‎My wife, Mrs. Mary Maku, with whom I have come to hold this thanksgiving is also filled with special gratitude to God today.

The various biblical text read by the priest sums up the reason why we are here.But I will add that Psalm 113 is of special significance to me in addition to what our priest has already told you. If you look at Psalm 113 you will see that King David was expressing to God his heartfelt gratitude for how God took him from behind; from tending his father’s sheep in the bush, over and above his strong, well groomed elder brothers and made him King of Israel. Now as I stand before you here, the summary of my life is that I am here because of God’s grace and mercy.

For those who know my little village by the hills, Wakama, Akun Development Area of Nasarawa State‎, if you go there, what it will remind you of will be what was said in the Bible that Bethlehem was the least of the cities of Judah and what good could ever come out of Nazareth.‎ So God can go to the most unlikely places and raise people from the dust and place them at the rulership of their communities and their nations. That is exactly what God has done for me.

Humble begining

My late parents didn’t go to school. They were peasant farmers; and when I was born, there was no modern facility in my village. My mother didn’t go to the maternity because there was no hospital around. And she told me that on the day I was born my father was the birth attendant, so, he took my delivery. It was not midwives and nurses that received me at birth. This is really a very interesting story. That is the way I came into the world. Indeed I don’t know my birthday because it was not recorded, so every day is my birthday, maybe it was today I don’t know but everyday is my birthday.

In our time, our people did not go to school. There was a catholic school at Alushi, St Michael’s Primary School, here but my community refused to go to school because we were very deep in culture. So I started life worshipping as all the traditionalists in my community were. Then some times at the beginning of the civil war, a priest from this church convinced the village head, he told him, ‘look we want to start a school in your village but you people don’t come to school, can you please go house to house and get maybe one child per house so that we can start a catholic school in your compound?’ So the village head went from compound to compound himself because he knew if he didn’t, nobody would agree, forcing each household to release a child to go to school.

Conscription into school

When he came to our compound, there was a big drama. My father said it will be my younger brother that will go to school. So I was very happy because they said then that they use to beat children in school, so anyone sent to school then was like punishment. I was very excited that I was not the one, so I went behind the compound rejoicing. Then some twist of fate took place, my step mother refused. She was begged for more than 30 minutes she said no that her last child would not go to school. Because my elder brother, Alhaji Usman Sule had already been forced to go to school earlier on in the 1940s, she felt that this last child will stay with her. So my father said I am the only son from my mother’s side so if I go to school, who will take care of my mother on the farm. There was stalemate and every opportunity to convince my step mother to allow my younger brother go to school failed. So the village head said look, if his younger brother’s case is impossible can we call his mother and plead if she will allow him to go to school. They called my mother and she said yes. That is how I went to school, by substitution.