People refer to me as Your Excellency — VP’s look alike
How do you feel when people say you look like Vice President Namadi Sambo? You see, we are created by God, and in His wisdom, He created individuals of striking resemblance even though they are of different parents and background. Only the almighty Allah knows why He does that. Therefore, I don’t see my […]
How do you feel when people say you look like Vice President Namadi Sambo?
You see, we are created by God, and in His wisdom, He created individuals of striking resemblance even though they are of different parents and background. Only the almighty Allah knows why He does that. Therefore, I don’t see my resemblance to the Vice President strange. We see such things in the newspapers all the time. Alhamdulillah, I thank God for that.
How do you feel?
To some extent it is something good for you to resemble somebody who is now second person in the country, but the most important thing is that God knows why he did so, that is just it.
What is the experience like to look like the Vice President?
Well, I didn’t know that I look like Vice president Namadi Sambo, until 2008 when I was the principal of Government Science Secondary School, Misau. My students came with a picture; they folded the name, and showed it to me and asked sir, do you know this person? I looked at it carefully and said yes I know. Then he was the Governor of Kaduna State. I answered them yes, this is Kaduna State Governor, Architect Namadi Sambo. They started laughing and said sir you look like him. Since then, from time to time, people will be telling me we look alike. In fact, my directors in the ministry when they see me they call me Your Excellency, because I look like Vice President Namadi Sambo. On the street people would turn back to have a second look at me. I am getting used to being stared at.
There is also this episode in Zaria when I went to collect my result in ABU in 2008. I asked somebody to collect the result for me but it didn’t work out, so I had to collect it myself. We went to a place to see one doctor in his house. He has the picture of Namadi Sambo hanging in the house, then he was the Governor of Kaduna State. We were sitting down, the doctors told my friend look your guest look like our governor. He said look at the picture. Actually, I could not see myself; I just looked at the picture like that. After leaving the house, we went inside ABU campus with that friend. We entered another doctor’s office, my friend then said, doctor look at this person very well, would you see any resemblance with anybody? The doctor looked at me and said yes, this is Namadi Sambo. In fact, I didn’t take it to be anything. These are some of the experiences I had for being Vice President Sambo’s lookalike.
Any regrettable moment so far?
No, not yet. Actually, nobody has embarrassed me because I look like Namadi, nobody has done that to me.
Any opportunity to meet Sambo?
No, I have never seen him face to face. I see only his pictures through the pages of newspapers and television.
If you have the opportunity of meeting Sambo what will you tell him?
I will greet him as my leader and interact with him as a normal human being.
I mean if you meet him, will you relate your experience to him?
Of course, if I meet him by any chance, I will tell him of my experience. I will tell him what the people say about me concerning being his lookalike. I think I will be proud of it.
Do you have any personal request from the Vice President?
Ah, because I look like Vice president I should ask him to do something for me? No, I don’t do that. It is a difficult question for one to answer. First of all, I am a Muslim. I believe in one God who provides for everybody at the right time, so I have that at the back of my mind. God is the provider; He gives you what you want at the right time, so the issue of any request is not there,
What would you want him to do for the country?
Yes, I wish he will take a critical look at the education sector and improve it. As a teacher, I believe if these youths are educated, the nation is educated. If that was the case, the issue of violence and social vices will not be there. I therefore wish that all tiers of government should pay more attention to education so as to rid our country of all the vices.
How is the experience like in the teaching profession?
So great, I wish to retire as a teacher. Teaching is a very nice profession. It is wonderful to be a teacher. I think I don’t see any job that is better than teaching; I have never thought of changing the job in my life.
How would you compare the profession now with the days when teachers are the most important people around?
Well, you see, the teachers of nowadays are not like teachers then. Once you are a trained teacher, whatever you do, you will always have at the back your mind that you are a model; that students would copy from you because you have to be trained to follow that rudiment of training a person. But today’s teachers actually are in a rush. They want to get rich quickly so they can do anything. Secondly, some of the teachers of nowadays are not trained. Somebody will graduate from the university or polytechnic without a background in education. If he gets into teaching definitely, you will have problems. If you don’t have trained teachers, if you are not a trained teacher, you are bound to fail.
But some of them are NCE holders who studied education in the university?
If your qualification is NCE or Bachelor degree in education you are a trained teacher. So, you will definitely be different, you will not be like somebody who did not read education, there must be that difference.