By Ikechukwu Amaechi
When Usman Shehu Gezawa died on August 6, 2020 at the age of 21, not many people outside his neck of the woods took notice. But his death was a huge loss to the country.
The fact that he died so young – he was just two months shy of 22 years, having been born on October 8, 1998 – makes it even more so, considering the potential.
He was a promise cut terribly short by death.
I knew Usman through his father, Abdulkareem Shehu Gezawa, Executive Director, Operations, NPF Pensions Limited. His educational accomplishments stood him out. All one needed to do was make his acquaintance and the relationship acquired a life of its own. He was a charmer.
For someone who was not a “royalty” and died so young, his death, ordinarily, would have been unsung. But to so expect is to betray ignorance of Gezawa’s personage. His death devastated those who knew him personally and people who just heard about him.
He was a royalty in his own right, a crown placed on his head by his prodigious intellect. Therefore, at death, he was mourned by all. One year after, most people are still grieving. And those who know or heard about his academic exploits rue that in his death, Nigeria lost a gem. The sense of loss is acute.
Gezawa suffered spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic neuromuscular disease that causes muscles to become weak and waste away.
People afflicted with SMA often lose a specific type of nerve cell in the spinal cord called motor neurons, which control muscle movement.
He walked for some months after his birth before the degenerative disease immobilized him. In primary four, he was already in a wheelchair.
But he was a prodigy in a wheelchair. What he lost through his physical disability, he gained through an extraordinary brainpower.
Gezawa was the overall best graduating pupil from Kano Capital Primary School in 2010, a feat he repeated in 2016 at the Crescent International School Kano, where he acquired his secondary education with straight “As” in all his subjects and carting home all the prizes awarded at the graduation ceremony.
But it was at Bayero University Kano (BUK), where he gained admission to read computer science in 2018, that the science world took notice. He shone like a million academic stars.
Gezawa set the computer science department on fire, literally, with his awesome brainpower and became the toast of the university. He could do with only his hands – of course aided by his phenomenal brain – what many people who are not physically challenged can hardly do with their whole body.
In the three years he spent at BUK, he was on Chevron Nigeria scholarship.
Trust him. He did not disappoint. Had death not brought his fairytale academic trajectory to an abrupt halt, Gezawa was on his way to doing an encore of the feat he achieved both in primary and secondary schools.
He ran a perfect 5.0 Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) on a 5.0 Scale in all semesters in his three years at the university. He was first class-bound. And it was building up to be the best ever first class in any discipline in the history of BUK.
He loved and also excelled in those subjects – mathematics, algebra, calculus, programming, et cetera – which the average student dreads. So brilliant was he that his fellow students nicknamed him “Brain on a Wheelchair.”
For others, he was “Kano’s Stephen Hawking,” named after the legendary Stephen William Hawking, an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2018.
In 2019, Gezawa was one of the most impactful speakers at the TEDx Aminu Kano Way where he talked about his condition in the presentation titled “Ability in Disability.”
After his poignant, personal and evocative presentation, which attracted a standing ovation and brought tears to the eyes of many, a philanthropist instantly offered him another scholarship.
The young man bore his disability with uncommon equanimity. In a tribute after Gezawa’s death, his best friend, Nour Bashir Galadanci, a medical student at BUK, wrote: “He was never embarrassed of who he was. Always grateful to Almighty.”
Those were the qualities that endeared him to all. Even in his disability, he was a role model to many. Younger ones looked up to him as a mentor.
He inspired his mates and made them look up to tomorrow with expectations. He dreamt dreams and had lofty ambition. He was hopeful and only saw the sunny side of life. His smile was infectious and arresting. You would never believe that he was so physically challenged.
Gezawa believed in the wise saying of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the English Baptist preacher, that “hope is like a star – not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity,” a sentiment amplified years later by Martin Luther King Jr., the American Baptist minister and civil rights icon, who said “we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Rather than become a hindrance, his disability was the catalyst he needed to reach for the moon. And he was almost there.
The Northern elite took notice. Former Governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, honoured him. Former Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, broke protocol, rose from his seat, and walked up to Gezawa in his wheelchair to present a certificate of graduation (in a slate form) as it is done by Islamic schools.
The honour was unprecedented. Traditionally, the graduating student walks up to where the Emir is seated and kneels down to receive the slate. The hall erupted in thunderous applause at Sanusi’s gesture.
Gezawa’s fame spread like wildfire. At his death, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, tweeted: “May the soul of Usman Shehu Gezawa rest in comfortable peace. Our condolence to this role model.”
His friend, Galadanci, summed up Gezawa’s essence in his elegy, thus: “Usman was a genius; always ready to explain to anyone who didn’t understand something in class. His character was outstanding. He was amazing, friendly, nice, patient and strong.”
It will be no exaggeration to say that no natural death of a student has impacted BUK as much as Gezawa’s.
He has been mourned for one year not only by fellow students but also by teachers and entire school administration.
His immediate family is worst hit. His parents and siblings still mourn him today as intensely as they did a year ago. The loss is too personal.
One year after, the wound which his death inflicted on the academic community also seems not to have healed. But there is closure, at the same time, in the fact that his memory remains a blessing to all who had the good fortune of making his acquaintance.
To make the healing complete, BUK needs to immortalize Gezawa by setting up an endowment fund on SMA research. Currently, there is no cure for the disease but research is ongoing. Treatment only manages the symptoms and provides sufferers the best possible quality of life.
When Hawking was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 21, it wasn’t clear that he would finish his PhD because the motor-neuron disease, which gradually and inexorably paralyzes patients, usually kills within four years.
But against all expectations, he lived with the incurable condition for 55 years, becoming one of the world’s most celebrated scientists.
Spinal muscular atrophy is less debilitating than amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and if Gezawa was born into a society that cares, who knows, he may still be here with us, trudging on to become Nigeria’s Hawking.
Usman Gezewa is gone but other children should be spared his fate. Knowing him well, that would be his only wish now even as he enjoys eternal bliss with Allah in Jannatul Firdaus.