My friend Isaiah Balat

Balat, born on 23rd October, 1952, was a self-made man with very humble beginnings. He had an elder brother, John who worked with Hassan Odukale, the founder of Leadway Insurance Company in Kaduna. John decided to join the army and then brought in Isaiah to replace him in the daily chores that the Odukales would […]

Balat, born on 23rd October, 1952, was a self-made man with very humble beginnings. He had an elder brother, John who worked with Hassan Odukale, the founder of Leadway Insurance Company in Kaduna. John decided to join the army and then brought in Isaiah to replace him in the daily chores that the Odukales would assign him.  Unfortunately John died in the civil war but Isaiah stayed on and worked for Odukale and learnt the basics of business and enterprise. This exposed him to various opportunities that helped in making him a rounded man.
For example, while doing his secondary school in Jos, Chief Odukale made him to work in his supermarket, Hassan Modern Stores so Balat could earn some money to finance his education. The good thing is that he worked diligently and that enabled him to move on in life. And to glory of God he truly went on to achieve great things. His adaptive capacity helped in conditioning him into remarkable roles that today made Senator Balat to stand out from the maddening crowd in family life, politics and business. Here lies the legacy that will keep resonating through various issues in his own home, Kaduna State, Nigeria and the world.
He started his education in ECWA Primary School, Gora, in Zangon Kataf Local Government Area of Kaduna State in 1959, then to the Commonwealth College of Commerce, Jos, between 1966 and 1970. Thereafter, he attended several proficiency course and programs that together with his life-time experiences added into building formidable academic certificates in Management (Upstream Oil & Gas), the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School (1991) as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Petroleum Management from Oxford University (1995-1997).
Senator Balat was an ideas man with a bubbly mind that expressed many things positively to the extent that even when his good sides were painted in warped manner, he took them with calm and reason. When in 1999 he was nominated to be Minister from Kaduna State, naysayers placed advertorials denouncing him for having incomplete educational certificates. His qualifications were placed to mean fraud so that the Senate would not clear him. After his clearance, he decided to blend his life’s history and experience by placing everything in the public domain effectively in a press conference and that killed this deliberate intrigue once and for all.
As President of the Kaduna Chamber of Com-merce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (1987-1991), his commitment laid the foundation for the development an construction of the Kaduna International Trade Fair complex which is one of the places of reference in Kaduna. My late boss TCPC (later BPE) Dr Hamza Zayyad spoke of Balat in superlative terms and praised his work on the Trade Fair Complex. Similarly for the short time as Minister in the Federal Ministry of Works, he did so much for the country but locally he saw to it that the shortcut to Jos through Machok was done while the roads to the Gimi Forest and to Kaduna were all redone. As Senator he ensured that some of the cellular phone networks covered most of his constituency, in addition to influencing the constructing a 330 KVA substation in Kafanchan to improve power supply to his constituency.
His concept of service was taken to the bar to prove his point and he did that at every turn of events. If Balat recommended you to a job, he followed it to hilt, irrespective of whether the beneficiary was good or bad to him in the past, so long as the person recommended had the requisite qualifications.  
 It is pertinent that Senator Balat went into politics early, making him to be the Chairman of the defunct NPP in the then Kaduna State (including Katsina) in 1978 at the age of 28! This no doubt schooled him in the art of politics and the management of the difficulties of the intrigues therein. He fared well among his peers and created a name for himself as a daring-do. According to Aliyu Akwe Doman, former governor of Nasarawa State, Balat was an incredible relay-man in the politics of emancipation during the NNP days. In the campaign for Obasanjos presidency he was strong in organizing the Kaduna State operations. He also played a similar role in the Jonathan/Sambo campaign during which he organized locally in Kaduna but travelled extensively to many states of the federation.
He also experienced many lapses, failures and successes, noting too that one must be adaptive and flexible to changes in order to get value from the vagaries of politics. After working so hard for PDP and the Obasanjo presidential election, he was made a minister, but lost it within just about a year and a half. After some cooling off for some years, he got the senatorial nomination and won the election. So soon after that he contested for state governor but lost to the Vice President Namadi Sambo. Being the good mind that he was, he consented to being a Special Adviser to the same person he had fought bitterly with.
Interestingly Balat was a resourceful businessman with interest in oil and gas; a field in which he had studied extensively, alongside banking, insurance and agro allied services. This enabled him to keep up with his basic needs and to train his children in very high profile schools both locally and internationally. He served as Chairman or Director in one government company, or the other but his active life in the corporate world was reflected in his membership of the board of the Nigerian Stock Exchange as well as a director of Guinness Nigeria Plc.
On Tuesday 18th, at about 2pm, I received a text apparently from Adam, but because I did not have his cell number it was strange. It read “Please call immediately you received this text. Something is wrong with the health of my Daddy.” I wanted to know who but no reply came. Soon after a text came in stating “is like Balat is dead.”  The first call met an uncertain answer but my second call confirmed my fears. I had gone home to bury my younger brother, Peter, who died the previous night of Monday 17th, but had to immediately leave for Abuja to Balat’s house only to notice a long stretch of cars surrounding it.
Senator Balat left behind two lovely women, Mary and Paulina who were his friends and ever so calm in looks and demeanour, and five children made up of two ladies, Linda and Jane, and three men, Adamu, Bobai and David.  
Goodnight Isaiah, my bosom friend.

Senator Ewuga wrote from Abuja