Opinion
Aregbesola, political treachery and the Ijebu-Jesa sermon
Chinua Achebe’s Tortoise folktale in his highly celebrated Things Fall Apart, among other motifs, excoriates an act of betrayal as evil. In having Ekwefi, one of his characters, narrate the proverbial cunning and treachery of the Tortoise to her daughter Ezinma, Achebe attempted to paint a moral canvass suggestive of the fact that traitors always take fatal leaps that eventually lead to their unraveling. Like the tortoise, they break their shell carapace.
This is Ekwefi’s narration: There once lived a very avaricious Tortoise whose greed knew no bounds and which eventually became its tragic flaw. One day, with the general awareness that birds were planning a huge feast in the sky, Tortoise met the Chief of Birds and pleaded with him to get his bird colleagues to make him partake of the feast. But the wings with which he would fly became a challenge. After pleading passionately with them, reluctantly, the birds agreed to each donate feathers to him so that he could be able to fly heavenwards and partake of the feast. On getting to the feast venue, Tortoise’s tragic flaw then took the best of him as he announced to all in attendance that his name had changed to “All of us.”
Unsuspecting of his manipulative motive by then, by the time the meals arrived for “all of you” and Tortoise cornered them to himself so that he could take them back to earth, his name being “All of us,” his cunning dawned on all of the birds. Miffed by this colossal deceit and selfish greed, the birds demanded that he returned their feathers to them. Left all alone, Tortoise pleaded to be done the last favour: the birds should help tell his wife to arrange soft cushions for him so that when he leapt earthwards, his fall would not be fatal. Conversely however, the birds told Tortoise’s wife to arrange a pile of stones, upon which he fell and which broke its shell till this day.
To Achebe, the above folklore was a symbolic foretelling of the calamity that awaited Okonkwo for partaking in the killing of Ikemefuna. While the Tortoise’s tragic flaw was greed, Okonkwo’s was pride and incestuous betrayal of the filial bond that existed between a father and the sonship of a foster surrogacy. Remember that grisly, gripping forewarning to Okonkwo by Ogbuefi Ezeudu, the oldest man in Okonkwo’s clan of Umuofia: “That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death.” This is because acts of betrayal rankle the spleen of society. It is why society approximates a link between treachery, avarice for power and the fit of epilepsy. They all seize their victim all of a sudden. The common thread that runs through them is that, when victims are in its fit, shame takes flight.
On Monday February 14, 2022, a known surrogate of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, two-term governor of Lagos State and presidential aspirant on the platform of the APC, former Osun State governor and Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, leapt into negative reckoning for mordantly attacking his benefactor. The bile, the magisterial arrogance and the Godlike sense of irreplaceability that dripped out of the address delivered by Aregbesola in Yoruba at a political gathering in Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State instantly gained traction on the social media, which gave readers the latitude to label him a traitor.
This has provoked the need for an examination of the concept of betrayal, what it means to betray and who a betrayer is. By definition, betrayal is an act of breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust and confidence. This rupturing of a written or unwritten contract produces a moral and psychological conflict. The person who betrays an ideal, a country or a person is commonly referred to as a traitor or betrayer.
There have been several acts of betrayal in history. When betrayers strike, their actions provoke a constellation of negative behaviours, thoughts, and feelings among their victims and society. In Yorubaland for instance, an act of betrayal is not only excoriated, betrayers are ostracized.
In Nigerian politics, where a stupendously wealthy political patron hands over power to a client, there have been claims and counter claims of betrayals. These have provoked the moral or otherwise in betrayal. In other words, when a political patron, who most times subverts the process, loots resources to benefit a client, does his client have a moral right to remain true to their agreement? Does anyone have to abide by the ethos of written, unwritten, sworn or unsworn agreement between a client and the patron?
