They Burned Everything Except My Dream — The Story of Godwin Ishaku, Nigeria

The following is adapted from Dream, Plan, Do! by Thomas M. Wells .

Every car needs fuel to function. In the same way, perseverance and resilience are essential to achieving dreams and building a successful career. Expecting success without effort is like trying to start a car with an empty tank. My life is a testament to this truth.

I am from Borno State, in the northern part of Nigeria, born into a family of struggling farmers. Our state motto is "Home of Peace," and we had enjoyed peace for as long as anyone could remember. My friends and I were dreaming big. Then, in 2014, the terrorist group Boko Haram came.

On one fateful night, while the whole community slept, my family and I were awakened by the deadly sound of guns coming from every direction. Bullets flew everywhere. Flames consumed houses, property, and many precious souls. We ran for the mountains and nearby caves, not knowing whether we would make it. Many people did not. When we returned days later, we found nothing. The terrorists had burned everything to ashes: the market, the shops, the school, our places of worship, our home. The only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing.

After days of hunger and thirst, we found temporary refuge in a community in Adamawa State, until the terrorists attacked there too. With the help of strangers who paid my transport fare, I made it to Abuja. I thought life would be better there. Instead, it was in Abuja that I first learned what it means to be homeless and hopeless. I hawked pure water by day to find something to eat, and at night I slept inside a damaged vehicle or under a bridge. My dream of becoming a medical doctor was still alive in me, but it was becoming faceless. Survival was all I could think about.

Then Home for the Needy Foundation came to my aid and offered me the chance to complete secondary school, where I finished as one of the best-graduating students. I was offered university admission twice, but financial constraints forced me to forfeit both. Still, I refused to regard myself as a failure. I kept applying until the Wells Mountain Initiative believed in me and offered me a life-changing scholarship.

Today, I am a fourth-year student of medicine and surgery at the University of Benin, having concluded my preclinical classes with a good grade. And I don't want to be just another doctor confined to diagnostics and the theater room. I want to be at the forefront of healthcare, carrying out research and shaping smart health policies that improve the global healthcare system.

If you ask what has brought me this far, I will tell you: God first, and then perseverance and resilience. Difficult times must come, but they do not come to kill you. They come to make you strong. When there is life, there is hope, and once resilience and perseverance are fully at work in you, your dream is realizable.

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For more advice on pursuing your dreams through perseverance and resilience, you can find Dream, Plan, Do! on Amazon.

Thomas M. Wells, founder of the Wells, Jaworski & Liebman law firm, practiced law for more than four decades before retiring and becoming “of counsel.”

In 2005, he founded Wells Mountain Initiative (WMI), fostering social change and funding undergraduate studies for over a thousand students from high-need areas worldwide. For their work with WMI, he and his wife, Carol, received Distinguished Citizenship Awards from Bucknell University in 2015 and honorary doctorates in humane letters from Middlebury College in 2023.

Wells serves on the board of directors of the YMCA d’Haiti, is a trustee of the Ridgewood YMCA, and serves on several public company boards. An alumnus of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Bucknell University, he lives in Vermont and the Virgin Islands.