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APC’s Long Night | By Lasisi Olagunju

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I saw two bearded, bitter members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Channels TV late last week lamenting. They said ex-PDP leaders were taking over the house they built. They fretted and lamented what was about to happen to their tendency at the party’s national convention. I pitied them. It is not everyone who builds that lives in the house they built. They’ve probably not heard it said before that “fools build houses, and wise men live in them.” It is in Alan Benjamin Cheales’ Proverbial Folk-Lore (1875). W.F. Butler, in his 1911 autobiography, injects a benign variant of that saying: “Fools build houses for other men to live in.” I also saw it somewhere that the men who built the big house of Empire for England “usually get the attic for their own lodgment.” J. Ray in his ‘English Proverbs’ (1670) has an even more ghastly slant: “Fools build houses, and wise men buy them.” Yet, there is at least one more person, J. Kelly who asserts in his ‘Scottish Proverbs’ (1721) that he knew a gentleman who bought land, built a house upon it, and then sold “both house and land to pay the expenses of his building.” All these are contained and explained in the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. Visit them.

So, which of the above sayings would you say fits the unhappy creators of the APC and the party’s new chief occupants? The founding members are unhappy because Abdullahi Adamu is the national chairman and Iyiola Omisore is the national secretary. They have a reason to be sad. They are in the rains; the people they thought they defeated are in their victory house, warm and well. The enemy even holds the yam and the knife now. Adamu was PDP governor of Nasarawa (1999 to 2007), secretary of PDP’s highest organ, the Board of Trustees and was elected PDP Senator in 2011. He left the party in 2014. Omisore was PDP Senator (Osun East) from 2003 to 2011 and an influential member of that party until he left it in 2018. Isaac Kekemeke, the party’s new National Vice Chairman was Secretary to the Ondo State Government under PDP’s Segun Agagu’s governorship. The list is longer than this. These three and more will run the affairs of Nigeria’s ruling party until such a time those who put them on the throne say enough!

Presidential democracy is about two or more cats chasing one mouse. It is also about two or more dogs setting at one bone. The strongest and smartest goes home with satiated belly. It is interesting that ex-PDP men have taken very firm control of the ruling party. Some defanged interests are sulking; they are not happy – but they are quiet – weighing options. Politics has a synonym in the word ‘conundrum’, something my Yoruba people would say means ‘adiitu’ (untieable knot). Why would Muhammadu Buhari strike down his old comrades-at-arms and enthrone Adamu, an old foe? They say it is politics, raw. Politicians would not mind to eat their enemy’s food if it contains the nutrients needed to sprint to power. Morality and talks of integrity have no place in power politics and in the politics of power. That is what happened on Saturday with the APC. The party has enlarged its coast with the strength (and stench) of the enemy so that its cat could catch more mice; and so its dogs could have smoother access to the bones of Nigeria. APC’s rival, the PDP, recently did something almost like that too. PDP’s new national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, was a foundation member of APC’s main content, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); he is also forever a bosom friend of APC’s mafia don, Senator Bola Tinubu. And both do not hide the cosiness of their joint duvet. Political incest and electoral adultery are in-built in such amoral structures.

Politics is war by other means. Politicians operate across enemy lines; they exploit so much the power of darkness to rule their game. Do soldiers in war ever help the enemy? They do guidedly and to their own peril. But politicians do it if it pays them. Own goals are never matters of shame to them. Anything that works, no matter how despicable, is correct and applauded in our politics. But what can we do? Our husbands are the politicians, and they are pragmatists of the darkest hue. And pragmatism teaches its students that life is lived in peace and in full when you pick your strike force from a pool of friends and from the enemy’s bedroom. Hitler did it with his friends and allies during the Night of the Long Knives. The pragmatist in the Nigerian politician sees nothing wrong in eating across enemy lines – and in feeding friends to enemy crocodiles. We won’t, however, be tired of telling him that it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest. Sometimes the Nigerian politician eats the leftovers of the enemy; sometimes he drops food for the enemy. He does this while the stupid children of the poor die fighting his cause. An APC devotee reportedly died in Abuja on Saturday while trekking to the convention venue. His death was reported without a name attached to him. He had no name and will have no memory. He was simply a tool that dropped into the silted bottom of politics.

