Bankole Ridwanullahi Ameenullahi took the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 2017 to gain admission to his selected higher education institution through the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). He received 225 out of 400 total marks in the UTME, prompting him to apply to Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) for Civil Engineering. However, he was unable to attend Engineering class. Statistics was instead presented to him.
The 25-year-old admissions applicant was startled that he would prefer take a course away from Engineering faculty than none at all. He had never heard of a Statistics course.
Nevertheless, Bankole exchanged a warm handshake with fate. He journeyed to Sokoto State in Nigeria’s northwest for the first time to pursue a degree.
“I arrived late to UDUS that year, even though the C.A test was about to begin because I got third batch admission. I tried to fall in love with my course and Alhamdulillahi at last, I am now a Statistician,” he said..
Though Bankole had it in mind to graduate in flying colors, he was scared by what someone somewhere had told his colleagues that no one could graduate with first-class. “Many students used to tell me that Statistics is hard. They also told me the history of a Statistics student that dropped out from school because of CGPA. This made me think I couldn’t achieve it but with Allah help l achieved it,” he narrated.
His first-class career, however, began with a 4.26 CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) of 5.0 in the 100 level. His CGPA climbed to 4.44 in the 200 level, 4.51 in the 300 level, and 4.55 in the final level.
Bankole felt fulfilled for being a first-class graduate. To him, “It is a dream come true, we used to sing a song in secondary school that ‘when the scholars are matching on, I want to be among the scholars, when the scholars are matching on’. I am happy that I am now among the scholars of my faculty and the university as a whole,” he said happily.
According to this reporter’s research, Bankole is the only first-class graduate of Statistics in the 2020/2021 academic session, making her the first in five years. Not only that, but he graduated as the best student in the Faculty of Physical and Computing Sciences.
No one encourage me with any prize — Bankole
Bankole criticized the encouraging culture at his university in an interview with this reporter. Graduating with honors in a demanding course like Statistics was never easy for him, let alone from a school he considered as one of the most difficult in Africa.
“No one encourages me with any prize. Seriously, there is no encouragement for the best students in UDUS which is totally bad. The management needs to do something about it because it is not easy to attain third-class not to talk of first-class,” he said.
Continuing, Bankole noted that schools like “University of Ilorin always treats their scholars well which gives a good name and pride to the institution for encouraging their students. They don’t mind the expenses because they value the developmental outcome of it.”
Recounting his undergraduate days, Bankole explained how he created a platform named Baba Sta Data Analysis Platform (BASDAP) where he taught students how to analyze data by using statistical tools like SPSS, Minitab and R-code.
According to him, his desire to help students overcome challenges of calculation courses pushed him to collaborate with other like-minds to create Standard Deviation Tutorial (SDT), a class where they teach mathematics, physics, chemistry and other calculation courses.
