Opinion
General Abubakar, was MKO’s death really natural?
Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, commonly known as V.S. Naipaul, would seem to have Nigeria and the facts of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola’s death in military detention in mind when he wrote his famous novel, ‘Half of Life’. Renowned for and indeed underscored by the Swedish Academy which awarded him the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”, summarized, Naipaul’s ‘Half of Life’ is a life of lie lionised to be true.
It was the life of Willie Somerset Chandran. Born to a Brahmin father, his father gave him the middle name, Somerset as an homage to English writer, Somerset Maugham. He however despised this middle name and in the bid to hide it, he left India for London to study. There, he shrouded off that name and faked the facts of his life for many years, mimicking in the process other people’s behavior, in order to hide his past. In the end, reality caught up with Somerset as he had to remove his self-imposed mask and eventually come to terms with “the presence of suppressed history”.
Since the announcement of his death in detention in 1998, a world that salivated for the actual truth of Abiola’s sudden death got swallowed in official narratives that lack logic. It is a cruel world where interrupting a flourishing life midstream is commonplace. It is also a world where suppressing and masking the truth of life’s interruption is a daily occurrence. Almost 24 years now after his passage, Nigeria has moved on to the next phase of its grisly life-dom. Here, we conclude without a conclusion because thoroughness and rigour are not part of our social order. The noise of the silence on Abiola’s death however persists, leaving an unfinished conversation of how MKO really died.
The military head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar, a man who gained the peace of Abiola and Sani Abacha’s death, recently exhumed the facts of Abiola’s passing. And as they say in arithmetic, QED, the general magisterially packaged these “facts”, like a mortician, for eternal rest in the morgue. Abubakar had, in a live television programme, quenched the undying fire of speculations that Abiola died after sipping the tea he was offered by a visiting American delegation, led by secretary of state for African affairs, Thomas Pickering and consisting of assistant secretary of state, who later became the national security advisor, Susan Rice and Bill Twaddell, US ambassador to Nigeria. Abubakar said that, rather than poison that was speculated, Abiola died of natural causes.
“Well, I smile because there were lots of allegations here and there that we killed Abiola. As always, when I am talking about the late Abiola, I still thank God for directing me on things to do when he gave me the leadership of this country,” he said.
The narrative funneled out by the Abubakar military government was that, at the meeting the American team had with Abiola, he suddenly fell sick and as Abubakar himself narrated in the recent interview, “the security officers called the medical team to come and attend to him, and when they saw the situation, they said it was severe and needed to take him to the medical centre. So, it was the medical team plus the American team that took him to the medical centre. Unfortunately, at the medical centre he gave up”.
The prequel to Abiola’s death was the expiration of military despot, Abacha, a few weeks before. Up until then, Nigeria had exploded in a political turmoil provoked by Ibrahim Babangida’s stiff-necked decision to annul the June 12, 1993, election. No government in Nigerian history had evoked so much national perspiration as the goggled general’s. Yes, the history of military rule in Africa had been that of muzzling of freedom and free speech. Under Abacha’s, you couldn’t even sight the shadows of freedom, not to talk of its muzzle. Nigeria under him can be explained by that 1999 political drama produced by cinematographer, Tunde Kelani, entitled ‘Saworoide’. Abacha the titular was not only a despot, but his military epaulettes also dripped with blood. Opponents of his rule vamoosed in daylight and he clamped dissents in detention as easily as ants crowd a diabetic’s pee. Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, was shot dead in broad daylight and people lived in dread and apprehension. When he suddenly died on June 8, 1998, Nigeria exploded in a thunderous orgy of celebrations.
The death of Abiola, who had earlier been clamped in detention by Abacha for declaring himself president, exactly a month after Abacha’s, naturally provoked a conspiracy theory. Though Abubakar said he was grateful to providence that the American delegation’s presence at the scene of Abiola’s death provided enough alibi for his government’s innocence in the death, the delegation’s presence further gave vent to the conspiracy theory. As at this time, Nigeria’s intractable crises had proven enough embarrassment to the rest of the world, especially to an America which saw African dictators as hindrances to its self-assigned task of promoting global democracy, human rights, and good governance in the Third World. America’s economic interests were also stalling due to the protracted crises. It was thus difficult to glibly impeach the theory spiraling at Abiola’s death that his “killing” was America’s quest to put a permanent end to the democratic impasse that had seized Nigeria like a pestilence.
