A wise man once said that the hand that gives is the hand that receives. Not because the gift returns but because the giver becomes someone else. He becomes the kind of person who can sleep at night, who can walk through the market without looking away, who can meet the eyes of the poor without shame. In this sense, giving is not sacrifice. It is self-preservation of the highest order.

Our Creator’s command in Quran 2:254: “O you who have believed, spend from that which We have provided for you before there comes a Day in which there is no exchange and no friendship and no intercession. And the disbelievers – they are the wrongdoers.

In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 9:7: says “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Similarly in Luke 6:38 for further reading.

Dr. Bala Maijama’a Wunti seems to understand this at a level that goes beyond philosophy.

Across Bauchi State, through his Wunti Alkhair Foundation and through gestures that carry only his name, he has been writing a quiet story of what wealth looks like when it remembers where it came from. Food packages reaching homes where the fast would otherwise be endured rather than enjoyed. Cash gifts arriving in hands that had forgotten the weight of something new. Textiles and relief materials spreading across Muslim communities like a blanket over cold ground.

The people with special needs are not an afterthought. They are part of the calculation from the beginning. Anyone who has ever organised anything knows that inclusion is harder than exclusion. It requires extra steps, extra thought, extra patience. Dr. Wunti includes them anyway, as if the extra trouble is not trouble at all but the whole point.

That is how you know giving has become habit rather than performance.

Now the students, 34 tertiary institutions across Bauchi State. Young people sitting in hostels and classrooms, trying to navigate a world that has moved online while they remain stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide. Assignments require data.

Research requires bandwidth. Connection requires infrastructure. Dr. Wunti installed Starling network services across all 34 campuses, free. Not subsidised. Not coming soon, it is done.

He did not wait for a delegation. Did not demand a memorandum. Did not ask for votes or loyalty or even a thank you. He simply looked at the situation, saw young people cut off from the river of modern knowledge, and decided to build a pipe. That is the difference between a politician and a statesman of the people. One gives when the asking is loud. The other gives before the asking begins.

And still the food flows. The cash flows. The textiles flow. Ramadan does not pause for infrastructure projects. Every evening, thousands across Bauchi sit down to break their fast with provisions that arrived not from government allocation but from a man who decided years ago that his resources would move rather than stagnate.

There is a saying from the Arabs: ‘Charity does not decrease wealth’. It purifies it. It removes the rust that accumulates when money sits too long in one place. The less privileged are not the only beneficiaries of giving. The giver is saved from the corruption of having too much while others have too little. Dr. Wunti seems to have learned this lesson so well that it no longer feels like a lesson. It feels like instinct.

The students now have access. They can research. They can submit. They can compete. They can sit in Bauchi and reach the world. Dr. Wunti did not ask whether they deserved it.

Did not check their grades or their family names or their political affiliations. He simply decided that being young and hungry for knowledge should not mean being locked out of the light. That is not charity. That is justice wearing the clothes of generosity.

The people with special needs now have food. Not because they could push through crowds or shout louder than others. Because someone thought about them in the quiet of planning, before the distribution began, before anyone could raise an objection. That is the difference between giving that is seen and giving that is true. True giving seeks out the faces that would otherwise remain in shadow.

Across Bauchi today, there are families who sit down to eat each evening and know exactly where the food came from. There are students who open their laptops and connect to the internet and know exactly who made it possible. There are parents of children with special needs who feel, perhaps for the first time, that their children matter to someone outside their own home. None of them were asked to vote for him. None of them were asked to sing his praise. The food just arrived. The connection just worked. The inclusion just happened.

In a country where cynicism has become the national sport, where every generous act is scanned for hidden interest, where even the purest motive must survive the acid of public suspicion, it takes something rare to break through. It takes consistency so long that it becomes its own character witness. It takes reach so wide that no one can pretend it is selective. It takes humility so deep that the giving outlasts the conversation about the giving.

Bauchi is watching. More importantly, Bauchi is receiving. And in the homes where food arrived just in time, in the hostels where students are suddenly connected to the world’s knowledge, in the quiet corners where people with special needs have been seen and remembered, a verdict is forming. It is not spoken in press statements. It is whispered in prayers. It is written in the silence of people eating, studying, living, because one man decided that his wealth would not be a fortress but simply to obey the Commandments of God, particularly in Charity Sakat and Zadaqah.

Dr. Bala Maijama’a Wunti has chosen his hand. And Bauchi, blessed Bauchi, rises each day to give him thanks in the only currency that matters: prayers whispered at sunset, when the fast ends and the heart is soft.

• Usman Abdullahi Koli, [email protected]