Sa'adiya Omar Bello

"I demanded to be taken to school at age 6."

"I came out with flying colous, all arrangements were made for me to get married and as fate would have it, I again protected, as I wanted to continue my education"

"I was born in Kano and was three years old when my father died. Our great grandparents were from Sokoto and my father was an erudite Islamic scholar, so they were sent to Kano to preach. He had an Islamiyya school in the house so I didn’t go out for my Islamic studies, I did it at home. He was teaching his family and when he died, his wives continued. All the children from that area came to our house to learn, so I had an opportunity of learning the Qur’an and so many aspects of Islam when I was very young."

"As an academician, I had to continue presenting papers and my area of interest was on Shehu Usman, their contributions to poetry and I took Nana Asma’u who was also a renowned Islamic scholar. I wrote a paper on her and presented it at the university and a friend to late Waziri Junaidu the erudite scholar attended the seminar and said that the paper I presented on Nana Asma’u was great. Then I also presented another paper on her sister, because I realized that most of these women were well- versed and educated, but their contributions were not documented."

"I actually wanted to do Islamic Studies, but it is always fate that determines what you do. I was doing both Islamic Studies and Hausa and this lecturer who went to my secondary school to give us forms to get admission to university was a Hausa lecturer, so he influenced my decision in which area I should go. He was saying ‘ we don’t have students in Hausa, please try and take that course."

"I had opportunity of learning the Quran and other Islamic knowledge when I was very young."