If You Believe in Something, Pursue it With All Sincerity-Prof. Amina Kaidal

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

As part of it’s shaping and mentoring initiatives of the lives of young people to becoming great achievers, the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has since last year been organizing a monthly Inspiring Leadership Reflection Series (ILERIS) with her staff, interns, volunteers, university students and other teeming young people around the civil society circle in attendance. Every month the center hosts a resource person for an interactive session with the young male and female participants with a view to making them learn directly from the experience and struggles of the resource person. This month the guest speaker is Prof. Amina Kaidal of the University of Maiduguri.

Giving an opening remark, the Executive Director of the organization Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u cautioned the participants not to just listen and forget the deliberations, but be attentively focused, learn and apply lessons that will take their lives to a greater height. He further said “this is our youths development programme, it is not a skill-based programme but a programme meant to inspire you (the participants) to discover your worth and to discover how you can work to achieve your own objectives, our objective in this is to inspire you not by promising you the best cars in town, the best house in the world, or the best wife or husband but by showcasing people who have worked hard in their lives and who have achieved greatness in what they are doing so that the inspire you to also think of excelling, and to even excel better than the people that we present to you here.”

Facilitating the session, the guest speaker for the month of January Prof. Amina Kaidal of the Department of Physical and Health Education of the University of Maiduguri began by expressing her joy for being given the chance to meet young people in order to offer her experience so that they emulate and excel too. Thereafter she stimulated the participants with a number of hints for managing or avoiding failures, challenges and struggles that life has to offer while pointing out the secrets of success and excelling in any activity. Prof. Kaidal emphasized the role of education in the lives of youths, noting that the youths of today needed education that exposes them to practical experience rather than ‘paper education’. Prof. Kaidal said “if you believe in something, pursue it with all sincerity, make yourself somebody so that you become somebody, don’t downgrade yourself so that you will not be downgraded by other people, an educated woman stands out differently even in a family setting”, therefore, youths need to explore all avenues possible to be able to excel too using determination as a driving force.

After the presentation by the guest speaker, participants made comments and asked many questions ranging from her major obstacles as a woman and housewife, academic challenge, how to handle tough moments, the need for elaboration on many quotes she used during the session etc, the presenter responded to all the questions and comments explicitly. The session ended with a closing remark by Senior Programmes Officer Kabiru Saidu Dakata and presentation of some publications of the organization to the guest speaker by Head of Human Resource Ado Shehu Yakasai.