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Badamasi Burji @ 52 : Garlands to a Serial Entrepreneur and Uncommon Philantropist

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By Ahmad Muhammad Danyaro

History is full of testimonies, promises and antecedents that many important people across the world have been remembered for various reasons, and for becoming outstanding in human affairs, some for their simplicity, others for their generosity, many more for their compassion and still others for commendable act.

In his success story, few people erroneously tend to view it as if he employed underhand tactics to achieve them and in the process underestimate his midas touch.

The fact remains that he attained his present height through dint of hard work and unparalleled exhibition of moral discipline.

In the lives of many, birthdays are usually periods for sober reflections .The period for stocktaking. Numerous personalities with eyes on the verdict of history use such occasions to reflect on their contributions to the betterment  or otherwise of their societies .Prof Odinkalu @52: Garland for an unrepentant Human Rights Activist

For Mr Badamasi ,he would have wished that the occasion of his 52nd birthday anniversary on `15th  November 2020,  be observed silently in strict compliance with his natural humility and simplicity. But the man is not an ordinary man today as he is the Group Managing Director / CEO of First Class Group and Founder ,Badamasi Burji Foundation .

Alh. Badamasi Buruji was born on November 15, 1968, in Burji village.He is a publisher, entrepreneur, writer, journalist and a generous philanthropist.He attended Burji Central Primary School from 1973 to 1980 before proceeding to Government Technical College, Wudil from 1980 to 1985.

He worked with Forestry Division in Birniwa, now in Jigawa State, for a while.After working for the Forestry Division, he finally relocated to Kano metropolis where he joined his uncle, Alhaji Salisu Hamza Kadawa, to be part of his industrial chemical business (Nasibi Pest Control Enterprise). He served as a sales manager.

Not long after, he got back to school to study Mass Communication at Bayero University, Kano, after which  Burji attended the Institute of Alazhar (ALIYU IBN ABI Talib Kano, from 1986 to 1987 ) for religious study.

He worked with Danfodio Islamiyya School as a teacher and personal assistant to the school’s proprietor, Malam Mahmud Aliyu Mahmud from 1987 to1999.After that, he ventured into the world of business and entrepreneurship by joining Nagari General Enterprise, a leading gas and electric gas cooker distributor in Kano.He served as a chief accountant.His stellar performance propelled him to the position of the managing director.

The momentum the company gathered under Burji helped it expand to the extent that more branches were opened in different places in Kano.

The company soon expanded to trade in cosmetics, goods, services, and bookshops.

Burji, as he is popularly referred to, is an author of many books both fictional and prose; he is also the publisher of Concern magazine and one-time chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Kano branch and a senior member of Nigerian Guild of Editors.

Badamasi Burji  Foundation was established in 2015, which started with sponsorship of the establishment of special  Islamic and Western primary and secondary school in the area with about 5,212 pupils currently studying and with the gestures of free education, free uniforms,  free feeding, free books and writing materials. Living in a conducive environment with well furnished classrooms. It has sponsored 109 students 98 girls and 11 boys into different junior secondary schools.

Girl-Child Empowerment programme was also initiated with the aim of training the young girls in various skills with a view to making them become self-dependent. The initiative behind the empowerment programme is to minimize rural migration to the urban centre, job creation, self reliance and create opportunity for the community to improve the socio-economic development of the area.

The women had already been trained in different kinds of businesses which include soap making, pomade, menthol, toiletries and many more. Second batch of the empowerment programme will soon kick start.

The foundation is embarking on free plantation to go with the climate change. Which include social, communal, environmental and economic benefit to the society. In part of the world programme  of making the environment green. BBF launched  10,000 (Ten Thousand) Trees to be done by the school children, their parents and adult education centre students.

Today, the condition of public education in many states in the region is very poor. Most schools here lack qualified teachers and teaching materials, even as school buildings are alarmingly dilapidated. And corruption thrives among education managers, who would rather send their children and wards to private schools.

