Paul Clough – Exit of a great teacher

Iwas foraging in the cyberspace, as is the habit nowadays, when I stumbled on the news of the death of Paul Clough who had taught my set of 1972/73 in the School of Basic Studies (SBS), Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Samaru, Zaria. An item in the Times of Malta announced: ‘Anthropologist and academic, Paul Clough died suddenly on Saturday shocking the Malta’s academic community. Professor Paul Clough who graduated from Oxford University and lectured at the University of Malta was an expert of the West African Hausa people and also harboured an interest in the roles of ethics played in a part of culture.’ Naturally, I was devastated by the news. Many of us that studied under his tutelage regarded him as an outstanding teacher who impacted on our lives in many ways.

When we stepped into ABU in January 1972, it was the only university in the North then and its SBS, established in 1970 at the behest of the Interim Common Services Agency of the governments of the Northern States (ICSA), was the first in the country. The SBS was purposely created and domiciled in the ABU to prepare students for entry into the university having realized that the traditional Higher School Certificate (HSC) programme was wasting the capabilities of many young secondary school leavers from the North aspiring to have a degree. A unique advantage of the SBS was the higher standard of teaching as the lecturers were all staff of the university. There was also a higher standard of living as the students also lived on campus and were bona fide members of the students’ community.

The conducive campus environment plus other better facilities for learning made it easier for the SBS students to attain the necessary qualifications for entry into the undergraduate courses. Obviously it was a privilege being taught at that level by Paul Clough. He had just graduated with a First from Oxford University and joined the teaching staff at the SBS some months before we came into the university. When we resumed in September 1972 for our last session in SBS, Paul Clough came in to take us in World Contemporary History.

Paul – he resented the Mr Clough bit – was barely in his twenties when he taught us. Many of us were still teenagers, though some were in their twenties and thirties, yet Paul succeeded in blending with us. He became tutor, friend and mentor. His lectures were a tour de force – showing a remarkable reading of a range of books on the subject matter prior to any class. He likewise expected us to dig deep into the well-stocked libraries on the campus to find and read the books and journals in the reading list he would always give to prepare us for subsequent classes. Many of the topics he covered were very current and were raging at the time, such as, apartheid in South Africa and racial discrimination in the USA, making his classes passionately driven, engaging, and at times volatile as tempers of students rose and fell.

His tutorials were even more so. The tutorial classes were much smaller, may be a group of five or seven students huddled up in his office. There again Paul would sit with us arguing back and forth over a concept or so with every one of us passionately involved and would even spend time beyond what was normally allocated. If the discussion became particularly interesting Paul would take us out to the ABU staff club to continue the chat over drinks and bowls of pepper soup. Paul’s markings were something else. When you write an essay or a term paper for him it returns to you with an additional page or two of critical comments in red biro in his unwieldy hand writing. After reading his comments you are bound to agree with whatever marks he decided to give you.

I guess Paul regarded himself as a lecturer in the mould of the tradition of the olden times, when tutors lived among their students and became their leading lights in all ramifications. In ABU, in that period, the total student population was small, probably a seventhousand or so, when you add all the students in all the three campuses of Samaru, Kongo and Abdullahi Bayero College (ABC), Kano, which made it easy for close interaction between students and teachers. Paul engaged his students in and out of class. He took out his students not only to the staff club but also to pepper soup joints in Samaru village and all the time it would be discourse on current issues. I recall taking him to Albarka cinema to watch an Indian film. He lived in Gyellesu near the old Zaria city among the local community in a mud house captivatingly decorated with Hausa murals. He had plenty of art works gracing the walls of the rooms. He had a Suzuki power bike with which he commuted to his office in Samaru and to neighbouring towns and villages in his research expeditions.

Many of his students would have many fond memories of Paul Clough. He regarded himself not only a teacher but a mentor. He took his mentoring role very seriously. When he learnt that I had literary ambitions we became even closer. He plied me with books from his personal collections and his friends, to read and discuss with him. Through such interactions I came to know authors that I would probably have never come across. He was keen on writers of fiction with a political content such as the Hungarian writer, Arthur Koestler, Kenya’s James Ngugi (later, wa Thiang’o) and the delightful Sudanese, Tayeb Salih and a host of others whose books I devoured and raised talking points with him. He introduced me to the literary group around Brian Downes, a lecturer in the Department of English, in whose house we congregated in the night once a week to meet other students and tutors to discuss books and other current issues over endless cups of coffee and small chops.

Even when I moved from Samaru to Kongo campus, Paul unfailingly ferried me on his power bike to those meetings every week. When we were leaving the SBS he collected a few of us to ask where we were heading to in the larger university. When I told him that I was accepted by the Faculty of Administration to read Bus Admin he was aghast, telling me that the course was ‘mundane, mercantile and is devoid of any intellectual content’. It was too late to change and even though I remained in Kongo, Paul did not relent in his mentoring role. At graduation he celebrated my appointment as a Graduate Assistant in the School of Business, but somehow I didn’t turn up to take up the appointment.

Paul left Zaria in 1976 and headed to Oxford for his doctorate which took a record 19 years to realize, always returning to Zaria a number of times for extensive field work. His efforts in this regard produced the highly regarded, Morality and Economic Growth in Rural West Africa: Indigenous Accumulation in Hausaland (2014). He joined the Anthropology department of the University of Malta in 1993 and was head of department for 13 years.

Professor Paul Clough died at the age of 70 while swimming on 25th July 2019. Our condolences to his students world-wide, his two sisters, their husbands and children, and of course his dog Sparky who survived him.