A Luminary of Integrity: The Multifaceted Legacy of Prof. Muhammad Bin Abdallah

"As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself. Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility" Nelson Mandela.

In the bustling corridors of Kano North's political arena, Prof. Muhammad Bin Abdallah stands as a paragon of cerebral gravitas and moral fortitude. I came to him since when I was teaching at Government Girls Arabic Secondary School, Faruruwa, his hometown. Towering at an imposing six feet three inches, his light complexion—reminiscent of sun-kissed Saharan dunes—belies a demeanor as unyielding as the Harmattan winds. 

Currently Chief of Staff to the Deputy Senate President of the 10th Nigerian Senate, Prof. is a study in contrasts: a polymath rooted in the austere traditions of Islamic scholarship yet agile in the labyrinthine world of Guidance and Counseling, adult education, inter alia.  His trajectory—from lecturing pedagogy at Sa'adatu Rimi College of Education and Bayero University, Kano to shaping our education system, and now supporting his master executing myriads of societal intervention —reveals a man whose life is a tapestry woven with threads of erudition, principle, and paradox.

As a former lecturer in various education courses from college to university, Prof. wielded Socratic pedagogy with the precision of a seasoned raconteur. Fluent in English and Arabic, his lectures were symphonies of code-switching, code mixing interlacing Quranic verses. Poised with both Western and Islamic Knowledge, one would recall his dissection of authentic traditions of Bukhariy and Muslim alongside Plato's, Maslow's and Bloom’s taxonomy, a fusion that transformed classrooms into arenas of epistemological awakening. His Arabic, mellifluous and Qur’an-sharp, lent him respect even at his office in the red chamber (The National Assembly) while his English—polished to Oxbridge cadence makes him achieve mutual national and international intelligibility. 

Prof's sartorial choice—immaculate white kaftans or tailored Babbar Riga—serves as both metaphor and manifesto. In Arab and Hausa cosmology, white symbolizes purity, calmness, peace. For him, this white  is armor against moral compromise. This chromatic defiance mirrors his disdain for Nigeria’s kleptocratic undercurrents. He champions meritocracy, surrounding himself with protean minds—regardless of age, background or religious inclinations.

As Chief of Staff, he navigates Nigeria’s fractious polity with the finesse of a Grandmaster. Detractors—often beneficiaries of opaque patronage—resent his disinterest in political kickbacks. Many wanted it chop I chop, ci-mu-ci way which he always wave and discard with a palm- saying this is a trust and we will abide by it no matter what it would cost. When I say His blueprint helps the DSP (Barau Jibrin) in legislative efficiency—streamlining committee workflows, digitizing oversight processes—thus, bolstered the Senate’s efficacy, is not an exaggeration.

The story short, Prof. Muhammad Bin Abdallah inhabits the interstices of reverence and reproach—a man whose clarity of purpose refracts differently across prisms of perception. To some, an anachronism in an age of moral relativism; to others, a beacon in Nigeria’s existential twilight. His legacy, still unfolding, is etched not in plaudits but in transformed lives and institutions. As Plato’s philosopher-king, he walks the tightrope between idealism and pragmatism, a testament to the enduring potency of principle in a world awash with compromise. In him, I see the embodiment of Rumi’s aphorism: “Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”

Muhammad Badamasi TSAURE
08140276592
76muhammadtsaure@gmail.com