It is for all these reasons that Malam Badamasi Burji sacrifices to reverse the ugly trend, reducing the number of out of school children in his locality by freely providing qualitative education for men, women, and children in Burji.

This manifest in his philanthropic strides that have ensured the construction and establishment of a community school engaging five thousand, two hundred and twelve  (5,212) students.

Burji strive to become a journalist, biographer and  author, venturing into printing afterwards. Today, one of his firms is spearheading printing in Northern Nigeria, specializing in educational books for nursery and primary schools and other publications for library use. He recently opened a restaurant that serves mouth-watering traditional dishes and delicacies, offering take-out and catering services. A consummate manufacturer of packaged foods too, his products are marketed nationwide and exported to  Malaysia, Ethiopia, Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirate, the United States, and so on.

One of the Burji proposal’s is to build National open university community study centre which already has been approved to do it in his Burji community.

Mallam Badamasi Burji  is a man who has distinguished himself in the service of his beloved community,  home state of Kano and indeed, Nigeria as a whole. He is man who is active and decisive who weighs intellect against intuition, which is fair and firm in his dealings, a man who encourages cooperation rather than confrontation as he works in partnership with others. He is a man who bears all that comes his way with internal grace and humour.

By any benchmark one deploys to assess him, and in whatever clime in our firmament of the planet earth, Mallam Badamasi S.Burji, the Group Managing Director of First Class Group and Founder of Badamasi Burji Foundation , is a stunning success, a unique gift to humanity  and he deserve to be celebrated by all and sundry within the Nigerian geography  and beyond as he turned 52 years on the planet .

Danyaro wrote in from Wuse 2 Abuja and can be reached on ahmaddanyaro2017@gmail.com

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Muslim-Muslim Ticket: idea fixation pathetic, religion be excluded in politics and governance, says El-Rufai

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The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has described the possibility that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, would run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 presidential election as mere speculation.

Making a remark on Channels TV’s political show, Politics Today, he said, Nigerians’ obsession with religion – when it comes to voting – rather than competence is sad. “This fixation of Nigerians on religion instead of competence, capacity, and capability is quite sad and pathetic.”

El-Rufai said that anyone asking him questions about the controversial Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket is asking the wrong person, because, in the 2019 general election he settled for a qualified Muslim woman as a running mate and won the election in Kaduna State.

He said, “I don’t look at people from Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian angle. Most of my closest friends are Christians. It was Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Pentecostal pastor, that took me to the CPC, not President Buhari. I’m very close to Bakare. I’m very close to many Christians. I don’t think the business of governance has anything to do with religion. I think we should look for the best person for the job. A person that will get the job done and let him do that.”

He advised Nigerian journalists to keep religion out of politics and government. He said, “I don’t think we should be looking at religion. We want to develop this country. When I get into a plane, I don’t ask about the religion of the pilot. When I go to the hospital, I don’t ask for the doctor’s religion of the doctor, I just want to get well. I just want to get to my destination when in an aircraft.

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Nigerian Universities, the interference of Professional bodies, and the time bomb

