Why I’m passionate about education, rural women, children

I attended Sultan Bello Junior Primary School in Kaduna, which is an integrated Qu’ranic primary school, and proceeded to Shekara Boarding Pilot Primary School which was established for educating northern girls. Thereafter, I went to Queens College, Lagos. After passing out with a good result, I was admitted into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, where I read Literature. Subsequently, I went for a post graduate in Ohio in the United States, where I obtained two masters degrees in International Relations and in Education.

I will not call myself a civil servant per se because I started as a lecturer for few years before I was requested to support the establishment of the Ministry for Women Affairs; then, it was a commission. Thereafter, I was appointed the Director General of Social Development.

In 1991, when Jigawa State was created, I was appointed as one of the cabinet members of the state executive council as Commissioner for Health for a few months; August to September. Subsequently, I was moved to serve as the first Rector of the Jigawa State Polytechnic.

In 1994, I was called back to serve as Commissioner for Social Development for three years, after which I left the public sector.

Going by my background, I have an NGO, Development Coalition (DC), which works as a freelance consultant. I support rural communities in addressing issues related to health and education. In the process, I set up several women groups in rural communities and that enabled me to run programmes on maternal health, girl child education and on many other issues. We also secured a grant from USAID. This enabled us to work on rural women and children in Kazaure area of Jigawa State.

There was also this time when there was a programme by some development partners in the North and they were looking for able hands for the implementation of the project; especially among northern women. Because I am comfortable with my consultancy services, six months after serving with them, I wanted to disengage but they insisted that they still needed my services, but despite that, I continued with my NGO.

However, at the end, I resigned from their service. I continued with my consultancy services. I was a consultant with Dfid, USAID, Mc Arthur Foundation and a host of others. Essentially, the great joy of it all is working in communities.

Along the line, I took a break from work because I had a baby, until 2003 when I served as a consultant to a project called Compass, which is about education and health. I was in that project as the state team leader in Kano. I was given a free hand to pick a team