity in the bud.
He also believes as did Mahatma Ghandi that the only sure-fire way to do away with insecurity is by keeping the youths unavoidably engaged.
Darki, a political analyst, writes from Kano
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