26/07/2025
“I Was the Child Who Wasn’t Supposed to Be Born”: Sarah Ayashim Redefines Single Motherhood and Academic Greatness
When life said she couldn’t, Sarah Ayashim answered with excellence.
Today, she stands proud as the Best Graduating Nursing Student from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS), finishing with an outstanding First Class GPA of 4.61. But behind the applause is a story of grit, grace, and a refusal to be defined by circumstance.
Born and raised in Zangon Kataf, Kaduna State, Sarah was raised by a single mother who carried both hope and heartbreak. From the start, society tagged her — “a child born out of wedlock.” But Sarah was determined to rewrite that label.
“I wanted my life to prove that my existence is not a mistake,” she said.
Her dream was to study Medicine. But in 2017, JAMB had other plans. Rather than wait, she enrolled at the College of Nursing and Midwifery in Kafanchan, where she discovered a true passion for nursing. She wrote JAMB again and gained admission into UDUS in 2018.
Getting in was just the beginning.
She quickly noticed something, no Christian student had ever graduated with a First Class in Nursing at UDUS. Some tried. None succeeded. That unspoken trend might have scared others. For Sarah, it became fuel.
> “If only one person gets an A in this class,” she told herself, “it has to be me.”
And she meant it.
In her second year, she had surgery — while others were going home for break, she was recovering. In her fourth year, her mother lost her job, and Sarah faced harsh financial challenges. But she never backed down.
Instead, she built a system — studying from the first week of every semester, breaking her day into 2-hour intervals, and taking sharp notes during lectures. She paid attention to what lecturers emphasized, not just what they said.
Her academic records never slipped:
✅ 100L – 4.71
✅ 200L – 4.73
✅ 300L – 4.71
✅ 400L – 4.64
✅ Final year – 4.61
Through it all, her biggest inspiration was her mother
