Governor renames state varsity after erstwhile former governor
The Borno executive council has approved the renaming of Borno State University to Kashim Ibrahim University, Maiduguri.
The decision, the state’s government said, is to honour Kashim Ibrahim, an erstwhile governor of Nigeria’s old northern region.
Usman Tar, Borno’s commissioner for information and internal security, said the renaming would take effect after necessary legislative amendments and notifications to regulatory authorities.
He said the decision was taken during the first council meeting of 2025, chaired by the state’s governor Babagana Zulum in Maiduguri.
“This decision is subject to legislative processes by the state assembly to amend the law establishing the university and actions by the ministry of education to inform relevant bodies such as the NUC and the JAMB,” Tar said.
Shettima Kashim Ibrahim (1910–1990) was the governor of Nigeria’s old northern region from 1962 to 1966, during the first republic.
The northern region was a large administrative unit that included what would later become Borno and many other states in the north.
Ibrahim was a politician and an educator acclaimed to have contributed to the development of northern Nigeria.
He began his career as a teacher and an education officer in the old Borno province, where he developed primary school textbooks in Kanuri and English.
Transitioning into politics, he served as federal minister for social services and later as minister of education in the early 1950s.
In 1956, he was appointed Waziri (prime minister) of Borno, implementing essential reforms in local governance.
He was appointed as the first Nigerian governor of the northern region (succeeding the British colonial officer Gawain Westray Bell) from 1962 until Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966.
Other institutions named after him include the Kashim Ibrahim College of Education and the Kashim Ibrahim Library, both in Borno.
