Humility Personified: The Exit of Mal. Gausu Ahmad from BUK

Those with a deep knowledge of my biography will always remember me in the Faculty of Education’s Department of Education which I joined in July 1980 at the relatively young age of 24. With a professorship in 1997, I felt I had enough of Education: I was talking loud and saying nothing. So I shifted my research focus to media and cultural communication. I never thought it would lead to another professorship in 2012, giving an academically glamorous status of being ‘dambu mai hawa biyu’ (up till now, I don’t know exact what this epithet means!), or double professor – in Science Education and in Media and Cultural Communication. Three people were responsible for this, one from Edo State, and other two from Zaria. How did it all start?

In 1992 I had just returned from a Fulbright African Senior Research Scholar residency at the University of California, Berkely, when I was visited in my office by late Prof. Mike Egbon (from Benin), then the Head of Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University Kano. It was our first meeting and it instantly crated a deep bond of friendship between us. He wants me to work with a student of his in supervising a PhD project on Mass Communication curriculum in Nigerian universities. I was happy to oblige, especially when I learnt that the student is another highly respected colleague, now Prof. Umar Faruk Jibril, the Dean of Communication in BUK.

Thus began my first footsteps in Mass Communication. Before long I was drafted to teach Advanced Research Methods for PhD students (while still in the Department of Education). This put me in contact with virtually all the current staff of the Faculty of Communication. I felt so happy, so comfortable with them, as well as their tutors in other areas in the Department. One tutor stood out. He was Mal. Gausu Ahmad (from Zaria, if you are keeping track!).

My relationship with Mal. Gausu was incredible, and often amusing. For some reason we were both mesmerized by each other. I had followed him on his column in New Nigeria years earlier. I was fascinated by his incredible take on Bayero University in an essay he titled “Looking Beyond the Badala”, a critique of the lack of synthesis between Bayero University and its host community. That article drew my attention to Mal. Gausu and I became an avid follower. So, when Mike drafted me into supervision duties in Mass Comm, I met Gausu Ahmad for the first time. What I saw was a neoclassical Hausa gentleman. His cheerful mien reminds one of an older Uncle or a grandfather but with contemporary perspectives. For instance, Mal. Gausu is the only person I know who has commissioned a traditional barber (wanzami) to come to his office and cut his hair in molo style. No barbing salons for him! We became instantly drawn to each other.

In 2003 I was the Chairman of the defunct Center for Hausa Cultural Studies Kano, a think-tank of interfaces between media and society. We organized an international conference on Hausa films – the first of its kind in the country. Virtually all staff of Mass Communication, including of course Mal. Gausu, participated wholly in the conference. Mal. Gausu was the HOD of Mass Communication then. It was at the conference that he consolidated his relationship with me.

I was then also asked to teach course on Online Communication in the Department, introducing new ideas that departed from the straight up Mass Communication scholarship of the Department in print and broadcast media. By then I had well-established online communities on the defunct Yahoo! Groups (since 2001) which became the first gathering places for future social media citizens. So, I was excited to be asked to teach Online Communication – even more excited were junior colleagues who wanted to be part of the course.

This went on for a while with me being an adjunct member of the Mass Communication Department, a position I relish far more than my Education position in the university. In 2004, my break-out media year, I was a visiting professor at the University of Cologne, Germany. The paper was “Enter the Dragon: Shari’a, Popular Culture and Film Censorship in Northern Nigeria.” When I returned, Mal. Gausu expressed dismay that I presented a paper about events in Kano in a foreign university. He insisted that the paper must be represented in the Department of Mass Communication, which I did later in the year – thus opening up new vistas of media anthropology. To cement this position, I was able to invite Brian Larkin to come to the Department and present his book “Signal and Noise” about media anthropology in July 2008. It is the first public present of this ground-breaking book.

Unknown to me, Mal. Gausu has submitted my name to the Registrar of the University, then Mal. Sani Aminu (Zaria!) for appointment as Part-Time Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication. This was instantly approved and I was only aware of it when I got the letter in November 2005. From then on, I became part of the Mass Communication ecosystem. Not only do I have more classes, I also had more students. In fact, the number of postgraduate students I supervised in a few years in Mass Comm was far more than the entire number of students in all the 25 years I had been in Education so far.

Under his leadership of the Department a very wonderful atmosphere of camaraderie and brotherhood was fostered. His elegant, calm demeanor does not brook any disagreement with any policy because policies and decisions in the Department were collectively arrived at and implemented together.

His biggest trait, however, was his humility. He was truly a knowledge seeker. He was never shy or hesitant in asking questions about what he does not know. Our offices were always close together and in evenings after Asr prayers when the building was quiter, we spent moments exchanging ideas and concepts. He became a sort of student to me. He would ALWAYS insist on carrying my rucksack to my car. ALWAYS. He fiercely resists anyone who attempted to take the rucksack from him, insisting it is his ‘duty and honor’. I, on the other hand, always felt uncomfortable with an older person taking my rucksack to the car! But he always insisted.

From January to March 2012, I was a European Union visiting professor at the University of Warsaw. When I returned in April, and informed my Vice-Chancellor and submitted my report, the next thing I knew was that I was caught up in the whirlwind of being appointed as professor of Media and Cultural Communication, in addition to already being a professor of Science Education since 1997. I was surprised as I thought it was not done. But the Vice-Chancellor who did it, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, was another bold and innovative person. And from Zaria! After all the due process, I was eventually announced as professor of Media and Cultural Communication in January 2013, with effect from October 2012.

The icing on the cake for me was the clause that I was to move from the Department of Education to the Department of Mass Communication. After 32 years in Education and having served as HOD for nine years during the period, I was extremely happy to leave. Thanks to Mal. Gausu Ahmad, I felt more comfortable, personally, emotionally and intellectually in Mass Communication. I felt really blessed. I mean, imagine, doing research in an area I am deeply interested in and making contributions to knowledge. And currently in 2024, as a staff of the Department of Information and Media Studies, I am under the administrative leadership of Prof. Nura Ibrahim. Do I need to say it? Ok. From Zaria!

The biggest lesson I learnt from Mal. Gausu was humility and patience. He went through so many challenges in the period he was in Mass Comm, but stoically endured them and eventually triumphed.

Mal. Gausu retired at the age of 70 on 12th September 2024. He retired as a professor. But his humility and salute to scholarship will always root him in the superior ‘Malam’ category. Anyone can be a professor. But it takes a special kind of person to be appreciated and applauded as a Malam. Mal. Gausu Ahmad is truly a first class Malam, embodying all the qualities of such position.

I congratulate him on his successful and honorable retirement from the University. He was one of the few academicians who brought real-life print journalism to academia and brought out the true application of the theory of Political Economy. His doctoral thesis, “The Rise and Fall of the New Nigerian Newspaper” in 2014 and followed by publication by ABU Press in 2016 under the same title, is an excellent slice of northern Nigerian media history, as only possible from an insider. If you really want to know print media history in northern Nigeria, get the book.

I pray to Allah (SWT) to continue to endow him humility, kindness, gentleness, health and prosperity as he charts the next course of his life.

Oh, and my prayers and gratitude to Zage-zagi for being ‘iyanyen gida na’ in scholarship (but not iyayen gidan Kanawa)!