Ahmadu Shehu: The nomad turned Ph.D.

This week, I write to celebrate my friend and brother, Ahmadu Shehu, on the successful completion of his Ph.D. from Poland’s University of Warsaw. I know that I cannot do enough expressive and descriptive justice to the direct and indirect emotional satisfactions and pride that I derive from Ahmadu’s achievements. Ahmadu says he is proud to associate with me and he always praises me to high heavens, although I think his achievements can only be left to my imaginations. And it is only fitting to say that we hitched on the same ride because we share a lot of things in common— things about our lives and choices, our freedoms and our happiness.

I first met Ahmadu on the social media when our paths crossed in public commentary on issues about Nigeria. Of course, we shared several respectable mutual friends which in a sense did not make him appear to me as a stranger at the instance of our meeting. But there was more to him than being a friend with whom I shared mutual friends. Momentarily, we got talking on the phone and it was immediately apparent to both of us that we had similarities that defined our set characters—in terms of the totality of our attitudes, our interests, our emotional responses, our social inclinations and ambitions, plus the many individual roles that we endure over our life histories. While to some people who know Ahmadu, he may come across as hard to relate with, however, to me, he harbours a real and often engaging personality that makes him very socially likeable. For example, both I and Ahmadu are uncomfortable with conformist and conventional perspectives on many issues and both of us do not mind being thoroughgoing contrarians on opinions and/or practices, dimensions and/or implications, etc., to the extent that we critically burst popular approvals.

But then again, I must confess that each time Ahmadu commends me highly, I become both thrilled and troubled—troubled that he may find me out to be a superficial thinker and analyst unlike him; and in whose analysis I found a unique intellectual whose advice I now take seriously. Having constructed and sustained friendship over the distance, I finally got to meet Ahmadu sometime last year in Abuja, when I returned to Nigeria upon the completion of my studies in the United Kingdom. But meeting him in person did not feel particularly distinct as he exuded an exceptional and infectious spirit both virtually and in reality. In no time, we became even closer and did so many amazing things together that are too numerous to mention. I later introduced him to my parents and family—marking the commencement of a family relationship greased entirely by technology.

Although I congratulated Ahmadu over his recent achievement, nonetheless, I presumed that it is noteworthy to publicly celebrate him for basically two reasons—first, it is important that young and exemplary scholar-intellectuals like him be celebrated to serve as an inspiration to other budding scholars; and second, because in a sense, Ahmadu’s educational trajectory is itself fascinating and inspiring, it thus, bespeaks the idea that with tenacity and perseverance, nothing may be impressively too great to achieve.

Ahmadu attended a nomadic primary school in his native Mamukan village of Jada in Adamawa State. And unlike the rest of us, he was not opportune to proceed to secondary school upon completion of primary education. It was much later that he was selected to participate in a pre-service teacher training program under the UK Department for International Development (DFID). At the end of that program, he earned the Teachers’ Grade II Certificate which gave him an opportunity to proceed to the Federal College of Education, Yola, for a Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE). Upon completion of the NCE, he was admitted to the University of Maiduguri where he majored in Linguistics (Fulfulde) earning a First-Class Honours degree. He was then employed as a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Nigerian Languages, Bayero University Kano. He then won a competitive scholarship to the University of Malaya, Malaysia, where he earned a Masters’ degree in Linguistics. In 2017, he won two foreign scholarships for a Ph.D. in the United States and Poland. He chose the latter option because he did not feel comfortable with doctoral programs in the United States whose durations are relatively longer. Ahmadu completed his Ph.D. in record time of exactly two years on a program of research entitled “Multilingual lexicon of body part terms”, supervised by Professor Iwona Kraska-Szlenk.

During the period of doctoral study, Ahmadu taught linguistics in the University of Warsaw, and held two additional study fellowships in Germany. He was a Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg and the University of Cologne. Last year, he was invited as Guest Speaker in the Institute of African Studies at the University of Vienna. In spite of his commitments, Ahmadu exerts a lot of energy towards his passion for community service. He has founded, co-founded, convened, and served on many community-devoted organisations and activities—amongst them are the Stop Genocide Action Group (SGAG), Fulbe Development and Cultural Organisation (FUDECO), Organisation for Educational Development (OED), etc.

As I welcome Ahmadu to what is normally an exclusive club of very sceptical people, I believe that he will put his education and skills to professional use as he continues in being who he is while displaying an exemplary attitude toward what he is.

September 28, 2019