IN SUPPORT OF PROFESSIONALISM

                                   

More than two decades ago an interesting episode took place at the GRA Katsina where the owner of one beautiful house, in fact it was the best constructed house in Katsina then, both in terms of the architectural designs and the serene environment on which the house was constructed complained to my brother how the landscape of the house was a source of concern to him. He told my brother how he wasted so much money and time on landscaping the house but to no avail. He was advised by one Julius Berger expatriate staff to see my brother for technical advice. His grouse was that on three occasions he planted different exotic flowers to beautify his house and for the same occasions the flowers were destroyed by yet to know who. The following morning he would ask the top soil of the whole area to be removed and new one brought in and another set of followers would be planted and this continued for about six months or more. My brother then set out for a reconnaissance of the area to determine how the work would start. After about 30 minutes in the area he did not see anything unusual that will prevent flowers and other plants from growing. He then thought of taking sample of the soil to test its quality and determine if it is good for landscaping purposes but after packing some quantities he noticed some dead black insects and decided to take both the sand and dead insects along. The following morning he drove to Bayero University Kano where he went to the botanical laboratory of the University to have the soil test. Meanwhile, as the soil test was going on he decided to go to the library with the dead insects and after about 30 minutes on an insect’s encyclopaedia he found out the name of the insect and immediately formed an impression that it was the insects that were responsible for the destruction of the flowers. He further found out that the insects stay right inside the ground about 18 inches from the top soil but only come out at midnight and would eat up the flowers for about one hour then return back to their base and they would return the following night to eat up what was left. After getting this information he left the botanical garden without even minding the results of the soil test. Immediately he came back to the house he asked the labourers around to start to dig through the soil profile into about 20 inches deep and in the course of that they met several hundreds of dead insects until they finally met hundreds of the live insects living in cluster and unionism. Insecticide and insectifuge were immediately applied to kill the insects and after about two days new sand was brought in to fill all the trenches made after removing all the fossils and residues of the insects. The result of that professionalism is the lush green flowers you always see when ever you go to Alhaji Labo Tarka’s house near the Commissioner of Police’s house at the GRA.

I think professionalism is not just being good at what you do but it has a lot to do with how you do it and the result you get from that. If you want to be successful in your business or any chosen career you will have to get used to being a professional. In which case you must have passed through some level of education and in the course of that have acquired some certification. One of the greatest problems we encounter these days is the fact that we have more pseudo professionals (gyara samun sa’a) in our midst than the actual professionals.  We have them as teachers, nurses, contractors, mechanics and others that you will not even know until you require their services. In order to move our state forward in this time of Internet technology we surely need professionals in teaching (forget the debate whether teaching is a profession or not), nurses, architects, Surveyors, builders (not of Idi Kwado’s brand) to propel us to break the glass ceiling.