If there is a best chance and time to celebrate an extraordinary mother who offers more than her time and resources in advancing the cause of women and children in Gombe state, it now. Ideally, I should not have come up with this piece until the day set aside by the United Nations for the commemoration of Mother’s Day. But I am guided by the persistent courtesies of Hajia Zaynab Jamil Gwamna by thousands of vulnerable families across Gombe state to write this.
While it is officially known that Mothers’ Day is celebrated in Nigeria in March every year, the case is quite different in Gombe state. Every blessed day is tagged and celebrated as Mothers’ Day. Year round Hajia Zaynab is honoured for being a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration to many young women in Gombe state for what she does that touches lives at all times.
It is true that whoever comes from a modest background, usually has a cherishing character. And this is what makes Zaynab Gwamna a point of reference by all and sundry. She has remained the only mother whose commitment to the plight of women and children in the state has attracted an avalanche of respect and honour among wives of notable personalities within and outside Gombe.
As a mother with a golden heart, her empathy for the common man in Gombe and humanity at large, she has stretched her hand to far and near to lend her support to individuals or communities across nooks and crannies of the state. An idea was borne out of this which further materialised into a charity foundation known as ‘Family Trust and Care Foundation’.
Part of the numerous reasons for the creation of this charity organisation is to aid women and children combat poverty, and also combat, to a large extent, social inequality. Through this foundation, Zaynab Gwamna is today changing the narrative of the situation of women and children in the Jewel in the Savannah. We have seen how several empowerment programmes were initiated with the aim of tackling the problem of women’s financial dependence on their husbands and other family members.
Through her foundation, Hajia Zaynab, the ‘Uwar Marayu’, as she is called by Gombe citizens, intervened in many aspects of the lives of the citizenry, especially orphans. She recently distributed food items and other essential learning materials across Muslim and Christian orphanage homes worth millions of naira. Counting on the successes recorded by Zaynab through this foundation in changing the lives of others would not end or be over even if I should write a book of more than a volume on them.
We often mourn the painful exit of our beloved mother, late Haj. Yelwa Goje, for the vacuum created in our beloved state by her passage, but we are very much happy that we got Zaynab as her suitable replacement in Gombe. Ma’am, time shall come when you’ll expand these your philanthropic services beyond our imagination. Surely, time shall come, and very soon!
Aishatu writes from Gombe
