By Ozumi Abdul.
She stood where the city barely noticed her. The morning traffic along the Abuja street hummed with impatience—horns blaring, engines revving, convoys gliding past in practiced indifference.
On her head rested a shallow tray of sugarcane, carefully cut into neat, chewable inches, their pale flesh glistening faintly under the harsh sun. To the hurried eyes of passing motorists, she was just another roadside hawker, one more anonymous figure wrestling with survival. But inside her chest lived a quiet desperation that no passing glance could measure.
She was hungry, not just in the way the stomach growls when food is scarce, but in the deeper sense of a mother burdened by responsibility. The sugarcanes on her head, if sold completely, would not fetch up to four thousand naira. Yet that small sum was expected to stretch into meals, school needs, rent, and hope for two innocent children who depended entirely on her.
Every step she took was calculated, every call to potential buyers laced with silent prayer. Today, like many days before it, was a gamble against hunger.
Her story had not begun on the streets. It had begun in a small home where love once tried to survive under the crushing weight of poverty. She had been married, hopeful, willing to endure hardship alongside her husband. But hardship, when prolonged and unforgiving, can hollow out affection. Her husband, a daily labourer skilled in POP handwork, struggled to find consistent jobs. Days without pay turned into weeks of frustration.
Arguments replaced conversations. Hunger sharpened tempers. Eventually, in a moment fueled by despair rather than malice, he asked her to leave. Poverty had spoken louder than commitment.
With nowhere else to go and mouths to feed, she turned to the streets. Fate, or perhaps providence, led her to a place locals quietly referred to as the domain of the White Lion: the frontage of one of the Abuja residences of former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Adoza Bello. To her, it was not a political symbol or a seat of power. It was simply a place where passing vehicles slowed, where there was a chance, however slim, that kindness might meet her need.
Inside one of those vehicles sat a man whose presence often announced authority.
Convoys usually mean distance, separation between power and the powerless. The gates open, cars glide in, engines go silent, and the world outside fades. That day seemed no different. As the vehicle approached the residence and prepared to enter, the sugarcane girl remained where she was, balancing her tray, rehearsing the same plea she had repeated countless times.
Then something unexpected happened.
Like the lion of the jungle—feared for strength, known for dominance—one would expect him to remain within the safety of his domain, untouched by the frailty outside his gates. But this lion chose otherwise. The convoy slowed. A door opened. Yahaya Bello stepped out, his attention drawn not by ceremony but by curiosity. He looked at the girl again, her slight frame and youthful appearance misleading. Assuming she was far younger, he asked gently why she was not in school.
The question startled her. No one had asked her that in a long time.
With hesitation, she explained that she was not a child. She was thirty years old. A mother. Not of one, but of two children who waited daily for her return with whatever she could manage to sell. Her voice carried the weight of exhaustion and shame, the kind that comes from explaining misfortune to someone who has no obligation to listen.
What followed was not pity, but engagement.
When she revealed that she had been sent out of her matrimonial home due to constant struggles fueled by poverty, Bello did not turn away. Instead, he asked her to call her husband. Confused but obedient, she dialed the number. The husband arrived, uncertain, wary, burdened by his own failures. Rather than condemnation, he was met with mediation.
The former governor invited both of them into his compound, away from the prying eyes of the street.
There, he listened.
He spoke to them not as a politician seeking applause, but as a mediator who understood that broken homes often begin with broken opportunities. He reminded them that separation would not only wound them, but scar the future of their children. Like the Qur’an teaches, “The strong is not the one who overcomes people by his strength, but the strong is the one who controls himself while in anger” (Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari).
Strength, in that moment, was restraint, compassion, and wisdom.
By the time they emerged, something had changed. The couple had reconciled. Hope, fragile but alive, returned to their eyes. Then came the gesture that stunned them both: a gift of two million naira to help them restart their lives. Yet even in generosity, there was principle. Bello made it clear that money alone could not sustain a family. He linked the husband with people who could help him grow his craft, expand his skills, and secure stable work. “I can show you how to fish,” he told him, “but I cannot keep giving you money, because no matter how much I give you, if you don’t work on it, it will finish.” Sustainability, not dependency, was the lesson.
In that act lay a powerful echo of scripture. The Bible says, “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed” (Psalm 82:3). Compassion is not complete until it restores dignity. By reuniting the couple, Bello did more than give money—he preserved a home, shielded children from the trauma of a broken family, and reminded two struggling adults that their story was not finished.
One may love or loathe Yahaya Bello. He is human, fallible, and not without controversy. His years in office attracted criticism, debates, and scrutiny, some deserved, others exaggerated. Like every leader, his administration had lapses that critics are quick to recall. Yet leadership, like humanity itself, is rarely a tale of pure virtue or absolute failure.
The Bible offers a telling parallel in the story of the woman brought before Jesus by the Pharisees, accused and condemned before she could speak. While her accusers focused on punishment, Jesus focused on mercy, declaring, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7). The lesson was not that wrongdoing should be ignored, but that judgment without compassion is hypocrisy.
So it is with Bello. Despite his shortcomings, no fair observer can deny his capacity for empathy. Stories abound of young people lifted from obscurity, of opportunities created where none existed, of doors opened not because of privilege but because of belief in potential.
In a political space often accused of recycling old faces, he became a symbol—especially for the youth—that leadership was not reserved for the elderly or the elite.
Within minutes on an Abuja street, a sugarcane seller’s life intersected with power, and power chose mercy. In that brief encounter, a nobody became somebody, not because she met a politician, but because she met a human being willing to listen. Her children’s future shifted course, not through slogans or speeches, but through action.
In the end, this is not just a story about Yahaya Bello. It is a reminder that leadership finds its truest expression not in convoys or titles, but in moments of choice. When the strong protect the weak, when authority bows to empathy, society heals, one family, one street, one quiet miracle at a time.
– Ozumi Abdul is a Senior Correspondent at PRNigeria and strategic communication expert. He can be reached via abdulozumi83@gmail.com
