STILL ON POVERTY

Alhamdu lilLah! Thanks be to Allah I’m glad to announce that the problem of that poor student of ours I narrated on this page last week is almost solved. First, Bayero University, Kano (BUK)’s Dean of Students’ Affairs, my good friend Prof Ismail Zango (and an avid follower of this column) read the article and […]

Alhamdu lilLah! Thanks be to Allah I’m glad to announce that the problem of that poor student of ours I narrated on this page last week is almost solved.

First, Bayero University, Kano (BUK)’s Dean of Students’ Affairs, my good friend Prof Ismail Zango (and an avid follower of this column) read the article and immediately contacted me. After discussion, he then directed his Deputy (my one-time student and now colleague at Mass Communication) Dr. Hajara Sanda to immediately take up the matter. Dr. Hajara invited and interviewed the student who came along with a female neighbour who knows the ins-and-outs of the pathetic situation.

For starters, she student has already been allocated hostel space, plus a free mattress. Dr. Hajara is mentioning a certain Alumni Fund support to be sourced from her graduating year (1992), and I’m sure the Dean will get round to doing more. Ma sha Allah.

Secondly, and most heartwarmingly, someone has written to me in confidence (we haven’t spoken yet, but I’m sure he will read this) that he is going to pick the tab on some of the student’s material needs fi sabililLah TILL HER GRADUATION in sha Allah.

To them all, we say jazakumulLah khair; may Allah reward you abundantly.

Apart from them, a few other people have also written with the same willingness to assist. Let me say that that really made me happy; there is so much goodness among people, alhamdu lilLah, and there is so much trust. People do want to help, and people do trust us harbingers of such sorry stories. For the latter ‘help-offerers’, whom I also do not know personally or where they are writing from, I have discreetly redirected them to enquire in nearby institutions where there could be many similar students in such dire straits. I promised them to assist in connecting, networking and sieving.

But sometimes it is very difficult to reach into the inner recesses of people who, as Allah describes them in the Qurán, “la yasálunan nasa ilhafa” (those who hide their penury and don’t go about broadcasting their poverty and asking people for sustenance).

Let me narrate how I started worrying about similar situations. Back in the early 1990s, when I was just starting out as an academic, I noticed one of my good students failing in class tests and assignments. I asked him to see me and I interviewed him. He was from a very poor family and had come to school with a limited quantity of food that his parents were able to afford. He organised his rations. All was going according to plan, and then the universities went on a two-week strike. The young man couldn’t travel, and his people couldn’t send more food, so he had to resort to skipping meals (something which, but for the seriousness of the matter, we the tomato-faces do by necessity) and so hunger was ravaging him and he couldn’t concentrate. And had no one to tell.

And wallahi not long after, I saw a group of his classmates at the university canteen ordering plantain and eggs and other proteins for lunch. (At that time I didn’t even know plantain was banana’s senior cousin). I compared and contrasted, and asked them to donate all their day’s surpluses to an indigent student fund then managed by our teacher Prof Aliyu Dauda (I wonder if that fund is still functioning, or even if the learned elder could remember). Long story short, that poor student got sustenance from that fund until he graduated. He is now doing well at a media house in Lagos.

As for the student under discussion, I assure you don’t want to hear her truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story – and as corroborated by that sympathetic but equally poor neighbour who accompanied her here the other day. Suffice it to say that she (the student) had lost her mother when she was two, and her father recently, just about the time she was writing JAMB. After he mother’s demise, she had passed through many stepmothers, and they had passed over her. When push reached shove, she was thrown over to unsympathetic maternal relatives (strange, this) in a neighbouring state. She scraped through primary and secondary school, just. As none of her siblings ever went beyond secondary school, they didn’t like it, and her! (Long story short here, I have asked her to document her sorry life, kawai!)

One thing about this Column is that it loves a good story. Sometimes we are asked of authenticity or source or reference, and I would say I am an academic and a journalist and should the importance of source – but I do love lessons learnt from stories with or without sources. Like the following story currently making the rounds in cyberspace, which further illustrates my “obsession” with sadaqa, and lifting the gloom off the gloomy. I hope it will touch someone to do something.

“I once had a dream where I saw a group of men (who had since died) walking very happily, and behind them was an old man following on very sadly. I approached this old man and asked him about his state. He replied: ‘As for these people walking happily in front of me, they have their family members who are giving out sadaqa on their behalf. But for me, there is no one doing so.’ I asked him: ‘Don’t you have anyone who can take out sadaqa on your behalf?’ The old man replied: ‘Yes I do have a son who makes a living by washing clothes along the river.’

“As soon as I awoke from my dream, I went to the river and saw the son of the deceased washing clothes by the rocks and he was saying ‘Dheeq! Dheeq!’ (meaning Hardship! Hardship!) ‘What does this mean?’ I asked him. He replied: ‘The sustenance for me and my family is very little, it’s not enough.’ I said to him: ‘Give sadaqa on behalf of your deceased father even if it may be a little amount.’ He replied: ‘I cannot afford to give anything from the provision of this world!’ I said to him: ‘Give something, anything, even if it is very little or simple!’ The young boy was now angry. He took three handfuls of water from the river and poured it by the side of the river and said: ‘This is all the goodness I have to give out, nothing more.’

“On the next night, I saw the old man in my dream again, but this time he was happy and smiling. I asked him about what made him happy. He said: ‘The little water that my son gave out on my behalf has greatly benefitted me and has totally removed my grief, and I am hopeful that Allah (exalted be His Name) will increase his sustenance.’ I replied: ‘Surely the water that he gave out was neither a precious thing nor was it even enough to quench the thirst of a thirsty man, then how could it have benefitted you?’

The old man replied: ‘When my son threw the water, there was a small fish by the side of the river taking its last breaths. As soon as the splashes of water reached it, it regained its strength and used the water to make its way back into the river, and because of this act of goodness that my son performed, Allah (exalted be His Name) has been generous to me and I am hopeful Allah (exalted be His Name) would also grant him plenty of good in both worlds!’

“Months passed, and I saw this young man again. He had now become one of the richest people! So do not be ashamed of giving little charity. Giving little is better than withholding.”