Opinion
Atiku Abubakar and the sexual history of the Nigerian presidency
In early 2014, the Zimbabwean public sphere literally caught fire. Rumours that the country’s former Prime Minister and the presidential candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai, had suffered “a nasty blow from below,” euphemism for zero virility, spread like bushfire. At about the same time, the virility-restoring prowess of Emmanuel Makandiwa, a ‘miracle-working’ Pentecostal prophet, froze the stratosphere like snowflakes in winter. Estranged wife of Tsvangirai, Elizabeth Macheka, had lit the fire. In an interview she granted The Herald, which was entitled, Why I ditched Tsvangirai: Wife Macheka had been quoted to have said that she had separated from Tsvangirai due to ‘sensitive personal issues’ and that this was known to her and Tsvangirai alone and which only the two of them could resolve.
The above story was told by Wale Adebanwi, highly respected scholar, in a recently published journal article he entitled The Carnality of Power. Therein, Adebanwi had explored the centrality and virility of power and how men of power, through their libido, use sex as a locus of power, as well as how all of us, scholars, lay scholars and society as a whole, “need to pay greater attention to the ways in which obscenity can help explain the nature of power.
For a Zimbabwean public that salivated on riveting gossips and rumours in high and low places, Macheka’s statement was the confirmation it needed for a high-quality rumour it hitherto circulated. In whooshing whispers and mouth-to-ear transmission, the former prime minister was said to have been afflicted by an “under-neath,” below-the-trousers problem of ‘erectile dysfunctional disorder.’ The Herald did not also help matters. It immediately and unabashedly tagged what Macheka dubbed ‘sensitive personal issues’ as ‘a medical one.’ Thereafter, Fungai Machirori, Zimbabwean journalist and blogger, did a salacious piece on the issue which she entitled, Of Penises, Politics and Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe, an essay which she called an “exposé of trouble in the un-paradise that is Tsvangirai’s love life’’
As the story went, in the bid to seek spiritual remedy for the restoration of his numb member, Tsvangirai had to make a sudden visit to Nigeria to meet the infamous miracle-hawking pastor, T. B. Joshua, now late. Joshua had been catapulted to the zenith of Zimbabweans and Southern Africans in general’s migration to his shrine for spiritual patronage due to a 2012 prophecy he made that an African leader who he said was ‘old and unwell,’ would die. At the exit of Malawian president, Bingu wa Mutharika,, the popular belief was that Joshua was ‘spiritually powerful.’ However, Macheka, unable to contain the penile starvation from Tsvangirai, had packed her things and fled her marital home.
The Zimbabwean yellow press world immediately interpreted this visit to Lagos by Tsvangirai as a spirited spiritual search for cure to what Adebanwi tagged his “double jeopardy” – an under-the-trousers virility trouble and a dwindling political fortune.
In his own penis-restoration evangelism, Makandiwa, who is the founder of the Zimbabwe-popular United Family International Church (UFIC), was said to have, during a New Year’s Day service, performed “a penis-enhancing miracle” on a Namibian. The penal calamity that the Namibian suffered from was said to be such that his private member was “the size of a two-year-old’s” and because of this phallic deficiency, he had to run from pillar to post so as to be able to prevent his own “Macheka” from eloping. In the report of what transpired, Prophet Makandiwa had reportedly commanded the Namibian’s miniature member to “arise!” and thereafter, according to an eyewitness, “first month grow, second month grow, third month grow, fourth month grow, fifth month, ummm stop,” such that, “the organ must have grown exponentially until the prophet decreed it to stop.”
For those who think less of the power of sex in high places, Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, was ready to shock them. “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power,” he had written. Scholars have taken the Wilde libidinous theorising further to say that there is an intersection between gender, sexual power and political power. So in the analysis of political power, a belittling of sex and sexual power could be a barren pursuit. Indeed, as Adebanwi said, there is an expectation that “the African man of power must display or exhibit his virility – particularly sexual virility.”