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Having worked with multidisciplinary teams during my PhD at the Department of Engineering of the University of Leicester and postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Electric Power Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), I decided to experiment the acceptability of a multidisciplinary team in Engineering departments in Nigerian universities in 21st century on my return in 2015. Then, I was already due to be a Senior Lecturer in ABU since 2014. So I sent my CV and an application letter for the position of Associate Professor to the VC through the Head of Electrical Engineering Department of one of our public universities in November 2015. And I received the following not very surprising reply.
“Having perused your application documents, I found them interesting and relevant to the need of the department. However, I cannot pass your application for further processing because of the post applied for. For your information, the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nig. (COREN) has fixed the bar of an Engineering lecturer who is not registered with COREN at Lecturer I regardless of the number of his/her publications.”
The question that came to my mind was that is the regulation of engineering lecturers in universities part of the mandates of COREN? I read the reply again and he was very emphatic on my PhD and postdoctoral research experience and the relevance to his department. I was made to understand that the University has no academic staff in the area of high voltage engineering, but for them to utilize my experience in high voltage engineering, if I was actually ready to move there, I have to accept to be demoted for 4 years because COREN said so. And I can’t grow no matter my research output till I am registered with COREN. Amazing offer! It will take a complete idiot to accept such an offer. That is the reality of the compartmentalization of our university system and the destruction of the Nigerian university system and the structure by supposed professionals.
This was completely different from my experience in my two universities in Europe. Prof. Len Dissado had a first degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemistry but was a Professor of Engineering at Leicester because his research area was in Dielectrics, a topic very relevant to High Voltage Engineering. He was retained as Emeritus when I left in 2012. Dr. Steve S. Dodd had his first degree in Physics and PhD in Physics but was employed as a Senior Lecturer in Engineering (High Voltage Engineering group) because his research area was in Electrical insulation materials. He retired as a Reader in High Voltage Engineering. The HoD of the Electric Power Engineering as at the time I left the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2015 had a PhD in Physics and was a Professor of Electric Power Engineering. Universities in the rest of the world are closing gaps, while we are widening the gap. Since I could not close the gap, so we decided to have a High Voltage Laboratory in the Physics department.
In universities, we are academics and research workers. Irrespective of the field, we are employed to teach and do research. The yardstick for evaluating your performance is research output. Engineering graduates in academia are not left out. They are not employed as Engineers. Universities have their Engineers to do the engineering work. As an academic, you can be COREN registered to enable you to practice outside the university but not for the classroom and research labs in the university. I once asked a colleague some years back if as a university worker, he is an Engineer for real or a teacher and he was silent. I asked about the value of COREN registration in his teaching of Engineering courses, research output, and student project supervision and he could not give me a straight answer.
I still find it weird that COREN, a body regulating practicing engineers on the field is now setting standards for promotion in the Engineering departments of Nigerian universities. They will soon be telling Nigerian universities what to teach and what not to teach. The other councils of professionals will soon follow to set what they perceived as standards for the respective faculties or departments.
The interference of the Councils of professionals in the affairs of Nigerian universities has grown beyond setting promotion guidelines. They are now deciding the establishment of faculties and the duplication of academic departments. It does not matter the burden of running such faculties and departments on the universities. I am still wondering how they are able to twist the hands of NUC and the universities’ Senate and Governing Council to achieve all that. Not long ago, the Faculty of medicine in Nigerian public universities were converted to Colleges of Medical Sciences with 4 faculties and several departments, thanks to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
What baffled me was the fact that the Department of Biochemistry, for example, that has taught medical students the biochemistry they know since the inception of the study of medicine in Nigerian universities is suddenly no more qualified to teach medical students because the Lecturers do not have a degree in medicine. Very amazing! We now have duplicated Biochemistry departments across Nigerian universities that they called “Medical Biochemistry” in the college of medicine. The “medical biochemistry” will possibly be taught by the Medical Doctors based on what they learned from the Biochemists in life science while in medical school. Could this be a case of trading quality for ego?
We also, for example, have a medical microbiology department in the college of medicine, a microbiology
department in the faculty of life science, and a vet microbiology department in the faculty of Veterinary medicine.
The microbiologists will be able to explain to us the difference between the different versions of the microbiology.
I was in Norway in 2014 when the Norwegian couple at NTNU shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with a Professor at the University College London (UCL). I tried to check the structure of these 2 universities. The faculty of medicine at NTNU has no biochemistry department. The Department of Biotechnology and Food Sciences, a replica of the Biochemistry department, is in the faculty of natural science and they provide service to the faculty of Medicine as we had before the coming of the colleges of medicine in Nigerian universities.
How the increased number of departments helping to improve the quality of our academic output is what I can’t figure out. Rather than the duplication of service departments that will only increase the number of academic departments and won’t really add much value to the system but increased running cost, we should have created a college of life sciences and pulled the relevant faculties and departments into it.
Individualistic research is going extinct and most of the novelties of the 21st century are from interdisciplinary researches. One of the winners of the 2014 Nobel prize in medicine John O’Keefe is a neuroscientist in the Faculty of life sciences at the UCL with his degrees in Psychology. But the others, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser are both neuroscientists from the Faculty of Medicine at NTNU and received their first degree from the Department of Psychology and PhD in neurophysiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Oslo.
There is nothing more fascinating than the fusing of different ideas together to produce a unique product. That is the exploration in the 21st century. The world has left us behind in individualistic ideology and moved into multidisciplinary academics. If we must make progress in our universities, we must break our erected artificial barriers that are keeping us apart. The academics in physical sciences and engineering must come together with possibly a research centre that is into cutting-edge research that will involve research groups from all the relevant departments. Same way to bring life science and medical complex together.
I have seen graduates of mathematics that became Professors of Econometrics in Economics departments in universities in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Chemistry that became a Professor of Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Physics that became a Professor of Electric Power Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. In Nigeria, I have seen Engr (Prof) XXX boldly written on our doors in the department but not in the universities in Europe. Are we having an identity crisis?
Professional bodies that are supposed to focus on the regulation of Professionals in the field should focus on their mandate and not be given free hands to change University policies as it pleases them. If we don’t end their interference, just like the medical council, COREN could wake up one day to tell our universities that there is a need for colleges of Engineering with departments of mathematics and physics to service the college because those in Mathematics and Physics departments are not qualified to teach engineering students because they don’t have engineering degrees. Vet council, Pharmaceuticals council, builders council, architects council, Quantity surveyors council, etc, may follow. So, how are we going to handle that?
Let’s stick to the founding principles of the university. Universities have world standards. We can stick to our British standard or borrow a leaf from the world’s top universities to improve our system, instead of allowing professional bodies to manipulate us and create barriers within the university system that will further slow down the progress we are to make.
Our universities are not in it’s best form and we have to do what we have to do to improve them. We should be more preoccupied with that. We should be discussing how to reposition Nigerian universities to be able to stand up to our various challenges and not duplicate departments without facilities because some Councils of professionals said so.
Finally, to my colleagues in Electric power engineering or high voltage engineering in Nigerian universities, you are welcome to experience our High Voltage Materials Laboratory in the Department of Physics, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. We have a 400 kV DC generator and 100 kV AC source with a partial discharge measurement system to serve you. Join us to learn the physics of electric power equipment. We do not have barriers!

