Sometimes when you go for research, people might be having manuscripts you need, but they would not release it to you because of lack of trust, as th… - Sa'adiya Omar Bello

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.

My first book was on Mu’azu, the poet in Jigawa. It was my PhD project and I selected him as a poet, because he impacted on my life. There was a particular poem he wrote on obedience to parents and my sister used to recite it while cooking and I picked from there. There’s another, also, about the flag- bearers of the Caliphate.

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.