How woman found ‘new love’ after losing House of Reps primary election

Surprisingly, however, she did not allow the dejection of losing election weigh her down. She found strength in the poverty stricken faces of village women, the grim faces of village children and the agonizing hours pregnant women spent on bush paths to get to clinics. Hajia Munga is originally from Karim Lamido but she said […]

Surprisingly, however, she did not allow the dejection of losing election weigh her down. She found strength in the poverty stricken faces of village women, the grim faces of village children and the agonizing hours pregnant women spent on bush paths to get to clinics. Hajia Munga is originally from Karim Lamido but she said she had never been to her village before, until she started campaigning for the House of Representatives seat. Now she has found a new love for her backward community. Karim Lamido is one of the oldest local government areas in Taraba state, since the old Gongola State, it is relatively and grossly underdeveloped. Giant neem  trees with verdure boughs lining the dusty streets of the small town and crumbling mud houses with rusty roofs are tell tale signs of a local government area in shackles of underdevelopment.

When Hajia Munga led two station wagon cars, fully loaded with drugs and medicaments to Karim Lamido on a sunny Monday morning, it was, according to her, demonstrating in practical terms, one of the lessons she learnt from contesting and failing elections. For her, the village folks who always get a raw deal in the political game are her new found love. It was real love that drove her to take a rough ride through the rugged hills of Lau, cross the serene waters of the Benue River and wade through the dusty plains of Karim Lamido.

She was going to launch her Safe Motherhood project and nothing was going to stop her. Not even the hails of dust entering her eyes, and selling on her entire body. Nor was the towering, laborious roar of the big ferry navigating upstream to carry passengers and vehicles across the river could dampen her spirit. She wants to get there, where she used to see those hungry and grim faces of women and children to remind them that she has not forgotten them.

“I was contesting because of my people, and now that I have failed why should I forget them? In fact, during my campaigns, I discovered that a lot of women do not have access to qualitative healthcare, especially pregnant women. I was shocked by the conditions I met pregnant women in.  God knows what I would have done to help them if I had won the House of Representatives seat for Ardo-Kola/Karim Lamido/Lau, but that notwithstanding, I can still reach out to them in my own little way,” she told our correspondent in Karim Lamido.

She said she was overwhelmed by the support women gave her during her electioneering campaigns and as a woman, she felt touched by their plight and would want to contribute her little quota to their development of the woman through her Safe Motherhood project, as according to her “if you develop a woman, you develop a society,” adding that “the drugs I have brought here are free for the women whom come for antenatal or delivery in the hospital or clinic.”

While handing over the drugs to the Executive Chairman of karim Lamido Local government Council, Mr. Idi Mali, comprising 50 cartoons of pain killers for pregnant women, 35 cartoons of anti-biotic injections, and other medicaments worth N2.3 million, she promised to construct a clinic at Ngurore, a remote village in the local government area and promised scholarships for the best students in all the secondary schools in the 11 wards of karim Lamido, the 10 wards of Lau and the 10 wards of Ardo-Kola.

“You are all aware that I contested and lost the primaries of our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but I still remain in the PDP. And if anybody thinks I am playing politics with what I am doing, let the person come out and do the same thing I am doing now, by directly touching the lives of the people, so that our communities can be developed,” she said.

However, she appealed to the people of the area to vote for Pharm. Danbaba Suntai and other PDP candidates, saying it is only by re-electing Gov Suntai that developments in their local communities can be sustained.  And as a mark of her unalloyed support to Gov Suntai, she donated her former campaign office in Karim Lamido to the Danbaba Suntai Campaign Organisation.

Receiving the drugs, Mr Mali said it is the first of its kind in Taraba and called on all politicians to emulate her good example. “Winning and losing election is God’s will but it is extraordinary for somebody who lost election to still come back and do what she is doing for the people.”

He promised that the drugs would be shared judiciously to all the clinics in the local government area. “I must make sure that the council’s director of health disburses the drugs equitably.”

A pregnant woman, Mrs Zainab Ahmadu who spoke to our correspondent said she thanked God for touching the heart of Hajia Munga to bring drugs to them, saying the last time she went to hospital she was heavily billed for drugs.

But most women got disappointed at the end of the day. They had come out in great numbers hopeful that they would be given handouts. When they did not get, they went home murmuring in Hausa and their local dialects that it was wicked of Hajia Munga to call them out into the blazing sun and then not give them any money for pure water (sachet water). Even as the women murmured as they began to disperse, young men began shouting similar gestate “sai Gamaliel, ba za mu sake zaben Danbaba ba. Me yayimana?

But Hajia Munga came back to Jalingo more determined to demonstrate the lessons she learned from losing elections, with a promise to make to Ardo Kola and Lau areas.