The Head of Citi FM/Citi TV’s Sports Desk, Fentuo Tahiru Fentuo, has been hailed by his former student after he paid her fees during his national service at some point to enable her complete her Senior High School education.
The lady took to her Facebook wall to express her heartfelt gratitude to Fentuo who was her English tutor during his national service days.
In the Facebook post, the lady by name, Nana Ephya Audrey Sam, disclosed that she decided to stop schooling when she could no longer pay her fees, but felt too embarrassed to talk about it.
According to her, although her parents were alive, her father paid little attention to her education.
“When I couldn’t pay my fees in SHS, and I had to stay home for almost a term, one day, Fentuo Tahiru asked me to come to school. He was my literature and English tutor. I had initially lied that I was leaving the school to a different one, just so I wasn’t laughed at by my mates. But Fentuo knew why. I was constantly driven out of school because of fees. And no one ever cared to help. I had my parents, but my dad paid little to no attention to my education.”
“The humiliation was too much, so I opted to stay home. When Fentuo asked me to come, he had already spoken to the administration to let me study at his expense. He became very close. He would walk with me after school, talk to me. He became the dad I wanted my father to be. For some young man coming from a not too rosy place, trying to build his life after university, it would seem a burden to cater for the fees of someone he didn’t really know. But he didn’t let it bother him,” the lady said in a Facebook post.
Fentuo Tahiru Fentuo, then an English Tutor at the Kings College, met Miss Audrey Sam in 2010/2011. She subsequently completed SHS in 2013.
After securing a Higher National Diploma, HND, she’s now pursuing a degree at the Kumasi Technical University.
Audrey Sam currently works with an advertising agency in Kumasi.
Fentuo Tahiru’s reaction
Asked why he was motivated to help the student although life wasn’t rosy for him, Fentuo told citinewsroom.com that he helped out because he understood what it meant to be from a poor background.
“When you come from the background that I did; poor and unable to afford school fees, you have special understanding of what students in such situation go through. And she was one of the brightest students in the class and I couldn’t afford to see her quit school simply because she couldn’t afford fees. So I did the only thing that made sense to me- help her.”
Fentuo also says the public recognition of his act of kindness is a surprise to him because he had forgotten about the incident.
“It’s humbling to see her post to be honest. I had totally forgotten about it because it happened so many years ago and my life is so different now as I’m no longer a teacher. Her post certainly reminded me of why I took up teaching in the first place. But this is only a small example of the greater impact so many teachers have had on students in similar situations. This story should inspire them to keep helping whenever they can. The best way to live life is to live it forward. I hope Sam is able to extend a helping hand of her own in the future”.