Last week, the place of sex in the Nigerian presidency became an issue of discourse. 2019 presidential candidate, presidential hopeful in the 2023 presidential election and former Nigerian Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, had suffered a fate though not similar to Tsvangirai’s but not totally dissimilar to it. Linking both is a single thread of marital dislocation, a desire by one partner in a patrimony to discontinue on a sexual voyage, though ostensibly for different reasons. Atiku Abubakar’s own “Macheka,” Jennifer Iwenjiora Douglas Abubakar, until now his wife and a former Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) correspondent in the 1980s, had gone to her own “The Herald” last Tuesday to narrate that her marriage to the stupendously wealthy politician named Turaki had broken down irretrievably with effect from June 26, 2021. Jennifer had loomed large as subject of a probe some 12 years ago by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, alleging that she, in cahoots with her husband, had funneled slush funds allegedly stolen from the Nigerian government, into America.
“The core reason for the divorce was disagreement over my continued stay in the United Kingdom, to look after my children and several other long-standing issues. I needed to play the role of a mother at this time to the children who have gone through the absence of both father and mother growing up; especially, with the passage of my elder sister who used to look after them,” said Douglas, alongside issues of disagreements over ownership of Turaki’s Nigerian, Dubai and UK properties.
Respected columnist and serial Facebook posts activist, Kayode Samuel, had put the sexual/power implication of the matrimonial squabble in perspective. In a post he made immediately the Atiku-Jennifer divorce became public knowledge, he had written, “Dear Igbo babes, it seems a vacancy may soon be coming up (or has already come up!) for a new wife in the home of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. The federal character-compliant attribute of his household was one of his strong selling points at the last elections. Now that his Igbo wife is leaving, I’m sure the old man would be thinking of making up her quota in time for 2023. So, up your game “sharperly“, ezigbo nwanyi oma! I won’t be charging anything for this piece of pricey intelligence. I’ll just take it to be part of my nwanwa duties…” Jennifer hailed from the Onitsha area of Anambra State.
Nigeria’s serial presidential candidate, the Turaki, seems to share fate with Zimbabwe’s Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai, aged 61, is “married as many times as he has lost in his bid to become Zimbabwe’s elected president.” This seems to be Abubakar’s lot too. Basking under the Islamic libidinous latitude which allows him to marry four wives, the Turaki went ahead to federal-characterized his libido by marrying Titi from Osun State, as well as other undisclosed women who must be from the northern part of Nigeria. Today however, Abubakar is facing his own double jeopardy of carnality and politics, like Tsvangira.
The political carnality jeopardy the Turaki is battling has to do with the fact that, Emperor Nyesom Wike and the Young Turk governors of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) like the Namibian’s shrinking manhood, seem to have shrunk the spatial chance of presidential contestation in the PDP against Abubakar whose presidential aspiration’s cloud seems to be dimming. For a man ravaged by serial allegations of corruption during his tenure as Vice President and whose strongest credential for the Nigerian presidency is his democratic – if you like, laissez fare – under-the-trousers personal economy, having had wives from the three geopolitical zones of Nigeria, unlike his challengers whose libido is tribalistic and ostensibly unidirectional, Abubakar’s loss of Jennifer Douglas, a major tripod of his credential, could be a mortal political, rather than a familial blow, in the proportion of Tsvangirai’s loss of masculinity. The question many people are asking is, was Jennifer actually being reticent on the real reason(s) she had to do a Micheka on her own Tsvangirai?
Counterpoising Tsvangirai’s “blow from below” image are some African presidents who were “perceived to have used their manhood well.” In Nigeria, we had the goggled dictator, General Sani Abacha, who though multiple attempts have been made to impeach the narrative of how he died, but over whom the prevailing facts on the streets have prevailed, one of which is that, he died after consuming poisoned apple fruits administered by stealth by the CIA and using Viagra to pump up his virility while working on two Indian prostitutes imported for him at the presidential Villa. Another was late dictator President Gnasingbe Eyadema of Togo, renowned with an elephantine sexual appetite as huge as the Basilica in the Ivorian city of Yamoussoukro. He was known for always sleeping with wives of his male ministers and his few female ministers. One of the ministers, said to have been blessed with an ‘especially attractive’ wife, had to hide her from Eyadéma so that he would not lay his lecherous paws on her. In this virility league was also the late Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was said to be as lecherous as a he-goat. This is not to forget the father of them all, the former South African president, Jacob Zuma, who is said to have married at least six times.
