In a narrow dirt lane where children scamper and play, Garba
Buzu’s rubber sandals slap the ground as he walks. His black prayer beads
dangle and swing in his right hand. His shoulders are bent, and his body rolls
like a ship with every pace along the alleys of this northern Nigerian city.
The children freeze shyly when he walks by. Mothers throw themselves to the
ground and bow low. Old men clap their hands together, faces creased with joy. Not that he doesn’t have his own responsibilities: He has
four wives, 25 children and more than 1,000 relations and hangers-on who live
in his compound.
“It’s by providence,” he says. “I cannot say I will allow a
person to go away empty-handed, without some little satisfaction of the needs
they came for. I never lack in giving something that they need. Widows,
orphans, all kind of people come to me.”
Buzu is pious, humble and strict. Born in neighboring Niger,
he moved to Maiduguri, a center of religious learning, as a young man 37 years
ago to teach Arabic and the Koran. He shared a shabby room as a tenant. But as
his following grew, people made donations in return for his prayers. He built a
house for himself, and later added rooms and built more houses for his students
and many relations. From there, it grew.
“I divided the property I used to buy into two parts, and I
still do. One half, I build houses and give to under-privileged people. The
other half, I buy and sell for profit.
“It started gradually, and it’s still expanding.”
His house is a down-at-the-heels maze of compounds, with
worn dusty rugs, peeling ceilings and a frightening tangle of electrical wires
instead of a fuse box. The place has an ancient feel to it. In one courtyard,
his wives and children sit quietly. In another, men unload bags of wheat and
rice, ready to be handed out. Every Friday, a camel is led in to be slaughtered
and the meat distributed. He runs an informal Islamic school, where men and
boys pray and write out the Koran in elegant ink calligraphy on yellow
parchment. For much of the day, he receives visitors on a small elevated
platform on his airy rooftop, surrounded by broken down couches, some with no
legs, others with the insides spilling out. Several of them are occupied by
sleepy young men, prayer beads dangling. Two shifts come morning and evening to
recite the Koran, in musical chants.
An elderly man with a walking stick, white flowing garments
and a beard staggers up the two flights. He has come nearly 200 miles, a
six-hour drive, from Gombe in Adamawa state, traversing dangerous areas to see
the charitable man. Buzu prays with him and offers a donation.
“You should spend this judiciously. Buy things you want,
especially kola nuts,” he says, referring to a large bitter nut that contains
caffeine and is seen as sacred in northern Nigeria.
Parked in Buzu’s compound are 13 battered, dusty cars, a
tractor and a motorized rickshaw that look as if they haven’t been driven in
years. When a well-heeled visitor tells Buzu he’d like one of the cars, Buzu
smiles and responds, “That won’t be a problem.”
All the time, his prayer beads swing. Charity is mandated in
Islam as an act of purification. And in northern Nigeria, well-off men often
support large extended families who have little means of their own. But few men
give away as much as Buzu does.
“Whenever I give things out, I always receive more blessings,”
he says. “This has kept me going. When I do such things, I feel very happy.”
Ibrahim Ahmadu, 42, never asked for help. But 22 years ago,
Buzu gave him a newly built shop rent-free in a city where rents rise so fast
that shops often fail.
“It was a huge surprise,” says Ahmadu, a father of three,
perched on a chair in his barber’s shop, surrounded by clippings of hair. “He
made me become self-reliant by working hard to be my own man.”
Despite his popularity, Buzu does have enemies. Four years
ago, the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram started threatening the
neighborhood. The militants warned Ahmadu to close his barber’s shop. One
morning, two gunmen sped up on a motorcycle as Buzu was crossing his compound
and fired six shots at him, but missed. Their motive is not clear.
“I think they wanted to kill me so my people would suffer
and be left in deplorable conditions,” says Buzu. “Then they might turn to Boko
Haram.”
Inside the compounds where the people live, clothing is
strung across narrow alleys; children skip ropes made of woven plastic bags,
and women fry dough. Some women have small tailoring businesses, and others
embroider men’s hats to sell. Some grind grain to make bread that will be given
out to people. Yagara Hamidu, 21, a heavily pregnant refugee from Monguno,
north of Maiduguri, stands in the doorway of her small home. She fled the town
last year when Boko Haram attacked, killing her brother and grandfather. When
she arrived in Maiduguri with her husband, they heard about Buzu.
“People were heaping blessings on him, and they were saying
he is giving out houses.”
Buzu put the couple up in his home for a week, then offered
them the house she is standing in. In a city with millions of refugees, thousands
of them living in the open, she says, “I have peace of mind and a roof over my
head.”
All shades of people come to Buzu, “rich and poor, young and
old, men and women,” says Ismail Adamu, 60, his deputy and longest associate.
“The needy are helped by him, but the wealthy come to find
solutions to their problems. They give him money, and this is used to build
houses and give out food. He never keeps it for himself.”
A teenage girl enters and genuflects timidly. Buzu asks the
nervous girl who she is.
“My father said I should come. I am your granddaughter,” she
says.
He sends her to the women’s quarters downstairs, gaining
another dependent, just like that.
Courtesy: LATimes
