Opinion
Before they kidnap our president
Singer and songwriter, Bukola Elemide, is better known as Asa. She was paid by the Nigerian state to perform on Tuesday last week in Abuja at the launch of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
Buhari was seated; many others who mis-run Nigeria with him were there too. They expected a Baba-has-done-well song because they were in the Villa tucked away from the groans of the grumpy, hungry poor. But black-clad Asa chose to ‘tickle’ them all with her song of rebuke: “There is fire on the mountain/ And nobody seems to be on the run/ Oh, there is fire on the mountaintop/ And no one is a-runnin’…” She sang and danced and sang and stopped. There was an applause. I am not sure it was as loud as it was supposed to be. Not all who had palms in that room clapped for the songstress. They were not sure which could be more seditious between their clapping and Asa’s song of fire. I won’t blame them. You never could tell, the president might understand the message! And why that particular song for that oily occasion? I watched the event and the song and the protest in the singer’s eyes. She appeared echoing Bob Dylan’s defiant explanation on a dark situation as that of Asa: “The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?”
Bob Dylan spoke about his song reacting to “the last straw.” The last straw would appear to be yesterday’s threat by Kaduna train attack terrorists to abduct our president and a state governor and others and sell off their captives. We’ve all watched the distressing video released by the terrorists. After thoroughly beating the unfortunate captives, they made an announcement; this: “Just as the Chibok girls that were sold off, we will equally sell these ones as slaves. If you don’t accede to our demands, we will kill the ones we need to kill and sell the remaining. By God’s grace, El-Rufai, Buhari, we will bring you here…” Scary. I wanted to say we should beg these fellows to leave our president alone because his freedom is our collective freedom, but then I remembered that the Villa is the safest house in Nigeria. And that is where the president lives.
I was in Accra, Ghana, two weeks ago. The very first night there, at some minutes past 10pm, I felt an alien presence by my hotel room door. Some people may be in deep sleep, yet they are awake. I think I belong to that group. William Shakespeare in Macbeth describes sleep as “death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast…” Mahatma Ghandi, father of India, had his own version of what sleep is. He told his country: “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” That is sleep. My people say sleep is that thief that snatches whatever a child holds. But they also add that what is inside a child, sleep cannot take away. I was drifting deep into sleep; then that invasive feeling of strangeness by my door, then a knock and a hello.
Not every hello is from a friend. I knew that fact before I was born. I checked the time; it was 10.22pm. Who could that be? I used the peephole – some call it spyhole. A man in uniform, a security officer knocking at my door – at night, in a foreign country! I should open the door; after all, I entered Ghana fulfilling every demand of the law. But, you know, not everyone in security dress is a security man. We saw that fact at an APC event in Abuja last week where the roue were dressed in costumes of the puritan. My Latin-speaking friend would say “cucullus non facit monachum (The cowl does not make the monk).” Wearing a cassock does not make a man a bishop – not in Abuja, not anywhere. Whether home or abroad, never judge anyone by their external appearance. So, I froze the push to reply the ‘hello’ and open the door. Then I made to answer the knock; then the man in uniform started moving away. He left. I went back to bed. But on that floor of the hotel, I could hear doors loudly opening and closing, followed by human voices. I slept.
The next morning I was at the reception.
“What happened last night,” I asked the front office lady.
“We are sorry for what happened last night. It was the Immigration people,” she told me.
“Immigration in hotel rooms? What were they looking for.” I asked because it was strange to me.
“They do that randomly. Searching for illegal aliens. Sometimes they come at 2a.m. Catch them in bed, sort of. They want to be sure that the documentations we did on our guests correspond with what the guests hold. It is all for our country to be safe from unwanted guests.”
The receptionist noticed surprise in my eyes and asked: “Don’t your own Immigration people do that in Nigeria?”
I smiled.
While all that was going on, a private security man at the hotel gate was also saying ‘sorry’ to another guest, also a Nigerian. He explained that the Kuje jailbreak in Nigeria triggered the visit and several other visits to other hotels. The Kuje incident, you remember, unleashed 64 terror suspects on humanity. The fire on Nigeria’s mountaintop is noticed in Ghana and everyone there is running. No one wants deadly terrorists inside their bedroom. I reminded myself that my country is a very unusual country. Our security people are also unusual – things like enforcing rules against unwanted aliens hardly excite them; it is not profitable. Going after illegal aliens is apparently not part of the training my country gives its immigration men. It would be done only if it would fetch good fortune – like what they do with issuance of passports to Nigerians. Possession or renewal of a Nigerian passport by Nigerians is as difficult as entering the Kingdom of God; you hold the document only if you are strong and your breast plate is made of steel of diamond.