I listened throughout APC’s Saturday Night of the Long Knives. I laughed as the recalcitrance of unfavoured aspirants melted. One after the other, they spoke to the microphone renouncing their ambitions and praising ‘democratic’ Buhari whose cold-blooded politics aborted their dreams. The contestants plagiarized one another in a competition of obsequity at the feet of the president: I withdraw from this race because of my love for our father, the president; I drop my ambition in deference to our hardworking president; I am no longer interested in this post because the president calls for consensus. Then came the bearded ex-minister from Oyo State who emerged at two minutes to 2am on Sunday to do what he had vowed never to do: He dropped out of the race for Omisore as the secretary of the party. He said it was for the president. They all elevated the president’s wish to that of their party. The gathering was a pageant of absurdity.

The Eagle Square parade had a parallel in ancient Rome. Historians call it ‘The Roman Triumph,’ a riotous rite of victory started by Rome’s legendary founder, Romulus. It involved the near-deification of the triumphator and an endorsement of his wiles and whims. You heard them on Saturday: the president is divine in everything he does. Everyone who spoke at the event had great things to say about their president. Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s speech was very instructive. He said Buhari’s persona was the fortune they all enjoyed. He said the old man “may not be on the ballot” next year. He paused and readjusted his words: “Let me be explicit, you will not be on the ballot in 2023, but you will remain the leading light and moral compass of APC even after your tenure finishes. And, therefore, Mr. President, I’m sorry, you will have little rest, because we will never allow you to go away.” What exactly did Lawan mean by the APC would not let Buhari rest even after his tenure? He could only mean that the party would forever need the incumbent president’s stone celts to strike at enemies and retain his luck to win unthinking votes. But that would not be original. Everything that happened on Saturday was taken from PDP’s operations manual. When it was in power, PDP made sure Obasanjo did no wrong just as today’s APC Buhari. That time, PDP said Obasanjo was their father and mentor forever; even the founders of the APC, including this same Buhari, went to the former president in Abeokuta in 2014 and begged him to come and be their “moral compass” – the exact words which Lawan used for Buhari at the Eagle Square. Try and view again the footage of weekend’s festival of flattery. What can you see there? What is Buhari’s reaction to those rains of blandishments? The cameramen did a very good job focusing on the General with an unsmiling mien. There he is: the president sits straight, looks straight; his deputy, beside him sits, looks not away, but down; his fingers fiddling endlessly with his iPad. The president is probably wiser than his palace bards.

The APC looks increasingly a personal monument to Buhari – for as long as he reigns. Exactly a month ago, I wrote about what I called “APC’s Kabiyesi Politics.” I have had to go back and read the piece all over again. In it, I said Kabiyesi means ‘we dare not question him.’ I added that, indeed, kabiyesiism isn’t strictly an APC doctrinal monopoly. I argued that the philosophy has been the guardian angel of all Nigerian presidents since 1999. I said the president is big and powerful and he is beyond query. I noted that whatever he does or whatever he does not do is very right and very good. I warned that you walk on the edge of his sword at your peril and to your sorrow. Everything played out last week climaxing with Saturday’s crowning of the president’s choices as the minders of the ruling party. The president’s word was the only law that guided the convention.

What does it mean to be the only consequential star in the firmament? There is this evocative genre of Yoruba oral literature called Oriki. Karin Barber, ex-professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, describes Oriki as “a master discourse” which she further says are enigmatic formulations that “commemorate personalities, events and actions.” My mother’s ancestral roots are in the intrepid palace of the Ijesa of Western Nigeria. There is a line in the Ijesa prince/princess’ Oriki which fits the narrative here: omo oni’bo kan, Ibo kan t’o ju oni’bo merindinlogun (child of the owner of one lone vote that is more than 16 votes of others). I donate this line to the children of Nigeria’s Caesar; their father’s vote was the only vote that mattered yesterday; it is the only one that will matter when APC’s presidential primary holds in two months’ time – and, maybe, at our presidential election. If you’ve been visiting palaces and shrines in search of APC ticket for the coming elections, please, stop and do a redirection of your compass. The only prayer that will be answered is the one offered to the real leader of the party, the president. That is the only lesson from weekend’s national convention of the APC and its outcomes.

