Why I left ABU to serve as LG chairman – Professor Shehu Bida

Members of the public know you as a professor of Veterinary Medicine. What most people do not know is how you came about that line of study in the first place. How did you start? The way to Veterinary Medicine started for me back in secondary school. I didn’t make the choice personally, though. My […]

Members of the public know you as a professor of Veterinary Medicine. What most people do not know is how you came about that line of study in the first place. How did you start?

The way to Veterinary Medicine started for me back in secondary school. I didn’t make the choice personally, though. My principal did. My principal directed and I obeyed. Principals were influential. If they gave an order you obeyed. In my time you did not disobey your school principal. My principal, Mr Butler, a Briton, asked me to go for Veterinary Medicine.

That sounds despotic of principals. You mean students did not have a say in what they were asked to do?

We respected their opinions because they would usually have a good reason for choosing any particular course for you. Very often they would look at your academic record. They assessed your academic strength, looked at available courses and figured out the future prospects for you. And the future for a promising fresh graduate was immediate. You got a job as you came out of school. I finished secondary school, that’s Government College, Keffi, in 1954 and was in a job in 1955.

Before the principal indicated Veterinary Medicine for you, what was your personal ambition?

Right from primary school I was hoping to become a medical doctor. I never heard about veterinary medicine. I think my principal chose veterinary medicine for me not only because he believed I would be good at it but also because he knew the nation needed more veterinary doctors. He knew I would be in hot demand.

Did it turn out that way?

It did. And I got to love it.

No regrets?

No. I have no reason to regret. I believe it was not a wrong choice at all. From zero I got to where I was when I retired from active service and where I am today. I thank Allah for giving me the opportunities I had and the life to utilise the opportunities and live to this day.
We hear this all so often, how jobs would be waiting as you finished school. Can Nigeria ever get back to those ‘good old days’? Will it ever be again that students will be employed as a matter of course as they leave school?

Not if we continue to take one step forward and two steps backwards as we are doing. We will have to practice real democracy. We will have to learn to let people express their will freely at elections and in our public life. Leaders want to think and act for the people. It can’t work that way. There will only be a difference when we practise pure democracy, when we allow people to decide for themselves. We say we are copying the United States. United States will manipulate their economy to benefit the people, not the individuals in positions of power as we do in our country.

You started out as a veterinary assistant and then a veterinary officer in the Northern civil service. You left to become a lecturer in the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria. Many wonder why you left the ivory tower at a time to become first a commissioner and then a local council chairman in your home Niger State.

In 1976, Murtala Nyako (Adamawa State governor) who was the military governor of Niger State came to the university to request the vice chancellor to release me, to let me be his commissioner. The VC told him I would soon become the deputy VC. He said I was the most senior to take over when the Americans would have left.

But you did go to become commissioner.