Meet Benue teacher who has master’s degree,plays football despite born without fingers, toes 

Rev. Chaplain Gbamwuan Samuel Teryima, a teacher at Penworth Secondary School in Gboko, Benue State, born without fingers and without toes on one leg, has built a remarkable life of teaching, faith and football — proving that a human life is defined not by what is missing, but by what it does with what remains.

Every morning, Samuel Teryima walks to a blackboard and begins a quiet negotiation that most people will never fully understand.

Born without fingers and without toes on one leg, the Rev. Chaplain and geography teacher at Penworth Secondary School in Gboko, Benue State, has spent decades turning what the world sees as absence into something else entirely — presence, precision, and purpose.

He draws globes on that blackboard. Full ones, with lines of latitude and longitude, rendered with chalk controlled by a body that adapted where others assumed it couldn’t. When students need direction, he simply says: “Just follow the line.” They always do.

Vanguard reported that Samuel’s story begins in Buruku Local Government Area — the seventh of fifteen children born to peasant farmers. His mother set the tone early. When a frustrated young Samuel complained about how long simple tasks took him, she told him something he has never let go: “Life is not a race between hands.” His father added another layer, sitting beside him once during a long water-carrying journey when he wanted to quit, telling him quietly: “Rest if you must, but do not build a house there.”

He didn’t.

From St. Peter’s Primary School in Mkar — where teachers experimented with chalk angles until writing became possible — to the College of Education, Katsina Ala, then a Bachelor of Education with Second Class Upper honours from the University of Calabar, and finally a Master’s in Educational Management from Benue State University, Samuel kept walking.

He also plays football. Without arms for balance, he relies on timing, anticipation and instinct. “People think life is about strength,” he says. “It is often about timing.”

Last February, he lost his wife — a grief still close enough to handle carefully. Three daughters, Patience, Deborah and Bethany, keep him grounded. His congregation says he speaks about suffering like someone still inside it, not someone who escaped.

When asked what he is most proud of, the answer comes instantly: “That I did not allow bitterness to become my identity.”

The chalkboard hasn’t changed. The man standing before it has made all the difference.