In and out of Ghana, the security men (and even cab drivers) I encountered at the decorous airport in Accra were well-dressed and courteous and businesslike. I arrived into the suffocation called Lagos airport and took more than a passing interest in how my country’s airport people handled their work. A very smart female superior officer was in charge of immigration procedures. Her men were in their cubicle attending to passengers’ passports the way they should. But the officer who attended to me was more on the phone than on duty. Perhaps, it was because it was a Friday. I should be forgiven for saying that. Here, Fridays are not for serious work. And I saw men in our airport doing security work in mufti. Should a uniformed force go to work without uniform – even if it was a Friday? James Hain Friswell (1825-1878) says dress has an effect upon character: “An ill-dressed man will never be so much at ease as one who is well-dressed…A mean and shabby appearance gives a man mean and shabby ways…”
Ghana appears to have better security sense than Africa’s most populous country. Wisdom is not assigned by number or by size. We are a country of 200 million people badly managed and wrecked by collusion with the unthinkable. My own country does not mind being overrun by the fires of unwanted guests – from Niger, from Sudan, from Mali, from Chad, from Libya, from etc. They come and get grafted onto our stem. They are everywhere as I write, top to bottom. One day, aliens will rule over us – that is if it has not happened already. The cost for bad behaviour is very high. In December 1980, Nigeria experienced what history describes as the first major religious crisis in post-colonial Kano – the Maitatsine riots. It was led by one Mohammed Marwa, an illegal alien from Cameroun, whose entry was enabled by Nigeria’s unguarded openings and whose excesses were accommodated by the country’s complicit law – all because he was a preacher. That the riots officially killed 4,179 people is not the major tragedy from that war. The real tragedy is that Maitatsine riots deflowered Nigeria and prepared the ground for Boko Haram which has wrecked the North and its people and has murdered the peace of our country.
A train was going to Kaduna from Abuja 119 days ago, it was attacked by terrorists. Of the unknown number of passengers in that train, the terrorists killed some, they abducted many. There are 43 of the abducted still in captivity. A video of their horrific flogging by their abductors trended yesterday. Bulama Bukarti, a fellow at the Tony Blair Institute who watched the video and understood the language tweeted on Sunday that one of the terrorists said in the clip that “he was among those who escaped from Kuje Prison.” I saw frightened women, young and old; I saw terrorised children and infants in the video. And that scene is a Nigerian spot. Who is in charge here?
Nigeria is a huge mountain on fire and the whole world, except Nigeria, has noted that fact. That is what Ghana’s close attention to visitors from Nigeria means. Nothing saddens elders more than being told that an illness has no medicine, no corrective ritual. The creator of Nigeria gave it congenital deformity in manners and conduct that stultify its growth and the bloom of its flowers. Nothing will resolve the problem – not a 2023 continuation of APC/Buhari’s reign through Tinubu/èmi l’ókàn presidency; not a second coming of PDP/Atiku presidency; not Peter Obi and his ‘obidient’ warriors. Nothing. And you know what modern medicine prescribes as remedies for being born with defects: surgery, maybe, but compulsorily, long-term support. That is a little short of saying this country is an invalid that may go to its grave with its unresolved and unresolvable malformations. You may also want to ask: Those being paid to make things not to go bad, where are they? They are sleeping on duty while the nation burns in every part – from economy to politics to security to everything. The late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, in one of his many deep interventions, called our attention to what the palace drummer told the king every morning: “Get up, no one sends his child to the toilet to poo on his behalf.” A king-size job should be a king’s job. It is not so with Nigeria and its drivers. No one takes responsibility for nursing the invalid nation. Every delegate delegates here, leaving the job fatally undone – and without consequences. There was an attack on a prison very close to where the president calls official residence. A common slap on the wrist no one has received. A mass murderer, Adamu Aleru, was sensationally made a chief in Zamfara State days ago. The turbanning ceremony was not sprung as a surprise on Nigeria and its security agencies; it did not take place at night. The bandit gave enough notice of his public ceremony to all and it held with a bang. Big bandits bearing big names were reportedly in attendance. Nothing happened to the terrorist and his guests and nothing will happen to them. That is the dictionary definition of privilege. Aleru has even granted a press interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which is coming out today, 25 July, 2022, in a documentary entitled ‘The Bandit Warlords of Zamfara.’ In that documentary, you will hear this terrorist as he boasts, in cold blood, that while his men kidnap people, he kills people: “My men do that (kidnapping); I just go and kill them (people).” The world has come to an end in Nigeria.
Plato saw music as “a moral law” which “gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order; it lends to all that is good, just, and beautiful.” The president listened to Asa and her song of tears on Tuesday. The train terrorists spoke their threats on Sunday. If Asa’s words were too arcane for the king’s septuagenarian ear, his courtiers should do us a favour. Let them bring out the lines in giant print for the palace to gaze at and chew on. All of us, elitist complicit enablers of bad, in government, outside government, should pay attention to Asa’s ‘Fire on the Mountain’ – particularly the last stanza:
“One day the river will overflow
And there’ll be nowhere for us to go
And we will run, run Wishing we had put out the fire.”
Celebrated columnist, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju writes from Ibadan
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.
-
Metro4 days ago
Grim Friday: Man, Wife, Grandson Perish in Ibadan Fire
-
News4 days ago
NNPCL Refutes Shutdown Claims: Port Harcourt Refinery Fully Operational
-
News5 days ago
Bank Robberies Now History in Lagos Since 2014 – IGP
-
Crime & Court5 days ago
Human Rights Lawyer, Dele Farotimi, Granted ₦30m Bail