The enduring nickname of Mr. Tanko Rashid-Computer, the Deputy National Elections Director of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), is a direct legacy of his extraordinary talent in the classroom, dating back to his early academic days.
Mr. Tanko-Computer revealed in a recent interview on JoyNews’ Personality Profile that the name was bestowed upon him by a mathematics teacher impressed by his calculative speed and conceptual clarity.
The nickname, which has become so ubiquitous that many in Ghana know him only as “Computer,” stemmed from his ability to grasp and solve complex problems faster than his peers.
Mr. Tanko explained that the formative incident occurred during a mathematics lesson where the teacher, whose accent or “slang” at the time was difficult for many of his classmates to understand, relied on him as a personal teaching assistant.
“I was the only person who could understand what the lady was doing. Wow. So I was more or less like a PA to her,” he recalled. The teacher would complete a lesson and then turn to him to simplify the concepts for the rest of the class.
“She will finish and okay, ‘Tanko, come and explain to your colleagues. They seem not to understand what I’m doing.’”
Mr. Tanko said that Mathematics and Science were his best subjects, a direct result of his innate abilities. He described his proficiency in the subject with the analogy: “Math was like drinking water to me.”
The nickname was a direct acknowledgement of his mental processing speed, which the teacher likened to a machine. Mr. Tanko noted that he could often predict the solution before the lesson’s methodology was fully articulated.
“She used to call me ‘computer’, and I didn’t understand what a computer was, but she was calling me ‘computer’,” he stated. “I’m sure because of the way I used to work maths, and then she will bring the formulas—I’ll even get the answers before we start putting it together and all this. So that’s how the name came about.”
A separate report confirmed this detail, stating that on one math examination, Mr. Tanko scored 98 out of 100, while the next highest student scored 57, prompting his teacher, reportedly Madam Katherine, to exclaim: “This is a computer man.”
The name, which started as an academic compliment, quickly caught on among his peers and became an indelible part of his identity.
“So from that area she gave the computer, computer. She started calling [me] computer, computer, and well, I say I have to just take the name,” he said.
Though his career path eventually took him from pure science into IT lecturing and now to the strategic hub of the NDC’s election directorate, his nickname remains a constant testament to his early intellectual brilliance, demonstrating the foundational role of mathematical precision in his highly analytical political work today.
About the Author