But that cannot be the democracy people died for. The English say a dry cough is the trumpeter of death. Whatever is poisonous cannot give life. The line of sanity between APC and PDP – and others – is blurred forever by the reigning amorality of anything goes that works. Warwick Chipman, in his ‘Pragmatism and Politics’ (1911) argues that “a democracy forgetting freedom and a philosophy careless of principles…go hand in hand together.” And they are a couple of evil. Chipman deplores the crude practicality of a democracy that threatens to entrammel men; he told “lovers of liberty” that they “must see that a philosophy without a standard, a wisdom that will not criticise, a doctrine that will not lead, is the greatest foe of all that they have to fight.” Everything he describes in that quote is in what we call democracy here. Nigeria’s battle for freedom has not started.

 

Lasisi Olagunju, celebrated columnist writes 

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Opinion

NASS Pensioners: How Akpabio, Abbas Should Not Treat The Elderly

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On Monday and Tuesday last week, workers and political operatives within the precincts of the new Senate building in the National Assembly complex, Abuja, were treated to a replica of the Theatre of the Absurd. This type of drama originated in Europe and later spread to America in the 1950s. It was influenced by existential philosophy and Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus.

In that work, Camus captured the fundamental human needs and compared the absurdity of man’s life with the situation a figure of Greek mythology, Sisyphus found himself, where he was condemned to repeat forever the task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, and repeatedly sees the same roll down the hill as he approaches the top.

He, thereafter, juxtaposed life’s absurdities with what he called the “unreasonable silence” of the universe to human needs and concluded that rather than adopt suicide, in frustration, “revolt” was required.

82-year-old Dr. Muhammed Adamu Fika, former Clerk to the National Assembly and former Chairman, of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), who calls himself the “smaller Adamu Fika,” must have come across the Camus essay in deciding to lead an emergency meeting of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries of the National Assembly on November 18. The emergency meeting, which was jointly held with members of the Association of Retired Staff of the National Assembly was meant to salvage the pathetic plights of the National Assembly retirees.

Eighty-two-year-old Fika can hardly gather the pace to navigate round the corners of the National Assembly, but he insisted on making the trip to enable him to preside over the meeting as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries. As his retiree colleagues, many of whom are far younger, saw him struggling to walk the required distance from the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Library, originally fixed as venue to the new Senate building, they had to provide some shoulders to lean on. At one stage, an office chair was converted to a wheelchair to ensure the elderly Fika got to certain locations. It was a sad tale, especially if you look at the essence of Fika’s trip to the National Assembly. He was there to preside over a meeting to press home the need for the payment of the entitlements of National Assembly retirees. An alarm had earlier been sounded on the different Whatsapp platforms of the retired workers of the National Assembly to the effect their members were dying in numbers. It was revealed that no fewer than 20 retired workers had died awaiting the payment of their entitlements in the recent past. Another set of retirees numbering 12 were said to have been bedridden in different hospitals across the land. That alarm was more than enough to prompt Fika and his retiree colleagues to an emergency meeting. But the sight of an elderly man, fighting a just cause on an improvised wheelchair was more than absurd.

Payment of the entitlements got stalled after former President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which mandated the National Pensions Commission (PENCOM) to hand over assets of the staff of the National Assembly in its custody after the passage of the National Assembly pension law.

In the beginning, there were no signs that things would go south on the implementation of the Act. Three months after the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act came into effect, PENCOM had written the management to convey its decision to hand off the pension assets of the staff of the National Assembly, while requesting the National Assembly management to provide it with account details to remit the accrued funds. The 10th Senate and the House of Representatives also provided hope for the retirees by providing a take-off grant to the tune of N2.5 billion in the 2024 budget. However, the NASS management could not comply with the request from PENCOM because the Pensions Board had not been inaugurated. Months after months, the retirees waited. Those who were already enjoying their benefits when PENCOM was administering had the payments terminated, while the waiting game ensued.

In trying to fast-track the implementation of the Act, Fika, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries had forwarded a letter to the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, intimating them of the council’s recommendations for positions in the National Assembly Service Pensions Board.

Fika said in the letter, dated February 27, 2024, that “Considering the pathetic health conditions of our retired colleagues, Your Excellency will agree with me that the establishment of the National Assembly Pensions Board is overdue five (5) months after Mr. President’s assent.” He said that his letter was premised on the provisions of Sections 2 and 17(3) of the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which indicate that the presiding officers of the National Assembly shall make the appointments subject to recommendations of the Council of Clerks and Secretaries. But some persons are insinuating that the undue delay might have been instigated by two strange bedfellows-politics and money. Where the two are involved, simply things hardly follow a straight course. However, nothing justifies the nearly 20-month delay in inaugurating the Pensions Board.

