I first knew him when we met at a tertiary institution as classmates in Zaria City, in the good old days of the ‘Harmony Fashion Stores’. To be considered ‘Fashionable’, ‘Chic’ or ‘Avant-Garde’ in the 70’s and 80’s one had to be a regular at the Harmony Stores, Zaria. The town, Zaria, was the centre of learning in the North, and also the region’s headquarters of fashion. It had all the students, male and female, to make it so.

All kinds of tertiary and other places of learning were found in Zaria City, because there were the fashionables, the chics, the debonair and the dour students, to make it the centre of catering to the taste of whatever one wanted sartorially. If you wanted to make a sartorial statement about yourself, then the place to be was Harmony Stores.

It was in those days that Usman Bello, as the Kanwan Katsina was then known, and myself met at the Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology ( KCAST) in 1976 to pursue the course that would eventually lead us to sit for the Joint Admission And Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination. The KCAST was equivalent of the then Higher School Certificate, which was already abolished.

Of course, there were others who were dear to me at the college. People like Mannir Isa Batagarawa, Sanusi Gambo Rumah, Yusuf Sada Dikko, better known by his alias of ‘BOZO’, Dr. Lawal Usman Bagiwa, Tukur Ahmed Jikamshi (former Deputy Governor) and Idris Mani (the town), made my KCAST days very special. 

But Usman Bello I came to be very close to when we met in Abuja many years later. He was then the Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Customs Service, after which he became the Controller of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Command of the Service.

It was while he was at the FCT Command that he came to the ‘assistance’ of the then President, who happened to be Umaru Musa Yar’adua, and his boss, the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Alhaji AbdulLahi Inde (late). Unknown to both of them.

It happened when a colleague of mine (now dead) came to me with a press statement that a certain group in the country wanted to read to the media at the National Headquarters of its union. To address the press at whatever venue, a certain amount of money must be paid to the venue, and the intended statement must be given to an assigned committee for a number of days for a thorough review to make sure that the material was not libellous.

The colleague, knowing that I came from the same state as the President and the Comptroller of Customs Service, came to me with the statement and asked if I could reach any of the two so as to stop the certain group from reading the statement to the media. I asked him to give me a couple of days, if it was possible. He said it was okay for me to have one week to do what I could do.

After several failed attempts to see the Customs boss, I went to Usman Bello, then the Controller at the FCT Command. When he went through the statement, he remained quiet for some moments 

before he finally asked if I could meet him again with my colleague. When we went at the appointed time, Usman asked my colleague if there was any way that the press conference could be truncated for good because of its ‘damaging’ nature, and my colleague answered in the affirmative.

He gave the amount of money the group prepaid for the press conference for delivery back to it. Plus a certain amount that exchanged hands between the two, with myself as an onlooker. This is something that yours sincerely had never discussed with anyone before now. I do not know whether the President and the Comptroller of the Customs Service were told about the matter. I never asked Usman Bello the question to find out about it, anyway.

After many years when he succeeded his father as the Kanwan Katsina and the District Head of 

Ketare, in Katsina State, Usman Bello continued silently impacting positively on the lives of many people both in Katsina State and the FCT, where I was then based, but not him, anymore.

We are indeed in very hard times, when large hearted people, like the Kanwan Katsina, are needed to come to the assistance of some of their less privileged compatriots.

May God give such people the will to assist the poor in the society.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.