The Metaphor in Ngozi Okonjo Iweala ‘s Visit to Zaria By Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice Ordinarily, a university convocation should not wear the toga of national suspense. It should be ceremonial, predictable, procedural. But the recent convocation of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria refused to be ordinary. It arrived heavy with meaning, layered with symbols, and pregnant with metaphor. This was no mere academic procession. It was the coming of a star girl. It was the arrival of excellence with a human face.
It was the presence of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Her destination was Zaria. Her moment was the 45th Convocation Ceremony of Nigeria’s premier university—an institution conceived as a melting pot of tribes, tongues, and temperaments. And like the sudden bursting of Kainji Dam, the campus surged. Students poured out like an armada of cyclones. Faculty, alumni, and townsfolk converged on Samaru. People came from far and near—people too often caricatured as conservative, backward, illiterate. They came not for spectacle, but to witness a ceiling breaker.
What they saw was a vivid contradiction of every limiting stereotype ever imposed on the northern girl child. Before them stood a woman whose résumé reads like a rebellion: first female Minister of Finance, first female Coordinating Minister of the Economy, first African—and first woman—to lead the World Trade Organization. A string of unbroken records. A lineage of firsts. A life that refuses smallness. In Zaria, she was not merely a guest lecturer.
She was a metaphor made flesh. She was proof that the girl child, when educated, does not whisper—she speaks with the might of power and the potency of relevance. In her voice echoed the long-silenced aspirations of women across Northern Nigeria. In her posture stood triumph. In her presence, victory. The message of her visit was not subtle. It was loud, deliberate, and urgent: educating the girl child is not a favour to women it is an obligation to humanity. It is not charity; it is justice.
For God did not create anyone in a lesser image of His intention. As if to underline this truth, the convocation itself offered a living footnote. The second-best graduating student was a woman—from Bida in Niger State. Not coincidence. Not tokenism. Symbolism. A quiet but forceful reminder that when women are given access, they do not diminish excellence they sustain it. I’m glad the Nupes are our ancestral – most likely the Igala blood flowing in them!! The university’s decision to invite Dr. Okonjo-Iweala rather than default to the familiar razzmatazz of political speeches elevated the ceremony beyond routine.
It was a deliberate departure from noise to meaning, from applause to inspiration. She was the breath of fresh air the moment required. For the northern Nigerian girl watching from the crowd, or listening from afar, Zaria became more than a city that day. It became a mirror. And in that mirror stood a future unshackled one that says: rise, learn, dare, and lead. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala did not just come to Zaria. She came as evidence. She came as an answer to the girl child’s quiet question: Can I? And Zaria replied resoundingly Yes.