At the end of the emergency meeting on Monday, further meetings were said to have been scheduled at the instance of the Senate President, Akpabio, his deputy, Jibril Barau and others but there were no conclusive steps, yet.

A communique released after the meeting indicated that the retirees observed that the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023 went through full legislative process in the 9th National Assembly and was assented to by President Muhammad Buhari. It further noted that the delay in implementing the Act has caused undue and untold hardship to the retirees who are unable to access their retirement benefits, adding that while a number of the retired Staff have died, many others are bedridden due to sufferings occasioned by the non-payment of their entitlements.

According to the communique, the meeting decried the pains the retired staff have been subjected to and recalled that appropriate recommendations as per the composition of the Pensions Board have been made to the Presiding Officers of the National Assembly, in line with the enabling Act.

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The Fuji Music House Of Commotion

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Like every lover of Yoruba traditional music, language and culture, I have of recent been inundated with requests to lend a voice to the newest raging fire in the Fuji music genre. Since the passage of Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Balogun, popularly known as Ayinde Barrister or Agbajelola Barusati, there have been longstanding tiffs on whom of the trio of Ayinde Omogbolahan Anifowose, KWAM 1; self-named King Saheed Osupa (K.S.O.) and Wasiu Alabi Pasuma, was the “King.”

These musicians’ recent quest for supremacy is not new. From time immemorial, supremacy battles have been part and parcel of Yoruba music. Apparently now tempered by modernity, in the olden days, the battles were fought with traditional spells, incantations and talisman aimed at deconstructing and liquidating their rivals. Mostly fought on genre basis, I submit that pre and post-independence entertainment scene would have been livelier, far more robust than it was but for the acrimonious liquidating fights of those eras.

In the Sakara music, Abibu Oluwa, a revered early precursor of this Yoruba musical genre, who reigned in the late 1920s and 1930s, had Salami Alabi Balogun, popularly known as Lefty Salami, Baba Mukaila and Yusuff Olatunji as members of his band. Oluwa praise-sang many Lagos elites of his time, especially Herbert Macaulay to whom he sang his praise in the famous track named “Macaulay Macaulay.” In it, he sang the foremost Nigerian nationalist’s alias of Ejonigboro – Snake on the Street and prayed that he would not come to shame.

Sakara also produced the likes of S. Aka Baba Wahidi, Kelani Yesufu (alias Kelly). It was sung with traditional Yoruba instruments like the solemn-sounding goje violin whose history is traced to the north, and the roundish Sakara drum, beaten with stick and whose appearance is like that of a tambourine. Sakara music is often called the Yoruba variant of western blues music because of its brooding rhythm though laced with a high dosage of philosophy.

When Oluwa died in 1964, he literally handed over to Lefty who, born on October 1913, died December 29, 1981. Lefty, a talking drummer under Oluwa, churned out over 35 records before his demise, one of which was a tribute to Lagos monarch, Oba Adele (Adele l’awa nfe – Oba Adele is the king we want) and another to the Elegushi family. I dwelt considerably on Sakara because it is believed to have had considerable influence on other genres of traditional African Yoruba music, especially Apala and Fuji, with the former sometimes indistinguishable from Sakara.

Apala music, whose exponent is said to be Haruna Ishola, originated in the late 1930s Nigeria. Delivered with musical instruments like a rattle (Sekere) thumb piano, (agidigbo) drums called Iya Ilu and Omele, a bell (agogo) and two or three talking drums, Apala and Sakara are the most complex of these genres of traditional Yoruba music, due to their infusion of philosophy, incantations and dense Yoruba language into their mix. Distinct, older and more difficult in mastery than Fuji music which is considered to be comparatively easy to sing, Ayinla Omowura, Ligali Mukaiba, Kasumu Adio, and many others were Apala leading lights of the time. The three genres have very dense Islamic background.

The latest entrant of all the three genres is Fuji. Pioneered by Ayinde Barrister no doubt, for an Apala musician biographer like me, I am confused that Omowura, as far back as early 1970s, asked listeners in need of good Fuji music to come learn from him – “Fuji t’o dara, e wa ko l’owo egbe wa…” Sorry, I digressed.