Political betrayal became an issue during the First Republic between Nnamdi Azikiwe, KO Mbadiwe, RBK Okafor and JOJ Okezie, as well as between Obafemi Awolowo and S. L. Akintola. During the Nigerian Fourth Republic, the tiff between Jim Nwobodo and Chimaroke Nnamani after the 1999 Enugu gubernatorial elections also became a subject of discourse. So also the 2003 tiff between Chris Uba, the barely literate but stupendously wealthy Anambra businessman and Chris Ngige, which exposed the destructive phenomenon, as well as revealing the sacral importance of traditional African oath in the service of abidance to agreements. The Uba-Ngige issue shows the phenomenon of abidance to political oaths as being sustained by recourse to African traditional medicine, whereby the godfather and godson go before grooves of renowned destructive shrines to swear oaths of allegiance. Ubah had financed the election of Ngige to be governor of Anambra, pulling him by the nape of his trousers to the Okija shrine to swear by an oath of abidance, at about 2 a.m. At midnight, a naked Ngige performed the rituals which involved dead bodies, his dangling member revealing the shame of godfatherism.
In Lagos, there was also the Tinubu-Raji Fashola experiment. What many saw, for almost four years, was matrimony worthy of an example. Not until the re-election campaign of Fashola in 2011 did the cracks begin to be noticeable, revealing a godfather/godson relationship as the proverbial seeds in a walnut pod, ostensibly in the distribution of the largesse of power. In many other states at this time, the matrimonies became a bedlam almost immediately. In Enugu, for instance, Sullivan Chime was still a governor-elect when he started to undo all that his mentor did. He spent eight years trying to pull down the Ebeano house that midwifed him. Orji Kalu suffered same fate in Abia, where his erstwhile chief of staff, T. A. Orji, who was in the EFCC custody while his election was taking place, eventually emerged governor. Orji spent his years in government firing ballistic missiles at Kalu who spent billions of state funds to skew the process in his favour.
The above political treachery has been replicated in virtually all the states, even in the 2015 elections where the anointed godsons, having mutated to become godfathers themselves, attempted to foist their own godsons too as successors. In Anambra, Peter Obi, while shopping for a godson, sidestepped the generally accepted skewer-minded political class, and walked into the supposedly sane banking hall as he searched for an urbane, corporate world executive. He got Willie Obiano. Less than a year after, the strange, somber-looking Obiano had transmuted from the gentleman who couldn’t hurt a fly into a stone-hearted political pall-bearer who strenuously presided over Obi’s political funeral. Same was replicated in Kano where Umar Ganduje, erstwhile Rabiu Kwankwaso’s lickspittle, became a hydra-headed monster who seeks to swallow his ex-boss. The rift between Emmanuel Uduaghan and his cousin, James Ibori was also alleged to be an act of betrayal.
At Ijebu-jesa, from the word go, Aregbesola did not leave anyone in doubt that he was embarking on an institutional insurrection. The speech began with a pugnacious howl you will find in a fight-baiting Alsatian dog. His APC faction in Osun, he began in the dexterous weave of bile, was the core Afenifere – a progressive group that genuinely loves the people, Awolowo’s group, Bola Ige’s group and “Baba Akande’s group, before he partly left us.” It is a known fact that Akande currently daily picks flowers in Tinubu’s garden.
“We followed and served this leader with all our might. In fact, our loyalty to him had caused some people to start wondering if we were no longer Muslims… Sadly, we didn’t know that while we wished him well, he didn’t think good of us. However, because we placed him higher than where he ordinarily should be, he started to think he is our god….By the time my successor was handed over to me around July or May 2018, I was told, ‘Rauf, this is the ideal successor that would stand by you. He would further showcase your efforts. He would not betray you; he would not dim the light of your glory’. That was what the person, who handed him over to me said. If the person is listening to me, it would resonate with him, if he said so or not. But, did he do as he was vouched for? And when he reneged on these promises, did the person, who handed him over to me draw his attention to these failings? Anyway, isn’t the person the one we now see today?” Aregbesola had waffled endlessly (all bold italics mine).