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Sports

Galadima Knocks Nigeria Sports Handlers Over Laziness in Talent Development,

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By Abdulgafar Oladimeji.

Former chairman, Nigeria Football Association , NFA Ibrahim Galadima(MFR) has faulted the administration, promotion and development of sports in Nigeria, noting that  the continuous  degenerating  global  status of Nigeria on the  sporting  arena could be attributed to laziness.

The outspoken sports administrator   stated that the absence of  clear  cut policies  on how  sports should be driven in Nigeria  constitutes parts of the factors that  has enrolled Nigeria on the path of total  failure.

Galadima in his remarks  on ( Thursday)at a one day workshop organized by Sports Writers Association of Nigeria, SWAN  Kano state chapter held at the conference hall of the Kano state Sports Commission with the theme “Early Warnings and Security Vigilance At Sports Events, he said “we re yet to clearly structure and drive the message clearly to say whether we   are in sports for business or  for leisure purposes.”

“our sports is going through difficult times, certainly, the Kenyans have  a clear concentration, they  have  shown clearly where they belong by dominating marathon races, recently they came to Kaduna and stamped their dominance.

“The abundant talent in Nigeria remained untapped, no age group graduation, even if you are in Chad, you are considered as a foreign based athlete, we are now so lazy in identifying talents.” Galadima lamented.

He alleged that lack of trust and confidence has  sent sponsors out of the industry, adding that potential brand sponsors are shying away from injecting their monies into  the industry for the fear of unaccountability.

 

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