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Feeble dance of the Tinubu, Osinbajo masquerade

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The most appropriate representation of the impending 2023 presidential election contest for the Yoruba is what is called the Odun e’gun or the Egungun Festival contest. It is a festival cum contest in which masquerades file out in their rainbow colour regalia, with a mammoth crowd gathered to watch them dance. As of today, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Yemi Osinbajo are the Yoruba people’s two biggest masquerades in this odun egun. 

The Alagbaa, one entrusted with the traditional right to preside over the ancestral rites of the festival is however a Fulani – Muhammadu Buhari. By the way, the Alagbaa is very central to every masquerade festival. He is a hereditary chief who heads the Egungun society and who determines the tone and tenor of the festival. Preparatory to the contest, the Alagbaa of the 2023 Nigerian Egungun Festival had literally decapitated the masquerades, succeeding in destroying the masquerades’ worth and credibility in the estimation of the mammoth crowd at the marketplace.

The masquerade festival is also a time to offer sacrifices to divinities, one of whom is Èsù-Òdàrà, known as the mediator divinity. Yoruba do not joke with making such propitiations to their dead. It is believed that if the wrath of these divinities is not appeased and in this case, through the Egungun festival, incongruities will besiege the land, so much that rats in the forests will lose their divinely ordained squeaking sound and birds, their chirps – “eku o ni ke bi eku, eye o ni dun bi eye”.

The masquerades, wearing long, multifarious colourful robes to court the aesthetic sense of the spectators, are masked according to the insignia of the spirits of their deceased ancestors and are welcomed to the marketplace by shouts of excitement and melodious drumming. The Egungun then file to the marketplace to perform several shades of dances. Though humans, but generally perceived to have transmuted into spirit beings on account of their regalia, the Egungun is expected not to be in conformity with the sedate norms of this world, and are thus held on a leash by men who wield cudgels, preventing intruders from coming close to spirit beings. Worshippers then dance to percussions of bata drum and in the process, become possessed by ancestral spirits, with those holding the whips flogging everybody within the precincts of their whips.

A religious practice of the people that has lasted centuries, the Egungun Festival is a ceremony in which the Yoruba honour what they perceive to be the annual return of their ancestors to the world of the living. At the marketplace, when the Egungun dances eclectically to the front to contest, he invokes the spirits of his ancestors long deceased, precursors of such interventions with the people, to grant him the grace of making brilliant dancing strides in the contest and go home with the village’s trophy of success.

For the Yoruba, however, even at this preparatory stage for the Nigerian 2023 Egungun festival, it is getting ominous. The omen writ large is that, even with Tinubu and Osinbajo dancing this spasmodically to the crowd’s frenzied excitement, the opportunity for the Yoruba Egungun to coast home with the trophy by succeeding in occupying the Aso Rock seat of power in 2023 is becoming almost a mirage. Either as a reflection of that hunch or premonition, in the last couple of weeks, especially on social media, Yoruba analysts and commentators have drawn three unpleasant anchors and images in the service of an explanation for the race’s impending plight. One is that they are drawing a similarity between the 2023 contest and the First Republic consuming fight between two of their recent ancestors, Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Samuel Ladoke Akintola.

Second is that these analysts are fleeing into Christian eschatology to locate their plight in a similar relationship that went haywire in Israel some 2000 years ago, between Jesus the Christ and his sidekick, Judas Iscariot. The third of their engagements is to go into the ancient Yoruba narrative of the curse of Alaafin Aole who, miffed at his betrayal, had reportedly cursed generations thereafter that they would be afflicted by rancour at critical points of their national development.

Whichever way you choose to look at their dilemma, the Egungun still represents the best explainer of the Yoruba crossroads. A secret society, on the day of the Egungun festival, masquerades come to the marketplace in various long, coloured regalia to perform the dual role of deity, listening to the requests of the living who gather by their feet in supplication and who are then believed to carry the supplicants’ requests back to their ancestral community in heaven, ultimately depositing them by the feet of Olodumare – God. Thus, women facing challenges of procreation beseech the masked spirit to grant them children and the people as a whole ask for continued guidance from the spirit being. The Egungun, in a high-pitched voice, in turn, prays for the supplicants, to which they answer ase – amen.

By especially shuttling into the First Republic to bring out the ghosts and personas of Awolowo and Akintola as referents and explainers for the 2023 contest, I submit here that this trait has always been part and parcel of the Yoruba. Indeed, in African cosmology, ancestors play very conspicuous and important roles. They represent very important sources of power and are believed to be capable of acting on behalf of or against their descendants. Ancestors also function as divinities even though they exhibit less spiritual power than the gods – Orisa, somewhat. When a descendant of an ancestor faces existential challenges in life, they go to their family groves, offer sacrificial offerings and invoke the destiny – ori of their fathers in heaven to intervene in their plights. Ancestor worship is very central to the religion of the Yoruba.

While the two big masquerades, Tinubu and Osinbajo, prepare to dance in the marketplace, their supporters have been invoking several epithets, parallels, epigrams and symbols as prologues to explain the two masquerades’ impending dancing steps. The epilogue has been coming in the form of a narrative put in the public sphere that Osinbajo, foremost professor of law and attorney general was moulded by Bola Tinubu while he was governor of Lagos state. Indeed, the strategy of interfacing Tinubu with the public by his supporters has been an audacious carving of the ex-Lagos governor in the mould of the Yoruba god, Orunmila, the orisa of wisdom, knowledge, and divination. Orunmila’s epithet is one who moulds the destinies of his appendages, the “mo’ri mo’ri omo tuntun“. Tinubu’s apologists have since cited people at the top who, upon coming in contact with this orisa, got their destinies moulded and catapulted to the top.

