I Never Knew The Day Would Come When I Would Agree With Isa Pantami Former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy -By Joe Dauda

Without going into the details of the reason for the title of this piece, I would like to add my voice to the call for the Federal Government of Nigeria to not only honour but also reward young Nafisa Aminu of Tulip College Yobe for her outstanding performance and the positive global publicity she has brought to Nigeria by winning the competition on English language skills at the 2025 TeenEagle Global Finals.I just read about this through a news article reporting the call by Isa Pantami for the Federal Government of Nigeria to do just that.

For me, it’s all about Nigeria and I can sympathize with the feelings of those who believe that nothing should be spared in encouraging especially those whose profession happens to affect Nigeria disproportionately—like sportsmen and women. I say disproportionately because I also sympathize with those who feel that others who are equally doing their best in their quiet corners never get recognized and stand virtually no chance of ever getting recognized—at least not to the level those in sports get recognized. Our soldiers, for example, are expected to go to battle in situations where their life expectancy sometimes drops from the national average to something as small as a few hours or some minutes, or even a few seconds in some volatile cases. While on the battlefield, they also risk being captured and dehumanized through torture by those they are fighting, either out of sheer sadism, or to extract privileged information from them. So that feeling is there and quite justifiable when some people say these football and basketball players who are now richer and more important than their contract envisaged for this particular tournaments, were simply doing their jobs. If they did it so well and became the best, others deserve what they got for putting in their best also. But, as they say, life is not fair and I guess this is one of those instances.

Dr. Isa Ali Pantami

No matter what one feels about the lavish largesse of the Federal Government for our national women football team and our national women basketball team, the logic for extending this largesse to the winner of an international competition in English language is strong and almost irresistible. On what basis could one deny Nafisa her share of recognition and reward since bringing glory to Nigeria is the issue and she has no doubt brought glory to Nigeria? As a writer, I appreciate what it must have taken for a Nigerian-born girl to so outperform every other contender in the world she came on top in something as amorphous as the English language.  But apart from my sentiments in favour of Nafisa (who may well end up as a writer herself later in life) I would say that the only way to understand the apparent logic behind the decision to reward and recognize our national female footballers and basketballers is to reward Nafisa also. The extent of the recognition and reward is necessarily at the discretion of the president but I see no way ignoring her completely would not send the wrong message. By going forward to lay the red carpet for Nafisa Aminu, it will be clear that the federal government of Nigeria is not insinuating that education is less consequential to national development than sports.

Congratulations to Nafisa and her teachers, and of course, Tulip International College, which would now benefit from this accomplishment in more ways than one can imagine.