Kaduna (Nigeria) (AFP)

Wearing sunglasses on her head, Yahaya Makaho sings a song from her new album in a recording studio in the city of Kaduna in northern Nigeria.

Blind since childhood, the singer who spent many years begging on the streets did not let his disability destroy his dreams: at 37, he became a star.

For the last four years, his songs and video clips have been very popular among the more than 80 million people who speak Hausa in Nigeria and beyond in West Africa.

"I see myself as a superstar who broke the spell associated with physical disabilities," Yahaya Makaho told AFP.

"I twisted my neck in the clichés that when you're blind, your only perspective is to take a bowl and go begging alms in the street."

Life can be difficult in northern Nigeria, where poverty and unemployment rates are extremely high - and opportunities for blind people generally very limited.

Makaho - a nickname that means "blind man" in Hausa - had to go a long way to record his 370 singles and three albums.

He lost his sight because of measles when he was three years old. Driven from his rural village, the boy is sent to an Islamic school far from his family.

There, he is made to understand that begging is his best chance of getting out of it. The odd jobs in which he embarked did not give much.

"It hurt to spend my time asking people for money, begging kills the spirit, so I decided to become a singer," he says. "I did not know that I had a talent for the song, I just wanted to make sense of my life and the idea of ​​becoming a singer appeared to me."

- 'Not like the others' -

His rise was not really dazzling after that. Discriminated and mocked, Makaho was almost discouraged, until the day when a wealthy admirer notices and decides to pay the cost of recording a song. 2016 marks the beginning of its success.

The singer builds himself a notoriety by evoking the problems of the daily life. In his soft voice, he speaks to his audience through words denouncing evils such as begging, drug addiction and corruption.

"Yahaya Makaho is not a singer like the others," decrypts Ahmad Bello, music critic and linguist at Bayero University in Kano (north).

"People love her songs not only for the rhythms, but especially for the messages they carry that deal with burning social issues."

His inclination to tackle sensitive topics has already caused him problems.

Makaho shocked members of the blind community in northern Nigeria in two of his singles, which criticized the widespread practice of street begging - often their only way to make money.

"They put me aside for exposing the evils of begging in my two songs and called me an enemy," he says.

But thanks to its success, Makaho has created a foundation that offers classes, provides uniforms and books in Braille to enable young people with disabilities to learn.

He can finally offer a comfortable life to his family through the song. He prides himself on having made his pilgrimage to Mecca and now hopes to build his own recording studio.

"I admire him and I really like his songs," said Hamisu Mohammed, who lives in a shelter for the blind in Kaduna.

"Every time I hear Yahaya on the radio, I feel proud, he is one of us."

© 2019 AFP