Professor Umaru A. Pate, a distinguished scholar of our time
By Aondover Eric Msughter
It is a great delight for me to pen to paper on the happy and joyous occasion to commemorate Professor Pate, whose victory as the Kashere University’s new VC cleared the air and swept the pages of newspapers and social media. The popular saying among us students is that “drinking from the fount of Professor Pate is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of current affairs”. Thank you the Kaigamma of Adamawa for widening our scope and internationalizing us even in our local milieu. You are a great scholar that has served the discipline well.
This is one of those rare moments of honour given to a few to mark an important milestone to a scholar per excellence, a symbol of hope and integrity in Africa’s media and communication. Professor Pate is a distinguished achiever, an accomplished scholar and a goal-getter. He is an embodiment of pure love for humanity devoid of any hidden and selfish tendency whereby he took everyone as his own son or daughter. He embraced all and sundry without discrimination as to tribe, religion and status. He would never give up in pursuing any goal he has, which made him a leading light in the field of communication.
Anyone who belonged and still belongs to Professor Pate’s school of thought and ideology cannot be associated with laziness, corruption, evil, wickedness or maltreatment of the down trodden, indifference to what affect the people. It is with utmost pleasure that I congratulate a credible scholar and a highly detribalized Nigerian whose linkages and connections traverse the Nigerian landscape. He is a great teacher, an intellectual and great scholar of sobriety and integrity and a professor whose imprints are all over the world.
Personally, he has been exceptionally helpful in my professional advancement. I have learnt and benefited in many ways from him. Apart from helping me to expand my circle of friends, he spurred me into action. At the time I am reluctant to put pen on paper, he literally forced me hard to hold the biro and at the time I wanted to rest for hours, he drummed into my ears the futility of leaving my potentials locked up in my brain, which significantly stimulated and sustained my desire in scholarship.
There is hardly any serious Department of Mass Communication or professional organisation in Nigeria and even beyond that does not have something to do with him. His connections have been through former students, books, external examination or professional engagements. He is a well respected scholar in the academia and beyond. His appointment as the Vice Chancellor of Kashere University is a loss for BUK students and a gain for students in Kashere University. It is my singular honour and pleasure to associate with a father and academic mentor like him. Today, my joy knows no bound as my cap of happiness is over flowing with joy as he emerges the new VC of Kashere University. I salute him and wish him greater energy to perform excellently.
Aondover Eric Msughter wrote in from the Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University, Kano.