Cruel fate dealt him a blow at the tender age of nine when he became an orphan with a seemingly bleak and hopeless future. His father died while he was barely a year old, to be joined in the world beyond eight years after by his mother, thus, depriving him the opportunity of attending not even an elementary school.
With the circumstances of his childhood, he grew up learning the ropes of survival the hard way, and could barely express himself in pidgin English. Even the pidgin English which he manages to speak is corrupted with heavy Fulani tone.
Tall, unassuming and dark skinned, the Kazizi, Sokoto State-born butcher is, in several ways, like his common folks scattered across the cow slaughter slabs in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), popularly referred to as abattoirs.
But unlike most of his colleagues who grapple daily with how to put food on the table at home, Alhaji Abubakar Dan-Galadima, is a butcher with a difference. He is stupendously rich; a multi-millionaire and does not make pretences about it. Yet, on a daily basis at the abattoir in Kubwa, an Abuja suburb, his hands are soaked in blood, cutting cow beef for his numerous customers. And he says until his last breathe on earth, no amount of wealth would stop him from undertaking his beloved trade.
“I am grateful to the Almighty Allah for uplifting me from rags to riches. I thank Allah for turning my life around and making me a reference point. Today, I have four houses of my own three of which are in Kubwa, Abuja . I now have a company in this business, and I have bought several vehicles including trucks, personal cars, and the Prado Jeep which I am riding presently. But I suffered and passed through hell before attaining this level”, Galadima told Daily Sun in an interview.
On this breezy evening recently, he told Daily Sun his tortuous journey in the wilderness of pains and sorrow, abandoned and dejected with no flicker of hope for assistance from any direction, a situation that compelled him to start fending for himself at the age of nine, until providence smiled at him about two decades later. However, that was not before he had traversed several villages and towns in Nigeria, Republic of Benin and Ghana, selling roasted beef (suya) and kolanuts for his masters.
“After I lost my parents at the age of nine, I stayed at Kazizi, my home town in Sokoto State for a while, but with nobody to take care of me, I moved to Yauri, also in Sokoto State. I was 10 years at that time. I stayed at Yauri for about three months selling suya, before I returned to the village. Though I had no money to buy fresh cow meat to prepare suya, there were some people such as Alhaji Sani Mai-Damezi and Alhaji Abu, who helped by giving me meat on credit and I pay them after sales”, Galadima recalled .
For about three years, he sold roasted beef at Yauri till the age of 14, when he relocated to the Republic of Benin and settled in a village known as Tashi and continued his trade for two years. Again, he was moved to Hampayou, Ghana, by one of his maternal uncles with whom he sold kolanuts for one year before heading back to Kazizi, his native home in Sokoto State, to settle down.
That, however, became another Herculean task, propelling him to begin a fresh phase of his life.
Hear him: “As an orphan with nobody to render assistance, I found it difficult settling down at Kazizi, so I traveled to Kano where I stayed for seven months before returning home. I was aged 19. On my return to Kazizi, I married my wife, Aisha, but three weeks after our marriage, I left her behind and went to Bida, Niger State to continue the struggle. I was at Bida for one year, selling suya, but later moved to Suleja, also in Niger State”.
At Suleja, he discarded selling roasted meat and started with fresh beef. Barely four months into the business, he recorded a breakthrough with the purchase of his first full cow which he slaughtered and sold at the old Suleja market. And that marked the turning point in his life. For 15 years, his business blossomed at Suleja where he had his first child, having moved his wife to join him one year after he settled down.
Now at Kubwa, an Abuja suburb where he has lived for 13 years, Galadima is known as ‘Madawaki power’, meaning deputy chief butcher in the sprawling satellite town in the FCT, and has several cows in his stock at the premises of Hamza Farms Limited. On a good day, he slaughters between two to four cows, each costing not less than N35,000, depending on the size.
In the course of his business, Galadima has acquired several vehicles in his fleet, including Iveco, Mitshibushi and Nissan trucks, as well as cars of various brands for his private use, the latest being a Prado Jeep which he bought last year. After battling for over two decades in pain and misery to conquer poverty, a disarming smile has become his trademark, and worries over his inability to attain formal education is now a thing of the past.
“Presently, my inability to attend even a primary school doesn’t affect me any longer because I started my business at the age of nine, and therefore, knows all the rudiments. I can tell you most people doing well in this business are illiterates, and it is only in Abuja that things have changed a bit. Now, most of the people here have secondary school certificate, including the four boys working for me. Although people look at butchers as common, there are so many out there who are wealthy and comfortable”, he says.
For lifting him from grass to grace, performing the holy pilgrimage to Mecca is an annual ritual of sorts to Galadima. He also sponsors not less than two persons yearly to the holy land as a mark of appreciation to God for his success. For him, hopelessness and despair are only temporary, and perseverance is the watchword.
Like Galadima, Mallam Balarabe Ango Kargi, the chairman of Butchers Association in Kubwa, is another success story in the world of butchers. But his tale is that of undulating fortune. Born into a family of butchers, Balarabe, who hails from Kaduna State, had a desire to attain formal education. But his father would have nothing to do with his dream, insisting that he must tow his line of business.
Thus, barely after enrolling into a secondary school on completion of his primary education in 1970, his father became a stumbling block and he dropped out of school. “I actually wanted to be educated, but my father said no. So, as soon as I completed my primary school and started secondary, my father stopped me and dragged me into the butcher business which he does till date”, Balarabe said in a chat with Daily Sun.
In his 37 years as a butcher, he has plied his trade in most parts of the country, starting from Kaduna, his home state, to Lagos, Suleja, Port Harcourt, Ogoja, Makurdi, Yola, and Abuja, where he presently resides. Interestingly, just as his dream of schooling was truncated by his father, Balarabe’s 27-year-old first son suffered the same fate in the hands of his grand dad.
The boy, according to him, would have been educated. But he says, “just like in my own case, when I enrolled my son in school, my father opposed the idea, and decided to take him. Initially, I refused, but he forced me to remove him from school and took the boy away. And that was how he introduced him into the butcher trade”.
However, Balarabe has no regrets for his father’s action. Perhaps by destiny and through a dint of hard work, he has built a comfortable house and changed cars. Although he admits not being poor, he would not want to be seen as a millionaire. Reason: “In this our business, sometimes, you will be rich, and sometimes, you go down. But I thank Allah for everything, because even though I may not be super rich, my son will surely become a multi-millionaire in this business and I have seen the prospects since he started in year 2000”.
Evidently, Galadima and Balarabe are just two out of several millionaire butchers who fought for decades and conquered poverty, becoming trail blazers and unsung heroes by butchering cows to wealth.