While KWAM 1 emerged with his Talazo music from the ashes of his being a music instrument arranger for Barrister’s musical organization in the early 1980s, the feud in the house after Barrister’s death erupted when narratives allegedly oozed unto the musical scene that KWAM 1 referred to himself as the creator of Fuji music. He however promptly denied the claim. For decades, Osupa and Pasuma were locked in horns over supremacy of the Fuji music genre. In August 2023, the two however seemed to have decided to thaw their feud as they shared stage with Wasiu Ayinde, at Ahmad Alawiye Folawiyo, an Islamic singer’s 50th birthday celebration in Lagos. KWAM 1 glibly acted as their senior colleague at the event.

As an indication that they are no bastards of the teething and recurrent supremacy battles that emblemize traditional Yoruba music, the three Fuji music icons seem to have gone into the trenches again. It first started with Taiye Currency, an Ibadan-based alter-ego of Pasuma picking a fight with the musician who self-styled himself Son of Anobi Muhammed’s Wife. In a viral video, Currency had disclaimed reference to Pasuma as his “father” in the music industry. In another video not long after, KWAM 1, like some kind of father figure, was shown asking Currency to apologize to Pasuma.

A few days ago, a video of Osupa went viral. Therein, he was chastising a particular hypocrite he called “Onirikimo” and “alabosi”, who is “stingy and is ready to shamelessly collect money from those under him.” Osupa also claimed that this “shameless elder” had strung a ring of corn round his waist and should be ready to be made fun of by hens. Watchers of the endless tiffs among these Fuji icons swear that KWAM 1 was the unnamed Fuji musician Osupa was casting aspersion on.

The trio of Sakara, Apala and Fuji music also witnessed such petty squabbles. While many claim that the fights were promotional gambits aimed at having their fans salivate for their hate-laced musical attacks against one another, some others claim that the rivalries were genuine. In the Apala music scene, Haruna Ishola and Kasumu Adio fought each other to the nadir, with Adio, who sang almost in the same voice and cadence as Ishola, suddenly vamoosing from the musical scene. Rumours and speculations had it then that a mysterious goat bit Adio and rendered him useless. While Ayinla Omowura also fought Fatai Olowonyo, Fatai Ayilara, among others in the Apala genre, the duo of Yusuff Olatunji and S. Aka also feuded till their last days. This is not to mention the interminable fight between Kollington Ayinla and Barrister.

If the tiff between the trio of KWAM 1, Osupa and Pasuma is about age and Yoruba traditional respect for elders, KWAM 1 would easily go away with the trophy of the best of the three. However, if philosophical depth, musical elan, research of lyrics and deployment of Yoruba language are at issue, none of the other two musicians can unbuckle Osupa’s sandals. Osupa began his musical career in 1983 as a teenager and has gone through the mills, his late father being a musician, too and Awurebe music lord, Dauda Epo Akara’s musical contemporary.

Unlike their predecessors, the three Fuji musicians are literate and should thus address their musical issues in more mature manner. Osupa even recently bagged a degree from the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. One thing they should know is that, whether one is supreme to the other or not, their fans will readily queue behind the brand that delights them.

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Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror

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Two incidents happened during the 1994/95 NYSC service year, which I was part of in Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi State, and they gave me profound culture shocks that I still remember till today. I would equally say that those incidents probably justified the Federal Government’s decision to float the scheme.

 

We were told that part of the reasons General Yakubu Gowon floated the NYSC was to ensure national integration, cohesion and exposure of young Nigerians to cultures of other parts of the country other than where they were born.

First was the shock of seeing a director that I was attached to in the then Government House, who had just taken a new wife, and sat among drivers, gate men and other junior staff to dine. I saw them seated round a huge iron pot of Koko, a local delicacy, exchanging one big spoon made of calabash, as each took turns to use the spoon to eat the delicacy. It was as if I was witnessing a scene where children of a big family were struggling to catch a portion of food or where people were eating Saara, as they say it in Yorubaland.

