Yesterday at the conference of Student Exchange Program Commissioners of Northern Nigeria, His Excellency, the Governor of Kano State was represented by His Deputy, His Excellency, Alhaji Nasir Yusuf Gawuna.
Malam
I never knew that the Deputy Governor, a biochemist, was one of my biology students way back in the 1980s at Usumanu Danfodio University, Sokoto until he stood up to address us. Yesterday, from the respect he accorded me, I really felt like there is not a better profession than teaching. From then, I ceased to be Dr. Tilde. He continued referring to me as Malam, Malam… That is the title from my Sokoto students, while those in Bauchi—who came to know me when I was much older—all refer to me as Uncle.
Our teachers, when we meet them, have a way of returning us to those old days when our destiny was literally in their hands. Those who put in their best to educate us, no matter how strict they were, earn our respect forever so long as they did not manifest the wickedness which some lecturers are associated with today. Whenever we meet them, we become once more students in their teens and genuflect in gratitude and respect for the role they played in shaping our destiny. It was the same feeling by Late General Murtala and Gowon before their teacher, our late father, Mr. Sunday Awoniyi. I felt the same way when I received my headmaster in my office two weeks ago.
As we were seeing His Excellency off yesterday, a Commissioner in his entourage came and whispered into my ear: “I was also your student at Sokoto.” Yeah. There were many students from Kano, I remember. Kano has been serious about education for long. Sokoto was not too far.
Advice
Whenever you have the opportunity of being a teacher, I urge you to put in your best, regardless of your condition of service. It will shock my readers to know that when I was teaching the Deputy Governor, I could not afford a bottle of Coke at the staff common room and I had no accommodation but a mat in the parlour of a kind friend—Auwalu Umar Argungu. But that never affected the passion with which I taught. I was punctual and demanded from my student’s punctuality too. I was strict on them in the class but lenient in marking their scripts to the extent that an external examiner from Ibadan in 1987 drew my attention to scoring some as high as 85%. I have not changed one bit to date. In the last semester, in my Crop Ecology course at ATBU, nine of the fifty students got A’s, one of them scoring 86%. I wrote the score without blinking. Three failed, though.
Never be among those who boast before their students on their first meeting that half of them will carry over the course. Please don’t. You will meet them one day in life and they will only remember you as “that wicked person.”
Thank you, Y. E
I thank His Excellency for the recognition yesterday. It was certainly the best way to pay back a teacher. Thank you, Your Excellency.
Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Bauchi
6 June 2021
