Senator Sunday Marshall Katung rolled into the displaced persons’ camps in Southern Kaduna on Tuesday with four trucks packed with mattresses, blankets, mosquito nets, and dignity.
The senator, who represents Kaduna South, did not send aides.
He climbed down from the lead truck himself, sleeves rolled up, and joined young men from the community to offload the items under the scorching sun.
“These people have lost everything to terrorists and bandits,” Katung said, wiping sweat from his brow as he handed a new mattress to an elderly woman who fled Gora village last month ago.
“Government palliatives are slow or never come. I cannot sit in Abuja and watch my people sleep on bare floors with malaria mosquitoes feasting on their children.”
More than 2,000 households across Zangon Kataf, Kaura, and Kauru local government areas received direct deliveries.
In Zonkwa, mothers wept openly when they unrolled the first mosquito-treated nets many of their children had ever touched.
Katung also stormed under-equipped primary healthcare centres in Samaru Kataf, Zuturung, and Mabushi with cartons of antimalarials, delivery kits, blood pressure monitors, and antibiotics.
Nurses who had been turning away pregnant women for lack of basic supplies hugged the senator in the corridors.
“Since the December 2024 attacks on Ungwan Wakili and the Christmas Eve massacre in Gwantu, our people have been living in church buildings and uncompleted houses,” said community leader Markus Dyaks.
“Today, for the first time in a year, we feel remembered.”The senator revealed he sold personal property and diverted a large chunk of his constituency allowance to fund the intervention.
“If I cannot bring security overnight, at least I can bring sleep and medicine tonight,” he declared.
While federal and state responses continue to face delays, Katung’s trucks kept rolling until dusk, leaving behind piles of white mattresses stacked like promises kept in the red dust of Southern Kaduna.
