ABU Is Slowly Rising To Punch At It’s Weight In Its Gown To Town Through Research Efforts. See It In Sorghum Farm
The Oasis Reporters
October 4, 2025
As northern Nigeria’s most famous and prestigious citadel of learning, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria clocks 63 today. (Established on October 4, 1962).
Perhaps this seems a good enough time to reflect on it by an outsider who has always looked in from a detached point of view.
When political leaders set up educational institutions, the idea behind their minds could verge between prestige and research into challenges facing society and proffer solutions.
Therefore when Sir Ahmadu Bello, the then premier of the Northern Region established Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria some 63 years ago, that was what he aimed to achieve. The then Northern Region faced a myriad of challenges from manpower shortages to a lot of other developmental challenges.
One defining social challenge was the noticeable huge population of children who roam the streets begging for food, a direct indictment of a broken system of family life where feeding the home was a monumental challenge.
Therefore the emphasis on agriculture was not a misplaced priority. After all, the north did not lack landmass. Utilizing it with its other human and natural resources in order to make things work and put food on the table for a great majority of the people was a crying order.
One of the moves by the University as it wakes up to one of its challenges was recently made evident when the high yield of one of the staples of the north was unveiled to the public recently.
Ahmadu Bello University has unveiled a pet project named Samsog 52, which is a conventionally bred variety of Sorghum. The beauty of Samsog 52 is that it is not a genetically modified (GM) variety that has courted a lot of controversy, both in favour of such varieties as well as against it by another section of the society. ABU Zaria has done a great thing, for there is no GM sorghum variety released in Nigeria.
The team of Professors Mary Yeye, late Daniel Aba, and Dr. Rekiya Abdulmalik with a few others led the development of the variety. Details about this variety will be found in the National Variety Register at the National Agricultural Seed Council.
The ingenious way adopted by the University to present the Sorghum variety was novel. That is ensure that the end-mile growers of the variety planted it besides the road to make it visible to passersby who would out of curiosity not only ask questions about it, but adopt the high yield variety which would put more grains in the harvest basins of farmers that not only would bring abundance and profit, but would provide more food on the table for families.
Cheers to Ahmadu Bello University for this notable achievement that has beaten a clear path from the Gown to the Town.
More of this, the foremost citadel in the north. Do not rest on your oars.
Greg Abolo.
(Assisted by Professor Khalid Othman and Alh. Rabo Danhassan)
