Dr Sagir Balarabe Musa, son of the late governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, has said when his father governed the state, he was driving a taxi in Lagos State.
He said he was driving a taxi as part-time work when he went for the one year mandatory National Youth Corps Service programme in Ogun State in 1981.
The former governor died on November 11, 2020, in his residence in Kaduna.
Sagir, in an exclusive chat with our correspondents in Kaduna on Friday, stated that being independent was one of the values instilled in him by his father, whom he described as “my good friend.”
According to him, one of the values his late father taught him is to be independent wherever he finds himself.
He also said one of his wishes was to meet his father again because “I know just the way I am missing him, he too is also missing me there.”
Sagir also recounted how he was a frequent visitor to the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo’s shrine in Lagos.
Sagir, who served as a permanent secretary before he was retired by ex-governor Nasir El-Rufai six months before reaching the official age, noted that in order to make Fela believed that he was Balarabe Musa’s son, he took the singer to meet the then Lagos State governor, Alhaji Lateef Jakande.
When asked how he felt being a son of the late governor, he said, “How do I feel? I feel as if he was nothing. It is the same thing that I am feeling. It is people who take themselves as sons of governors that will feel otherwise. Even when my father was a governor, I was driving a taxi. I was a taxi driver in Lagos.
“When I went for my National Youth Service Corps scheme in Abeokuta, I had a very good friend from Oyo State. He was a Customs officer then. After his official office work, he would remove his uniform and come over with his taxi and ask me to escort him.
“From Abeokuta, he would travel to Ota and we would go to Agege as well as Surulere and come back. I was just observing him. He then convinced me to join him. He asked me to get my own taxi. You know, we were young then and very rascally. So, I didn’t take myself as a governor’s son or whatever.
“My father trained me not to look at myself as anything. I was as ordinary as anybody else. I went anywhere I felt like going.
“My father knew I was a taxi driver. He knew everything about me just as I knew everything about him. He was not only my father, but a good friend.”
