The Dean, Faculty of Arts at the University of Jos, Plateau State, Professor Tor Iorapuu, has disclosed that he is a professor of theatre arts today because of his late mother, Mama Grace Wan-aba Iorapuu, who died on Sunday, 9th October, 2016.

Professor Iorapuu, who was speaking as External Examiner at the Department of Theatre and Cultural Studies, Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), made this disclosure while addressing Final Year Students during their practical presentations in Production Workshop, a course being handled by the Executive Secretary/CEO, National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), Assoc. Prof. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma.

To him, as painful as his mother’s death was, it could not stop him from doing what he knows how to do best, saying it was in his late mother’s honour that he was at NSUK to carry out the function of an External Examiner to the Department of Theatre and Cultural Studies.

His words: “I lost my Mum on Sunday but I decided that we must knock this off. I am doing this is because I am a professor today because of my mother. I hated going to school; but she will beat me to a point that there was no day we never had a drama or performance just to go to school; and in the process her wrapper will fall off but she insisted I must go to school and did everything humanly possible for me to go to school. Today, she is no more.”

Continuing, “The night she went into coma, that was the night University of Jos Library went on fire and I was there, fighting with students to protect the place till 4am and in the morning of Sunday, I was still getting feedback from home and I said let me go so I can meet her alive. It was then the other floor of the Library started burning. I stayed back to keep pushing on but by noon, I said I must go to see my mother; but as at the time I got there, she had passed on.”

He maintained that if his mother did all she did for him to go to school, his being at the University was the reason for doing so, saying: “This is the purpose she did all that for me and ‘the show must go on’ as they always say. It is in her honour that I am happy to be here because this is why she wanted me to go to school.”

Caleb Nor

Corporate Affairs Unit

NICO, Abuja