Malam Bello Alaramma, as he is popularly called, is a night guard at Bakori Housing Unit, Bakori, Katsina State. He hails from a nearby village called Kabomo, about six kilometers from Bakori.
He has two wives and children. Malam Bello takes care of his family through sheer hard work and he never relents, not unless he is sick.
What attracted me to this great guy is his untiring effort to fend for his family. It's this effort that made him engage in the work of a security guard, which he had never done before, just to make ends meet and to keep body and soul together.
In his village, he is called Alaramma because he is well versed in Qur'anic education. And this qualified him to be an Islamic teacher, teaching children. He is also called Mai'unguwa, being a ward head in the village. Naturally, he is also a subsistence farmer as is customary in the village and surrounding area. What's more, Malam Bello uses his motorcycle as a commercial vehicle, ferrying people to various destinations within Bakori and environs, during his spare time. When he is not doing that, he maintains a shop in Funtua, about ten kilometers from Bakori, where he sells Moringa (Zogala) leaves to people who find it a delicacy to be added to the menu for breaking their fasts.
Close to the shop is one of his wives who sells 'Kuli-kuli', a necessary ingredient mixed and consumed with Zogala. Both Malam Bello and his wife sell these commodities in fairly large quantities that, in a way, made them wholesalers as well as retailers. Hawkers buy these commodities from them and sell in small quantities to interested buyers.
You may wonder where Alaramma gets 'Zogala' in large quantity... Well, he travels to distant places, as far as Batsari, a distance of more than two hundred kilometers from Bakori, almost on a daily basis, to buy a bus-load of the plant as he does not cultivate them himself. The plant is seasonal and sometimes he sells only the dried leaves.
Such is Mai'unguwa's life, year in year out. He never relents, never wavers and never has days off. One wonders how he manages to meet his marital obligations.
It's this dignity of labour in a single individual that impressed me so much that I feel I should share with you.
Now compare that with your average son, the son of a middle-class working parents. He grows up lacking for nothing, having attended good schools. He does not know hunger, wearing rags nor how rents are paid. He doesn't have an inkling how you struggle to maintain his mother, himself and his siblings. He doesn't know how you settle domestic bills. Yet he gets angry if his favourite meal is not cooked. He sulks if his favourite material is not sewn for him. He grows up with no skills and thinks it's demeaning for him to do menial jobs to get money to recharge his phone. He has to have an expensive phone as well as money to purchase data to browse the Internet and visit sites like facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. He spends long hours chatting friends and girlfriends on WhatsApp and BBM.
Any wonder then when such sons end up taking drugs or even stealing to maintain their habit?
But there's always an exception to the rule. I know a top civil servant who had the presence of mind to set up a car-wash enterprise. The boys he employs to wash people's cars normally take certain percentage of the proceeds and he takes the rest.
This guy brought in two of his children who also participated and were duly paid just like the other boys. He told me that they used what they were paid for washing cars to finance their education; one has completed a diploma program from a Polytechnic and the other has bagged a degree.
Who says dignity of labour does not pay?