As I walked past the noisy crowd, I was transfixed seeing the newly-wedded director among the lot. He saw me standing still, as I couldn’t comprehend what he was doing there, and he got the message. ‘Taiyo, (as he used to call me) you won’t understand,’ he said as he waved to me to keep going. When we later saw, he explained that what he just did was a way of assuring the commoners that ‘we are all one,’ as they felicitated him on the new bride. But I could not fathom how the occupant of a ‘huge office’ as that of a director in a Government House , would sit among “commoners” on a tattered mat to share a single spoon and eat in public.
The other incident was quite pathetic. My friend, Tunde Omobuwa, was posted to a school in Yauri, in the southern part of the state, for his primary assignment. But he found the place boring on weekends. So, he arranged to always be with me on weekends.

One such weekend, we decided to take a stroll round the streets near the Government House. We took off from the place of my primary assignment, the Federal Information Centre; bought corn beside the office, and started ‘blowing’ the ‘mouth organ’ as we strolled. We were too engrossed in our gist and the sweetness of the corn to note that some young boys were trailing us, praying that some leftovers of the corn would drop for them to scavenge. Somehow, the two of us dropped the corn cob almost simultaneously. We were more than taken aback by a commotion that erupted at our back. Four eight or nine year-olds had descended on the supposed leftovers and broken the corn cobs into pieces. I was again transfixed as if one was hit by an electric shock. Remember that feeling when you play with electric fish?

I was moved to tears as I had never ever seen a group of children scavenging on nothing as it were. I beckoned to the kids and offered them N20, which was the highest denomination at the time, and with some smattering Hausa words told them to go buy their own corn from the same place we got ours. As they left, heading to the corn seller, I couldn’t erase that ugly sight from my mind. Was it really possible that some people scavenge on nothing this way? I was later to see incidents of children swarming around restaurants and pouncing on near empty plates.

These incidents told me clearly that the North was a different place and that the life of the boy child is not only risky and endangered but sold to stagnation and deprivation, unless you are one of the lucky few.

Having benefited from the free education policy of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) between 1979 and 1983, when the Second Republic was terminated, I knew that there is a lot the government can do in educating the children. In my secondary school days, I was the Library Prefect at one point, and so I saw an excess of books supplied by the government to our school. So, I was an example of the feasibility of free education. It was the same way the Action Group government had handled education in the years preceding Nigeria’s independence and the First Republic.

So why can’t the state governments in the North declare free and compulsory education for the young ones out there? Why should children be made to scavenge on empty corn cobs just to see if they can find pieces of seeds left over?

And why was my director giving drivers and gate men in the Government House false hope that they were all the same, instead of him to challenge them to seek to lift themselves up the social ladder?
I think there was no excuse for the North not to have adopted a free education policy, just as Chief Obafemi Awolowo did in the South-West. And if we say the North needs to look itself in the mirror, you again remember the efforts by President Goodluck Jonathan to educate the multitude of Northern children through the Almajiri Schools. That government built more than 400 of such schools, which were abandoned because it could upset the oligarchy. The oligarchs forgot the truism that the children of the poor they refuse to train today won’t let their children sleep peacefully.

But the governor of Borno State, Prof Babagana Zulum, appears to have got the message. Last week, I was thrilled to see him organise a summit to reform the Almajiri system.

The Almajiri education system is a traditional Islamic method of learning widely obtained across states in northern Nigeria. Through that system, which is tied to Islamic teaching, youths, especially boys are kept out of the formal western education system. I don’t know why the teachings by Islamic scholars cannot go alongside that of Western education as it obtains in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other Islamic countries that are doing well economically and in the world of science, technology.
While addressing the summit, Zulum had mentioned the need to address the root causes of insecurity through the provision of education for citizens of Borno, adding that improper teaching of Islamic studies has contributed to the emergence of Boko Haram insurgents in the state.

According to him, to curtail whatever is the adverse effect of Almajiri education; the Borno State Government has established the Arabic and Sangaya Education Board to introduce a unified curriculum for Sangaya and Islamic schools. He said that the reform would include establishing Higher Islamic Colleges to cater for Almajiri children and blending the religious teachings with the secular curricula as well as skills.
He said: “The Sangaya Reform is a great development. It will give Almajiri a better chance in life, particularly the introduction of integrating western education, vocational, numeracy, and literacy skills into the centres, which are also described as Almajiri and Islamic schools.

“Distinguished guests and esteemed educationists, government’s intention was to streamline the informal and formal education systems to quality integrated Sangaya School for admission into colleges and universities.”

One would have thought that governors with radical postures like Nasir el-Rufai and others before him would have proposed this type of reform, but it is better late than never. Zulum should be supported to get something out of this.

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