In the last five years, the name, Rashidat Bello, First Lady of Kogi State, was synonymous with charity, empowerment, skill development, capacity building, sustenance of indigent, less-privileged people, and other forms of humanitarian gestures, both within and outside the shores of Kogi State.

This attitude of Her Excellency, Kogi governor’s wife, is not a deliberate political ploy to water down some critical aspects of this administration but an innate tendency and passion for human advancement.

If not for anything but posterity, it is already in the public domain that as part of her numerous gestures, the governor’s wife has taken many indigent children out of the streets, through his back-to-school programme sustained on a yearly basis in the last five years, where items ranging from school uniforms, school bags, shoes, exercise books, text books, among others, are given out to pupils.

Very reliable sources even confirmed that in the course of her programme of removing Kogi children from the streets back to school, she placed some of them on her personal care and scholarships, especially the ones identified as gifted and highly vulnerable from poverty-ridden homes.

These kind gestures among many others of her life-touching programmes include her medical outreach programme across the state, distribution of foods and essential items to the less-privileged among cash donations and empowerment.

From inception, her tendencies to liberate not only the women folk but even men for a better society is non-translucent, as intermittently she embarked on distribution of food items, cloths, working tools to improve the conditions of ordinary Kogites and those affected by natural disasters like flood, among others.

As a product of testimony from ordinary people in Kogi state, Mrs Bello has been a rallying point for Kogites in the mobilisation of Kogi women for various activities - be it political or social and economic – that greatly assisted Kogi women in sustaining and improving their economic activities.

This is on the premise of her consistent, concerted and concrete arrangements of all her humanitarian activities that run concurrently to the admiration of many Kogites.

No doubt, many Kogites outside her consent nicknamed her the “Shock Absorber” of the administration of Gov Yahaya Bello within and outside the state.

This development justifies the saying that giving back to the society while in public office is not out of place for well-placed Nigerians like Hajiya Rashidat Bello.

As you mark additional year in life, children and many Kogites you have touched their lives one way or the other, are soaked in prayers and supplications, particularly in the holy month of Ramadan, not for anything, but longevity for you and your household.

Congratulations, Hajiya Yahaya Bello.

•Yusuf Abubakar writes from Abuja and can be reached on: yus.abubakar3@yahoo.com

Update news