What a Journey to Katsina Taught Me About Power and Peace
By Haroon Aremu
The phone rang at an hour when silence still owned the world. My chest tightened as our team lead’s voice came through—brief, deliberate, almost cryptic. We were to depart for Katsina the following morning to visit a statesman described simply as an “incorruptible minister.” No name was given; no hints were dropped. It was just enough to turn an ordinary dawn into a quiet summons.
I will admit: my first instinct was dread. In the modern Nigerian psyche, “Katsina” has become a word frequently shadowed by headlines of banditry and volatility. I had never visited the state, and that night, my sleep was fitful, haunted by the caricatures of danger depicted in the media.
By 8:00 a.m. the next day, we were on the road from Kano. As I sustained a steady stream of silent prayers, the urban sprawl thinned into vast plains, and the landscape began to open into a different kind of possibility. Cattle dotted the horizon like punctuation marks in a long, patient sentence. The air grew crisper, calmer. As the kilometers slipped by, our conversation shifted to Katsina’s natural endowments—its harmony of land and livestock, where agriculture is not merely a tradition but a quiet, rhythmic industry.
It was a stark reminder that this is the cradle of legacies; the home of leaders like Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari.
There is a narrow myth about the North—one fed by sensationalism—that reduces a complex, vibrant region to a theater of conflict. But as we drove deeper, that caricature dissolved. Villages hummed with the steady pulse of routine commerce. Traders moved with purpose. Cows, not chaos, appeared to be the true currency of the land. It struck me then, with a mix of bitterness and hope, that if even a fraction of the energy siphoned into regional insecurity were redirected into livestock farming and agri-enterprise, the returns would dwarf the “wages of fear.” The land looked ready: serene, hospitable, and profoundly investable.
We reached Katsina town by mid-morning and arrived at a modest compound. The house did not announce wealth; it offered something much rarer: restraint. There were plain gates, a tidy courtyard, and a dignity that felt organic rather than performed. The statesman was out attending a meeting on the state of the nation, so we followed his trail.
When we finally met him, there was no fanfare. He stepped out calmly, greeting us with an economy of gestures. There was no hovering entourage, no air of entitlement. In his presence, one realized that humility was not a strategy for him—it was a habit. Now in his eighties, the story of his life emerged not as a boastful résumé, but as a steady rhythm of service: schools built, places of worship supported, and scholarships granted to indigent students—all carried out far from the reach of flashing cameras.
Two lessons etched themselves into my notebook that day. First: humility is not transactional; it is cultivated. Second: leadership that endures is that which serves without spectacle.
On our return journey, I reflected on Katsina’s strange alchemy. How does a place that produces national giants also preserve such steady community rhythms? The answer was not found in policy papers, but in the gestures we witnessed: elders tending to the future with the patience of farmers; traders turning commerce into social capital; and a former minister returning to his people without armor or ego.
Agriculture and livestock are not “side notes” to development here; they are the spine. They anchor livelihoods and offer a humane alternative to desperation. When paired with entrepreneurship—value chains, processing, and finance—this countryside becomes a growth engine rather than a footnote. Yet, none of it scales without leadership that is credible and incorruptible. Trust is the fertilizer of progress; without it, nothing grows.
In a previous essay, The Transience of Power, I warned today’s leaders to learn from the restraint of the past. This visit made that warning personal. If there were a handbook for public life, it would be written in the margins of this trip: Show up, stay small, build quietly, and let the public good be its own reward. Titles fade, but service remains. True dignity is found in the way a leader returns to the people they once governed.
As the city lights of Kano reappeared, I felt changed. I hadn’t just met someone famous; I had witnessed humility in motion. We often try to make headlines with noise, but we build legacies with silence and service. For anyone seeking a blueprint for leadership, it is as plain as the dust paths of Katsina: serve the people, invest in the land, and keep your hands clean.
If you are curious about the man who inspired these reflections, search for Alhaji Abu Gidado, the “incorruptible minister.”
The rest of the story will find you.
Haroon Aremu Abiodun is an Associate Member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and can be reached via [email protected].