In Africa, when a man of power “uses his manhood well,” he is seen as not being effeminate as Tsvangirai. If he is then “blessed” with an imposing virility, whether he uses it licitly or illicitly, this easily gains traction, making his rule to be seen as dominant and domineering. Another example in this regard is Robert Mugabe, who never hid the illicitness of his virility and who had been dating Grace, who he later married, even before his late wife’s death.
The man of power who possesses the Eyadema, Zuma and Mobutu image of a libidinous behemoth in Nigeria’s power calculus is Olusegun Obasanjo. During the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) saga when he and Abubakar aimed at each other’s jugular, Atiku had alleged that Obasanjo bought a 607 Peugeot car for a woman friend who resided in Abeokuta with slush funds accruing from the PTDF scandal. Like Mugabe, Obasanjo was then married to Stella, who was Nigeria’s First Lady. In 2018, Obasanjo’s son, Gbenga, even alleged in a court affidavit that his father was having an affair with his wife, Moji. Mrs. Patricia Etteh, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was also rumoured to be Obasanjo’s woman friend. In The Carnality of Power, Adebanwi talked about “one prominent and ‘internationally respected’ West African president (who was) famous for breaking meetings – even abroad – to have a ‘quickie’ with his countless paramours.”
Indeed, Nigeria had been “lucky” to have occupiers of the seat of power whose sexual virility was benumbing. Military President Ibrahim Babangida reportedly went out of Dodan Barracks to demonstrate the strength of his awesome libido. In a 2013 book he authored entitled Honour for Sale: An inside account of the murder of Dele Giwa, a military aide to Babangida, Major Debo Basorun, wrote about how, on a trip to France, late First Lady, Mrs. Maryam Babangida, literally pummeled her husband for his presidential libidinous rascality.
Taking the opportunity of a long official meeting he had that dragged into the thin hours of the morning, IBB had engaged a paramour in a liaison whose dalliance with her husband Maryam got to know through the scent of her perfume in IBB’s hotel suite. Dealing the General heavy blows under locked door, when the Better Life for Rural Women proprietress eventually opened the door to IBB’s scared aides who had been ordered by a senior officer to prise the door open upon hearing noise of violence in the suite, they saw a C-in-C, renowned for his braggadocio that “we are not only in office but in power” whose face had been pockmarked by bruises from feminine paws. He was panting amid sweats, with a roughened military service dress which had some buttons torn off by a woman scorned into fury by the stray libido of her husband.
Those who knew Muhammadu Buhari as a young military officer claim that he too sowed wild oats too like his colleagues. They said he specifically coveted liaisons with mountainous posteriors. However, age and ill health would seem to have dealt a blow on that fancy. While emerging from the throes of a health challenge and on a visit to Angela Merkel of Germany and he was asked about the place of his wife in his government, Buhari had attempted to communicate his virility and masculinity, like an African who sees sex as conquest and show of power. He seemed to be saying that he had an active “under-neath” that ill health could not upstage. His wife, according to him, belonged to “zi oza room,” a euphemism for a hot libido. This sense was probably what a social media virility fabricator was about when he sent out a picture of Aisha Buhari, the First Lady, which went viral recently, a picture that had been touched to bear a protruded belly, suggestive of a Buhari who hadn’t gone the way of Morgan Tsvangirai.
In all, as Prof Adebanwi counsels, if we carefully rummage the lurid, the grotesque, the salacious stories of their Sex-cellencies – even at state levels with the governors – we may find anchors to how power politics in Nigeria and Africa can be explained through sex. Similarly, as Zimbabwean journalist and blogger, Fungai Machirori, told us, we may need to study the sexual histories of our men in power because, from the rhythm of the silent but jangling bells of the dangling penises of men in power, a silent compass to their politics may just as well be hiding.
Dr. Festus Adedayo, a Journalist and Columnist writes from Ibadan
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.
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.
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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