For retired Colonel Sani Bello, a former Nigerian Military governor of Kano state and founder of the Sani Bello Foundation, comparing Nigeria’s past to its present is both a nostalgic and sobering exercise. In this interview with ASHENEWS, he shares his views on the nation’s decline, his passion for philanthropy, and his personal journey of choosing service over extravagance.
Q: How would you compare Nigeria’s past with today?
Comparing yesterday and today, the difference is obvious, a lot of things have changed. More population, obviously more indiscipline and when I look at yesterday and today and compare the two, I sometimes regretfully say yesterday was better than today. Regretfully because I wish it was not so.
When you look at the infrastructural collapse of Nigeria, I think it is worrying. In the 1970’s, when I was an officer, I used to make Lagos from Kontagora in six hours, seven maximum. Now I can’t make Ilorin in seven hours. It’s a big change, a change moving backwards.
In those days, I could go to Minna within one hour, and 45 minutes. Now it takes me five hours to go to Minna on the road. I don’t know whether that is progress or retrogression. Yesterday, things were better. Yesterday, I could take a train from Zungeru to Kano or Maiduguri. In fact, in the 1960s when I was going for my qualifying examinations in Keffi, I took a train to Guddi, I am sure most of you never heard of it before.
Now, you can’t, there are no trains. When you look at all of these things together, some of us who saw it before start wondering what went wrong, why did we get it wrong and where did we miss the way. Every day we wake up, we say yesterday is better than today, not talking about the economy which is something different.
But when you look at every aspect of Nigerian life from my eyes, we ask ourselves, have we made progress or is it retrogression?
In those days security-wise, despite the war, I could leave Lagos by 4 pm to Kontagora and I was sure of getting here without somebody molesting me, be it a bandit or a kidnapper. My only worry was a punctured tyre which I was always ready for so when you look around now, is it the population or what? Why are we not making progress?
We are much richer now. In terms of quantum but in value we have nothing. Most Nigerians were satisfied but now there is so much of this rat race, so much dishonesty, so much people who hold responsibilities and abuse trust.
When I was in school, we used to get pocket money every week and without fail, that pocket money would come. When I was an officer in the army, I used to collect my company salary and I’ll distribute it to the soldier. Now you can’t do it. Then there were no banks, now we have many but even then it showed trust. How many would you give such now?
Q: What motivates you to help others?
I derive a lot of pleasure in helping others. All the gifts they give me such as cakes, I just receive it out of politeness not out of desire but whenever I visited the medical outreach patients, I used to really marvel at what we have done. We are touching lives and where I come from, it’s not a rich family but a very poor family.
I can see stark poverty now, the kind of which I never saw growing up. In Kontagora, the kind of poverty I see today, I have never seen it before. Two days ago, a doctor came to me with a picture of a child suffering from malnutrition. The last time I saw this kind of malnutrition was in the 70’s.
I couldn’t believe that in a place like Kontagora where we have lots of food, lots of vegetables and trees, we could survive in the bush during my days and a child could go hungry to the extent that you could see his ribs and count them, you could see his backbones and count them.
He could not lift his hands, because of hunger. I think something went wrong, there is so much poverty and because of this kind of poverty, many people cannot access hospitals even when they are sick.
And so I thought that with this kind of money, if I wanted, I could have spent millions of naira to give a party, I said why should I spend millions to give a party and most of the people I will invite are privileged people who have lot of food in their houses at the end of the day even the food I’ll bring, they will waste it. So, I said why shouldn’t I give that money to people who need my help to get better.
Q: What keeps you inspired to give back to society?
I derive a lot of pleasure from seeing people smiling. Whenever I see the smile on their faces, it gives me joy, it makes me feel like I have made my contribution to society. This society trained me, educated me free of charge and that’s why it’s my duty to make my contributions.
When some people get a lot of money, they buy a lot of cars, some marry more women while others build beautiful houses. But my interest is to serve people and look after people. I have passed the stage where my interest is to buy lots of cars and beautiful dresses. I haven’t bought a new Agbada in the last ten years because my children bought them for me.
Q: What other support does your foundation provide?
We have about 50 orphans who we take care of, we clothe them and send them to schools, we also give scholarships as well.
