Exonian Profiles
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Dr. Haroun Al-Rashid Adamu ’66: ‘Education
Is the Cornerstone’
In 1965, Haroun Al-Rashid Adamu traveled halfway around the world from his native Nigeria to attend Exeter. For the past five years, Adamu has been trying to bring a little bit of Exeter to northern Nigeria. Together with a group of fellow Nigerian academics, Adamu founded Zaria Academy, a boys’ college preparatory school located in the northern Nigerian city of the same name. According to Adamu, the boarding school seeks to provide its 90 students with “the disciplined intellectual, moral and physical rigor of a first-class secondary school.” The short-term goal, he says, is to give students “a head start in any profession.” The long-term goal is larger still: using education to improve Nigeria’s economic, social and political prospects in the new millennium. Adamu was moved to help start Zaria Academy in part because he saw the difference a strong education made in his own life. As a promising student in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, he came to the attention of Michael Samuels, a young American (and recent Yale graduate) who was teaching there on an exchange program. Samuels—who would later serve as the U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone, and who has lent his support to Zaria Academy—urged his pupil to apply to Yale. An admissions officer was impressed by Adamu’s credentials, but suggested that he spend a PG year at Exeter to help prepare for the transition to Yale. With the Samuels family serving as his hosts, Adamu arrived in New York in August 1965; a few short weeks later, he drove to Exeter and settled into Bancroft Hall. Almost every aspect of Academy life—from academics to the weather, let alone the experience of being the sole African student on campus and one of just a handful of blacks—represented a major adjustment for Adamu, but he says he relished the challenges. Accustomed to classes of 36 or more, he suddenly found himself seated at a Harkness table with just a dozen other students, vigorously debating the merits of Faulkner and Hemingway “while Mr. Leonard sat listening and occasionally intervening to calm [us] down,” he recalls. “This was, for me, a new and effective system of imparting knowledge.” He also studied history, math and public speaking; played varsity soccer and ran track; and agonized over the swimming requirement. “Each time I jumped into the pool, I felt as if I had a millstone tied around my neck,” he recalls. “However, Mr. Dunbar ensured that I did the two laps, with a few more to spare. There was considerable celebration when I finally made it.” As planned, Adamu went on to Yale, where he earned his B.A in political science. He then returned to Nigeria and embarked on a multifront career in politics: as a teacher (he earned his Ph.D. from Nigeria’s Ahmadu Bello University), a journalist (he served as a political editor in Lagos and later as publisher of the Nigerian Economist) and as a government official (he is currently a senior special assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo). But Adamu remains convinced that “education is the cornerstone” for true progress in Nigeria and other underdeveloped countries. Those interested in learning more about Zaria Academy or in making a contribution of money or needed equipment may do so through the nonprofit foundation that supports it, the International African Education Foundation. In the United States, contact Samuels International Associates, Inc. (Attention: Judith Fehervai), Two Lafayette Centre, 1133 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036; tel. (202) 223-7683. —Beth Brosnan |