With the above, the question remains, is there morality; or should there be morality, in political patron-client relationship? This reminds one of that famous statement from Fashola which articulates the moral dilemma of the godson to his godfather. Fashola, apparently at a critical juncture of a loyalty intersection, had, prayer-like, supplicated, “may our loyalty never be tested.” In flagellating Aregbesola, so many tales have been told about how he literally emerged from the gutters and is today a man of political reckoning, courtesy Tinubu. The Lagos landlord was said to have spent billions of naira to install this erstwhile lickspittle of his as governor of Osun, rising from being a Personal Assistant to him for about few months after the January 1999 election, to being Commissioner for Works, seconded to Osun where he served two-terms as governor and currently, minister. The godfather also allowed the Minister to grow a hydra-headed political base in the Alimoso area of Lagos. So why was Aregbesola making an issue of “serving ‘this person’” with the whole of his might, against someone who gave him this colossal uplift?
Aregbesola’s followers however say that the support was vicarious, that the cache of political favour was mutual and that the godfather was the ultimate beneficiary. For instance, they said that the former governor, known for his eclectic spirituality, was allegedly Tinubu’s marabout and spiritual Man Friday. More importantly, Aregbesola was also said to have been planted in Osun as an agent, ajele in Yoruba. If this then is so, the agent ought to know that he was not sent out by the godfather so that he could become another godfather. The Yoruba will say that a farmhand does not plant plantain or kolanut. If he does so, he would be seen as a farm grabber because as the Yoruba say again, if the beard of a labourer is as long as the distance of Bourdilon to Ebira land, his master remains his master forever. So, knowing the self as the roots of his so-called push to the top and perhaps the subversion of societal norm that went into the process of his push up by the patron, can it be said that Aregbesola and other political godsons who dealt treacherously with their patrons, were/are guilty of a moral subversion?
What will seem to be an answer to this knotty moral dilemma is that ancient Western aphorism which says that there should be honour even among thieves. It was lusciously propounded by Salawa Abeni, the self-styled Queen of Waka music who, in one of her songs, sang: “I have partaken in spending from proceeds of your wealth so I am barred from joining in abusing you.” What that means is that, no matter how amoral the proceeds of wealth of the patron that sustains the ascendancy of the client is, the moment the client decides to close their eyes to the immorality behind the acquisition, they are barred from moralizing their treachery against the patron. This convicts Aregbesola and other political godsons in allegation of rank treachery. In the case of the Minister of Interior, like the Tortoise at the feast in the sky, he became the “All of us,” manifesting a triad of audacious greed for power at the expense of his godfather, ultra political selfishness and assuming the ultimate power of God or Fredrich Nietsche’s Superman.
No matter the pains, discomfort and acts of betrayal a political client suffers in the hands of his patron, escalating the disagreement to the absurd level that Aregbesola did in Ijebu-Jesa was treasonous. Apparently, having been privileged to be in the inner caucus of his patron, the Minister, ipso facto, sees himself as having transmuted to the same level with the godfather. Which is a fatal flaw in the laws of power. The consensus of mind between him and his Ijebu-Jesa political gathering bred that ad-lib reference to “those who are now urinating on themselves” by one of his cohorts. By refraining from immediately censoring the author of the ad-lib, it will appear to suggest what lawyers call consensus ad idem between him and the author of the quip.
Now, Aregbesola has met the first level of his waterloo, his candidate having recorded a colossal loss in the Osun APC primary held on Saturday. When traitors exhibit their treachery, there is often room for mending of fences between them and the patron. However, the scar may never heal enough to be totally off being seen. Tinubu’s political odyssey is said to be replete with a baffling path of forgiving traitors. However, that Ijebu-Jesa misadventure, for Aregbesola, and his loss of face and gradual decimation in Osun politics, may be a signal to a gradual nunc-dimitis of his political relevance, preparatory to a political well that is beginning to run dry. His loss today in the Osun gubernatorial primary will seem to be the beginning of a long dip into political abyss. The problem with treachery is that, it provokes and legitimizes future intra-group treachery against the traitor himself too. When this happens, the traitor will remember the ancient aphorism which says, you never miss the water till the well runs dry. When the Tinubu well runs dry, the traitor’s treachery would have run its full throttle and he will begin to miss his water.
Dr. Festus Adedayo, a Journalist, Lawyer and Columnist writes from Ibadan, Oyo State
Opinion
NASS Pensioners: How Akpabio, Abbas Should Not Treat The Elderly
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.
Opinion
The Fuji Music House Of Commotion
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.
Opinion
Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror
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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