ALHASSAN ABDULAI SUHUYINI

Headmaster and chief of Gbalahi who ate last and taught thousands of Tamale children

There is a Dagbamba saying that a chief is the one who eats last, and Alhassan Suhuyini took it literally. At every Damba feast he served the guests first, the elders second, the children third, and sat down at the end of the mat to whatever was left, laughing.

Born in Savelugu in 1944, he was the son of a farmer and Quranic teacher who insisted that his son learn both his alphabet and his Arabic. After Savelugu Middle Boarding School he entered the Tamale Teacher Training College, qualifying in 1964 and starting as a classroom teacher in a village school that had no desks. He taught there on a mat, under a neem tree, for two years before the district built a classroom.

Over thirty-five years with the Ghana Education Service he taught or headed schools across the Northern Region, finishing as headmaster of Gbalahi Primary School from 1979 to 2004. He walked or cycled to work in all weather with a flask of tea on his handlebars, and made a point of visiting the home of any child who missed more than two days. More than three thousand pupils passed through his classrooms.

In 2004 the elders of Gbalahi enskinned him as their chief. He settled land disputes with patience, attended every naming and every funeral, and saw to it that every child in his chiefdom enrolled in school, girls first. He loved tuo zaafi with ayoyo soup, the Harmattan mornings, and the long evenings of the Damba festival.

He died at the Tamale Teaching Hospital in December 2023 after a short illness. He leaves his wife, four children and twenty-six grandchildren, and a town full of former pupils.

“A chief eats last, and a teacher goes home last.”