Epitome of humility, pragmatism in Taraba

Governor Darius’ approach to youth’s empowerment is to give them skills first and encourage them to train others close to them. Beneficiaries are drawn from all the 168 electoral wards and comprise both males and females. The story of Aishatu Ali from Gashaka is very popular in the state media and it was typical of […]

Governor Darius’ approach to youth’s empowerment is to give them skills first and encourage them to train others close to them. Beneficiaries are drawn from all the 168 electoral wards and comprise both males and females.

The story of Aishatu Ali from Gashaka is very popular in the state media and it was typical of the governor’s approach to skills acquisition programmes. Aisha was given sewing skills. She went back to her community and started applying her skills with the empowerment she received and soon trained her daughter and a widow relative. Today they are all doing well offering tailoring services to their communities. Through this approach the state government has taken many youth off the streets, which has helped in addressing the issue of youth restiveness.

The humility of Darius manifests itself when he was asked about the kind of person he wants to succeed him and he had this to say: “I will rather pray for God to bring somebody after his own heart, someone who thinks about people first to take over from me. That is the time that one needs to pray even more that God should give him somebody with equal or better vision; somebody with a heart for the people; somebody who thinks about the people first before himself. Above all, you need somebody who is humble and willing to learn.”

I would say it takes a humble person to recognize humility as imperative character of a leader. For Darius’ pragmatism we need to only look at his performance in the 2019 elections. For someone who had to go into a re-run election in his first tenure, only to win landslide in the second, must have been a pragmatic politician. No doubt Darius’ humility and pragmatism gave him the second mandate in a conclusive manner for that matter!

Hassan is a writer on Business and Economy.