Friday 29th July 2016 marks the day the Gombe State Ministry of Education paid a courtesy and thank you visit to the pioneer Vice Chancellor, Gombe State University, Professor Abdullahi Mahadi, CON. The team, led by the Hon. Commissioner as represented by her Permanent Secretary the erudite Alhaji Umar Bappa (Wamban Gombe) was specifically in his office at the School of Post-Graduate Studies of the university to express the Ministry’s gratitude for his foundation’s intervention work in the area of conservation and environmental beautification in public schools across the state. The team learnt that no less than three thousand (3,000) seedlings were planted, most of which have been nurtured to maturity, thereby adding to a serene environment for teaching-learning process.
Professor Mahadi came to Gombe in 2004 to nurse the then newly established Gombe State University after being prevailed upon by the then administration. His performance, backed by a very versatile and cooperative management team, saw to his being re-appointed for another five-year term that came to an end in 2014. Luckily for the university, it got another management team that is building on what he did.
The Professor of History and Fellow of the Horticultural Society of Nigeria brought along with him, the Abdullahi Mahadi Foundation, a non-profit making organization that aims at fighting desertification and providing assistance to indigent and the physically-challenged students for their educational pursuits, I believe among many other aims.
In the area of fighting desertification, the Foundation took the initial step of commissioning a two-man team to find out how much of trees were being felled in the name of firewood within the forests of Gombe State. This came up as a result of the chairman of the Foundation, Prof. Abdullahi Mahadi, witnessing a large number of pick-up vans overloaded with firewood driving into Gombe every morning of the week!
Naturally, the first beneficiary of the Foundation’s project in Gombe is the University. Its site was the former Teachers’ College Gombe, which accommodated other government institutions with the creation of the state in 1996, the last of which was the Police Mobile Unit/Force. Thus, in order to have structures that tally with the needs/requirements of a befitting university, there were restructurings, renovations and demolitions of old buildings, alongside new structures being put in place. It was at this early stage that the Foundation also began planning for the University’s environmental conservation and beautification.
It began with uprooting trees that have either outlived their usefulness or had no use in the first place. Old buildings were also demolished to pave way for professionally planned plantations, the first of which is the date-palm plantation. Over five hundred seedlings were planted by no less a professional than Professor Misari of the Institute of Agricultural Research, ABU Zaria. It is now a site to behold, and the plantation’s fruits are reaped year-in-year-out.
Other varieties of fruit- and non fruit-bearing trees replaced the uprooted trees. All have been nurtured to maturity, thereby making the University environment weather-friendly and very conducive for teaching, learning and research activities.
This environmental conservation and beautification of the Foundation has, as stated earlier, been extended to the wider environment. It is on-going across the state. Apart from planting trees in the public schools, the Abdullahi Mahadi Foundation also develops orchards and market gardens for the benefit of both staff and students. The orchard at Vocational Training Centre Hina in Yamaltu-Deba Local Government stands out as one of the best. Additionally, it contributes financially for watering where it understood water is difficult to come by. This was attested to by the Principal of Government Girls Science Technical College Amada.
The Foundation’s tree planting campaign transcends schools; it is in other institutions, worship centres and local communities. The Juma’at mosque of the Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe, the Izala Eid praying ground in kumo, the ECWA Goodnews Gombe, the Doho, Daban Fulani and Tula communities are clear examples. While informing the visiting team that there are a host of other requests for the Foundation’s interventions in the area of tree plantings, Professor Mahadi says it only intervenes where it gets an undertaking to nurture the plants to growth.
With regards to Abdullahi Mahadi Foundation’s scholarship award to indigent and physically-challenged students, it is worth stating that it has made a very strong positive impact in moulding the life of such beneficiaries.
This writer was opportune to discuss with the chairman, Gombe State chapter of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPwD), Hon. Umaru Ali Goro while on a monitoring visit of a USAID/ECR-run Centre for the Physically Challenged IDP class in Gombe recently. He said with the intervention of the Abdullahi Mahadi Foundation towards the education of the disabled, the Association now has about 40 graduates, 30 of which courtesy of the Foundation. One of them, a visually- impaired Ishiyaku Adamu, now holds a Master Degree in Political Science from Britain, and a lecturer at his Alma Mater the Gombe State University. He is also the current Chairman, National Association of the Blind.
He therefore posited that if there were few more individuals, organizations or foundations that can match what the Abdullahi Mahadi Foundation is doing to the physically-challenged in terms of their educational pursuits, there would have been a drastic drop in street begging by this class of people.
One other magnificent project of the Foundation in the field of scholarship is the International Institute of Islamic Research and Development situated in the premises of the Gombe State University. Though only meant for post-graduate studies, it aims at modern development through Islamic research. In summary, Gombe State (both the government and the populace) continues to reap from this foundation, and it is indeed heartwarming.
Pindiga wrote in from Ministry of Education, Gombe State.