One of a series of devious stratagem used in the service of this bid is drawing a parallel between Awolowo and Akintola’s feud of the First Republic as an explainer of the interface between Tinubu and Osinbajo. This came to the fore with brute force immediately after Osinbajo’s declaration for the 2023 presidency. Upon examination, however, it will be found to be very hollow, shallow and lacking in any rigour of a historical understanding. Let me explain.

After being systematically rigged out of the 1959 federal election, Awolowo decided not to go back to his premiership of the western region. This is unlike eastern region premier, Nnamdi Azikiwe, who accepted Prime Minister Balewa’s overture to form a government with him, thereafter becoming Nigeria’s only ceremonial president. Azikiwe left his turf in the hands of Michael Okpara, a very grits-full medical doctor with a very strong mind of his own. while Ahmadu Bello of the northern region sent a junior politician, Balewa, to the centre to become Nigeria’s prime minister.

It is no longer news that though Akintola was his deputy in the Action Group, Awolowo favoured either Anthony Enahoro or Chief FRA Williams as his successor. He however had to succumb to party elders like Dr Akanni Doherty and Akinola Maja who articulated the need to pick Akintola who had then become the deputy leader of the AG after the death of Chief Bode Thomas. In his own words, however, Awolowo maintained that those who dissuaded him from picking Chief Williams as successor were Chief S. O. Gbadamosi and Dr Akanni Doherty.

In late 1961, the Action Group constituted a group of young men who prepared memoranda for a cogent ideology for the AG. The party’s federal executive council meeting thus agreed on the adoption of democratic socialism as its ideology and, among others, that, “nobody, especially government or party functionaries must have more than one plot of government land; fringe benefits and perks for ministers and parliamentary secretaries were slashed; and thirdly, the party pronounced that the party was supreme and that anybody who held office did so at the pleasure of the party and that anyone who held any governmental position must see that his policies were either laid down by the party or were in line with party policies”. This did not go down well with the premier, Akintola, who mocked the ideology of democratic socialism openly. More fundamentally, while Akintola believed that the west should bond with the north to gain power at the centre, Awolowo believed that the west must go eastwards in seeking allies.

To buttress this, Akintola, in his witty aphorisms and government policies, slammed the managing director of the Nigerian Railways, Dr Ikejiani Clark, for nepotism in his recruitment of staff into the railway company. This he did in his famous “ikeji a ni, iketa a ni” and in the squabble for the VC-ship of the University of Lagos between Professor Eni Njoku and Saburi Biobaku, Akintola played on the Yoruba common denominator of “death” in the names of the VC contestants and asked why the Lagos university community would prefer someone who ate dead bodies (literal translation of Eni Njoku) as against someone who did not want to die (literal meaning of Biobaku).

What the above signifies is that the duo of Awolowo and Akintola disagreed and fought on the place of their Yoruba people in the scheme of things in post-colonial Nigeria and not on inanities of who made who and who betrayed who. I scooped many documents, newspapers and magazines on the tiff between Awo and SLA and never for once did I stumble on that petty magisterialism of Awo ascribing Akintola’s rise to the premiership to his imperious power. So, when supporters of especially Tinubu try to reduce the contest to betrayal, it smacks of a spurious attempt to leave the substance of the right of a sixty-something-year-old man to aspire to any office in the land and pursue shadows of tar-brushing him as a turncoat.

In the last eight years of Tinubu and Osinbajo people’s sufferings under Buhari, both of them never demonstrated any fidelity to them or the boldness to wear their Yorubaness on their lapels. They never demonstrated that their people’s plight was worthy of any amplification and resolution. When kidnappers killed and ransomed their people of the south-west without let, the duo of Tinubu and Osinbajo bonded with the Alagbaa in his taciturn cold-bloodedness. They even literally abetted him in his nepotistic embrace of his Fulani people and discard of others. While Tinubu told the world that, to become the Nigerian president has been his lifelong ambition, Osinbajo has not demonstrated that he is possessed of any unique love for his Yoruba people, nor that Yoruba people should queue behind him as a matter of mutual kinsman fidelity.

Yes, while in their respective political offices, they have both favoured their political and religious clienteles – apologies again to Professor Farooq Kperogi – I am not aware that any one of them bent over backwards to articulate the plight of the Yoruba in a different pitch, in a federal Nigeria under Buhari.

With the above in mind, it then means that those haranguing supporters of both Tinubu and Osinbajo on account of their disparate views, citing the so-called Aole curse of disunity among Yoruba, are merely walking on a barren historical route. While it is a feel-good feeling to have one’s kinsman as president of Nigeria, the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency exemplifies that Yoruba wise-saying that one’s benefactor is not necessarily your kinsman – “ajumobi o kan t’anu…” It is arguable if Yoruba’s south-west was not the least considered for development of Nigeria’s six zones under Obasanjo.

So, while the two masquerades – Tinubu and Osinbajo – prepare to have their individual day at the marketplace to dance, Yoruba should clap their hands for any one of them that catches their fancy, feel free to get scintillated by their multi-coloured Egungun masquerade regalia. They may mop up as many frills and personal excitements as they can from the eclectic dance steps of the masquerades, get entranced by their beautiful costumes and be awed by the whiplash that each of them lashes on each other. To now Yorubanize the presidential bids of these masquerades and approximate their travails and baggage as the Yoruba race’s is is absurd and inappropriate, something in the mould of a journey doomed to fail.

 

Dr. Festus Adedayo, a lawyer, journalist and columnist writes 

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Opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Fuji Music House Of Commotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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