PROFESSOR Nisar Ahmed Siddiqui was an iconic person who carved the magnificent Sukkur IBA University into a state-of-the-art facility out of two bare rooms. He was a visionary educationist committed to education.

Born in 1944, he received his early education at Piryalo in district Khairpur. Being an outstanding student he got a gold medal in MEd from Sindh University.

He started his career as a teacher from Piryalo High School which was followed by a brief stint as a lecturer at Government College of Education, Sukkur.

He qualified in the 1974 provincial civil services examinations and joined the civil service. He was not a traditional bureaucrat and proved himself a man of great integrity. No political influence nor worldly temptation could distract him from his principled stance. Honesty, devotion, perseverance and courage were the dominant traits of his illustrious career. His main forte, however, was education for which he had a passion.

He aspired to open an institution of excellence so that could play a pivotal role in transforming Sindh’s moribund education system. He would always say: “Light a candle, don’t complain of darkness.”

In 1994, when he was commissioner, Sukkur division, he took the most ambitious initiative of his life. He set up the Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (Sukkur IBA) in two rooms of Public School Sukkur with the motto ‘Merit, Quality, Excellence’. Thus he lit the candle of meritocracy in the interior of Sindh.

After his retirement from civil service in 2004, Prof Nisar became the director of the Sukkur IBA and began to pay full attention to developing the institute. His efforts bore fruit in 2017 when the institute was raised to the level of a full-fledged university (Sukkur IBA University) and he became the founder vice-chancellor.

A staunch believer in merit, discipline and innovation, he worked tirelessly to raise the academic status of the university. As a result the Sukkur IBA University soon came to be counted among the top four (business category) universities of the country.

To encourage talent in the country, he launched programmes like National Talent Hunt Programme to provide 300 scholarships to students from Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, and the Sindh Talent Hunt Programme to provide 300 scholarships to the students of Sindh.

The university with the enrolment of about 5,000 students in various disciplines, has become the hub of educational and cultural activities. Its magnificent building amidst the lush green lawns looks like a foreign university.

Prof Nisar established 13 community colleges in various districts of Sindh on the American pattern for building the capacity of underprivileged students. These colleges are the conceptual models for developing the practical and creative skills of students.

Prof Sarwar Pathan
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2020