What strikes me most about Alhaji Tajudeen is how he has turned his influence into a tool for community building. His support for healthcare for our aged men and women simply shows a wisdom that knows that a community’s strength lies in how it treats its most vulnerable members. In some fora, many influential figures use their success to build walls around themselves, but Alhaji Taju has chosen to build bridges that connect him more deeply to his people. – Excerpt
By: Shafihi Abdulrasheed
There are people who grow up in a place and leave it behind like an old garment, and there are those who carry their community in their hearts wherever they go. Alhaji Tajudeen Ibrahim Eleku belongs to the latter—a man whose very existence seems intertwined with the soil of Adewole, whose success has become a bridge for others to cross from despair to hope.
I have known many philanthropists in my time, men and women who give with cameras flashing and speeches echoing, but Alhaji Tajudeen gives the way rain falls—naturally, quietly, and with the understanding that the earth needs water to flourish.
When I worked with my team of three through the HATAAF Foundation, facilitating school fees for vulnerable students, providing stationery to eager young minds, and settling medical bills for those who had nowhere else to turn, I saw something in his eyes that moved me deeply. It was not the look of a man seeking recognition, but the gaze of someone who understands that true wealth lies not in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.
In Adewole, the interlock roads that now connect Omodele Junction to the front of Onimajesin Compound and wind their way to his ancestral home at Eleku Compound. That of Aromaradu Junction through Abanise Hospital to Apalara starting point tell a story of a man who believes that progress should not be a privilege but a right. The path through Odi-Olowo Street that he facilitated speaks of someone who knows that development is not about grand gestures alone, but about the small connections that make life easier for ordinary people.
When I think of the solar-powered boreholes that dot our community, the electric-powered ones that hum with life, I am reminded that water is life, and that by providing it, he has given life itself.
The solar street lights that illuminate our streets—including the one at my maternal home—are like stars he has placed in our sky, turning darkness into dawn for families and children who once feared the night. I can testify to some street lights which even serve reading purposes for night Arabic class. This is leadership that does not announce itself with fanfare but reveals itself through the quiet transformation of lives and landscapes.
What strikes me most about Alhaji Tajudeen is how he has turned his influence into a tool for community building. His support for healthcare for our aged men and women simply shows a wisdom that knows that a community’s strength lies in how it treats its most vulnerable members. In some fora, many influential figures use their success to build walls around themselves, but Alhaji Taju has chosen to build bridges that connect him more deeply to his people.
The HATAAF Foundation, though quiet now, still holds potential that pulses like a heartbeat waiting to be awakened. I believe—gaskia—that with the right collaboration and vision, it could become a vehicle for even greater transformation.
There are others in our community who possess the means to make a difference, but not all possess the heart, and it is the heart that makes the difference between charity and genuine love for one’s people.
On this special day, I may your years be prosperous, not just in material wealth, but in the richness of lives touched and futures secured. May God preserve you for us, for Adewole still needs your vision, your compassion, and your commitment to the place that shaped you.
Happy birthday, Alhaji Tajudeen Ibrahim Eleku—may your light continue to shine on Adewole, and may your legacy be written not in stone, but in the lives you have transformed and the hope you have planted in the hearts of your people.
Shafihi Abdulrasheed
sharvee2@gmail.com
15.07.2025
Abuja
