‘Solomon Lar, a quiet schoolboy who grew into an impactful gentleman politician’
Chief Solomon Lar, a former governor who remained famous and commanded wide acclaim in and out of a string of other offices till he passed on last Wednesday started as a ‘quiet school boy’ who grew into Nigeria’s rancorous politics and succeeded largely in calming it, according to many who knew him closely
Much has been said about the Plateau State governor between 1979 and 1983 and founding national chairman of Peoples the Democratic Party (PDP), the late Chief Solomon Lar. Many have pictured him as being a gentleman with a load of humanity, but much of the talk comes from people who knew him only too little. One man who has known him from when he was only a schoolboy is his school mate from primary through secondary schools, Rev Selcan Miner.
SOLOMON LAR WAS A QUIET SCHOOL BOY; I WAS SURPRISED WHEN HE JOINED POLITICS – Rev Miner
“We went to school together,” Rev Miner told Sunday Trust yesterday, expatiating, “We attended the same primary school and then went to Gindiri Teachers College together. He was a quiet boy. And he grew into a quiet gentleman. I joined government when we finished school and he got into politics. Knowing his background, I was surprised that he turned to politics. I asked myself, ‘How could such a person be a politician?’ It was a question to which I had no answer at the time.”
Miner, who is currently the chairman of Tarok Elders Forum, said his answer came when the late Solomon Lar got into politics and showed that he could actually afford to be different from the pack. “As it turned out, he was a politician with a difference,” Miner said, explaining, “He was the type who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was one person who would hit you if he must, but who would take steps to see that you are not hurt unduly. But, amidst all that softness, he made his mark. He had a knack for politics that stood him out.”
A member of the Lar family, his nephew, Gideon Lar, said his uncle played politics with humane touch because he saw himself as a representative of his people to whom he was indebted. Gideon Lar said, “Baba was my uncle but, the way he treated me, nobody who wasn’t close to the family would know that I was only his nephew. Even beyond his immediate and extended family, he was a father to all. He was always saying that his life depended on the people that had even the remotest connection to him. He said he was living for the world around him.”
Gideon emphasised that Solomon Lar was forever conscious that he did not make himself, that
his life depended on the people who had made him what he was. Gideon added, “I think that with such a mindset, it was easy for him to live a life of humility and a life that always sought the public good. He said it was by the people and for the people that he became a member of parliament, and then governor of Plateau State. He would say that there was no public position he occupied outside public support, that he always discharged the tasks of such offices in the consciousness of what good could get to the people, because he owed whatever he became to the people. He repeatedly acclaimed that his cause was to emancipate the people, and I think he put it into practice because he got close to having the word ‘emancipator’ made part of his name. It is the word that sympathisers have repeatedly used to describe him since his passing on.”
BABA STARTED GROOMING ME POLITICALLY WHEN I WAS ONLY 21 – Pauline Tallen
Former minister and immediate past deputy governor of Plateau State, Dame Pauline Tallen said Solomon Lar took deliberate steps to groom her into politics when she was just 21 and newly married. Tallen, who has been spending much time with the Lar family since the late sage passed on, spoke to Sunday Trust: “Personally, I’ve lost a father and mentor. I will miss his counsel; I will miss his words of wisdom.”
Reflecting on her political history as it relates to the late Solomon Lar, she said: “It happened shortly after my marriage in 1978 when he was a very close political associate of my husband and they were going for the first meeting that gave birth to NPP (the defunct Nigeria Peoples Party under which Solomon Lar won election and governed Plateau State from 1979 to 1983). This was shortly after my marriage and when Waziri Ibrahim invited them to Lagos.
I was just a young woman who was not yet into politics; but he (Solomon Lar) specifically asked my husband to come with me to the meeting. He said he had seen potentials in me and wished to groom me. I attended that meeting as the only woman, and a young one at that. After the meeting, he said, ‘My daughter, we are baptising you into politics’. He blessed me and said, ‘You are going to go places in politics’. I believe it is the blessings he gave me at that meeting in 1978 that has followed me to this day.”
Pauline Tallen, who has actually gone places, losing gallantly to Governor Jonah Jang at the 2011 governorship election which they both stood for, said she was with Solomon Lar again when the ban on politics was lifted in 1978 and they became founding members of the PDP as he became founding national chairman. “Since then, he had always been a father who stood by me; I can’t forget the fatherly role he has played in my life and how he mentored me into politics,” she said .
Tallen said she had the privilege of being with Solomon Lar in what has now become his final trip abroad: “Incidentally, the day he travelled last, we travelled together on the same plane and we sat next to each other with his wife. This was 11th of July, three months ago. I stopped in London and we bid farewell. I didn’t know I would never see him alive again. I will live to remember him. May God give him eternal rest.”
HE PLACED HIS HANDS
He repeatedly acclaimed that his cause was to emancipate the people, and I think he put it into practice because he got close to having the word ‘emancipator’ made
part of his name
ON MY HEAD AND BLESSED ME. I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS HIS WAY OF SAYING BYE-BYE – Sen Victor Lar
The senator representing Plateau South Senatorial Zone, the late Solomon Lar’s senatorial zone of birth, has the same surname as Chief Solomon Lar. He is Victor Lar, the senator who was taken by many to be the biological son of the late Lar for sharing same birthplace and name. But Victor Lar, who addressed newsmen at the late Lar’s Jos residence yesterday, said ‘Baba’, as Solomon Lar was fondly addressed, was actually his father.
“I was a son to Baba; he was my leader and my mentor, my role model,” Victor Lar said. He spoke of a personal encounter with Baba the memory of which he said would remain with him. He recalled, “Baba came back to Nigeria and spent about two weeks, I think in August. He led the Middle Belt team to see the president and came home to prepare to go back for his check-up. On the eve of his departure, I went to him. He said, ‘My son, God will bless you. You found time to come and greet me.’ He made me to kneel down and with his two hands on my head, and he blessed me. I didn’t know it was his own way of telling me bye-bye. I will never forget that.”
Victor Lar said Solomon Lar was ‘a quintessential politician, adept at forging alliances that deliver’ and who would be sourly missed. “We will miss him, but there will be a replacement,” the senator enthused, adding, “Nature abhors a vacuum. When we lost JS Tarkar, nature brought up Solomon Lar. There is no doubt that nature will produce another leader.”
‘WE OWE OUR EDUCATION TO HIM’
One young man, Gabriel Naanma, says about the late Solomon Lar in one of the two condolence registers opened at the Lar’s residence in Jos: “Your legacies are enduring because my generation is a beneficiary of your educational development in Plateau State in the 1980s.”
Another individual who benefitted from Solomon Lar’s exploits for education while he was governor, is Christopher Bello, a top civil servant and currently the interim administrator of Langtang South Local Government Area of Plateau State. Mr Bello said in a brief interview with Sunday Trust: “I befitted from his scholarship. From the time he became governor up to when he left, he was paying scholarship. As a student, I wasn’t paying money. He was paying the money through the scholarship his government was giving.”
It was evident in the way many visitors conducted their visit around his expansive Jos residence that the late Chief Solomon Lar touched the lives of many. As you sit somewhere in the compound, you see people walk in, many of who have about them an air of unfamiliarity that tells you they came to the house, not because they are so close to the family or even have enough acquaintance with the family to be recognised or received by any member of the family. You could see that such people just come in because of the goodwill for the man and as a form of last respect for a man whose life impacted on them in some way.
Those who know enough of the impact of the life of the late ‘political titan’, as a visitor to the house would describe him, say that though they mourn his death, they are consoled that the man ‘lived well’.