When my friend, Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde, recalled, in a recent post, how his admission into secondary school was delayed by several months because the admission letter languished in a post office box, I also recall that mine, too, was delayed, albeit by several weeks. I remember how my friends, Dikko Abdullahi and Bashir Shehu Ƙurami all got their admission letters and were jubilating. I thought mine wasn't forthcoming as I had lost all hope of getting it. Fortunately for me, my dad went directly to the ministry of education, Kaduna, where his friend was the staff officer and got a copy of my admission letter.
Several days after getting the admission letter, my dad took me to Kaduna and to his friend's house at Unguwar Rimi before proceeding to the school, Rimi College Kaduna. It was his friend and classmate at Elementary School, late Senator Tukur Yusuf Ajiya, (the father of my friend, Ibrahim Tukur Ajiyan Bakori) who later, together with my dad, took me to the school around 8:00 p.m. in the night. I was handed over to a form 3 student then, called Reuben Damina (I wonder where that guy is now).
Before we went to the school, my dad's friend had his male cook treat us to a dinner with chicken pepper soup. After dinner, he drove us to the school in his 504 Peugeot, which I recall was left-handed. The car had sunroof and I could see the moon as we drove through the night.
It was exactly the same year, 1973 and I had no inkling then that fate would bring us together. In 1982, Dr. Aliyu Tilde, Prof. Abubakar Kaoje and I, found ourselves at the then Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, Imo State, for our orientation program, where we were posted for NYSC. For our primary assignment, while Sheikh (Aliyu Tilde's nickname at ABU) was posted to one College of Agriculture in Umudike (now in Abia State), I served in a Community Secondary School, Umuaku-Isuochi, then under Okigwe Local Government Area. I used to visit him and spend the weekend at Umuahia, where he was accommodated. Since then, we've kept in touch from his days as a lecturer at Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto, to ABU again when he went back for his second degree etc etc...
What I found funny in his post was that while he was glad going to secondary school to escape from tending cattle and Qur'anic School, my happiness lied in the fact that I would no longer have a clean shave (ƙwal-da-kwabo/ƙwaryar molo), as promised by my dad...😃😃😃.
Our dad never allowed us to trim the hair but insisted on a clean shave, which I hated. Because he knew we didn't like it, he promised us that it would stop the day we gained admission into a secondary school. And it did.