“My father knew I was a taxi driver,” he said, “he knew everything about me just as I knew everything about him. He was not only my father, but a good friend.”
By Jeffrey Agbo
Sagir Balarabe Musa, son of the late governor of Kaduna State, Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, has revealed he was a taxi driver in Lagos State at the time his father governed Kaduna.
Sagir stated this in a chat with PUNCH on Friday in Kaduna.
He noted that being independent was one of the values instilled in him by his father who died on November 11, 2020.
Sagir 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.
He also recounted how he was a frequent visitor to the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo’s shrine in Lagos.
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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, 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.”