Precedence didn’t favour America either. Its leading espionage organ, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had scooped frightening renown from all over the world for targeted killings of America’s perceived adversaries or persons who constituted stumbling blocks to its aspirations. While targeted killing is generally a euphemism for state assassination or murder, America’s state kingpins had always seen it as a statecraft tool. It is supervised by governments and carried out outside of judicial procedure and battlefield but enveloped by the shawl of nationalist determination to neutralise terrorists and combatants. For instance, it is said that 76 children and 29 adult bystanders were killed by the CIA in America’s serial attempts to kill the physician and founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and ally of Al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. He had been indicted for his alleged role in the August 7, 1998, bombings of US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
CIA’s notoriety in this regard is a plethora. One of such was the Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was nearly killed on September 26, 1960, by an American called Joe. He had arrived in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) with poison to administer on Lumumba, which would have manifested as an incurable deadly disease. Lumumba, after a putsch, was later on January 17, 1961, in company with his two associates, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, executed by firing squad with Belgians supervising, their bodies thrown into shallow graves but later dug up, hacked in pieces, and dissolved in acid as Abacha ordered done to Ken Saro-Wiwa.
So also was the CIA’s attempt to assassinate Chile’s leftist politician, Salvador Allende in 1973. Aside from plowing the sum of $3 million into opposition to Allende’s 1964 presidential aspiration, on his win in 1970, President Richard Nixon approved a whopping sum of $10 million for Allende’s overthrow. The same went for Cuba’s late president, Fidel Castro, who in his own admission, America made 634 futile attempts to assassinate. One of such was a 1960 CIA assassination ploy where Castro’s box of favourite cigars was poisoned with a botulinum toxin which would have killed him instantly. Popularised by the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Clostridium botulinum, produced by gram-positive anaerobic bacteria, when ingested in food or laced on an open wound results in muscle paralysis, paralysis of the respiratory system, and then, death.
Even though the US senate attempted to wipe off this blood stains from Uncle Sam through a thorough investigation of this, culminating in President Gerald Ford’s 1976 statement that, “No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire in, political assassination,” the world holds this with a pinch of salt. Many targeted killings allegedly supervised by America are said to have taken place since then.
Susan Rice’s memoir entitled ‘Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For’, which gave an account of what led to Abiola’s death, though plausible, is not entirely believable. Rice had served Abiola the infamous cup of tea which happened to be his last sip alive. She said she offered to give him the tea when Abiola suddenly lapsed into a coughing fit.
“About five minutes into the conversation, Abiola started to cough, at first mildly and intermittently, and then rackingly with consistency. Noticing a tea service on the table between us, I offered Abiola, ‘Would you like some tea to help calm your cough?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, with appreciation, and I poured him a cup. He sipped it, but continued coughing,” said Rice. Glib, suasive and evocative, isn’t it? She further wrote in the memoir that even upon taking the tea, Abiola’s persistent cough revved the more and when the team called a doctor to attend to him, he later pronounced his death, after an hour, as due to a heart attack.
The fact that though MKO was a Muslim, a religion that forbids autopsy notwithstanding, an autopsy was said to have been conducted on his remains which turned out negative. However, discarding the theory that the June 12 election winner could have been poisoned would be naïve. Research has shown that there are ten deadly poisons known to mankind and their powers vary. The poisons are arsenic, hemlock, dimethylmercury, polonium 210, mercury, tetrodotoxin, cyanide, Atropa belladonna, and aconitine. While arsenic is renowned for being the most potent of the lot, harvesting in its sack the hugest cadavers in its fury, it has been in existence from ancient times. It is preferred in targeted killings because it presents without colour, smell, or taste. Upon its administration, it manifests in vomiting, severe abdominal cramps, and ultimately, as the Yoruba will say, the hawker of eko (cornmeal porridge) in heaven stridently calls for patronage of her wares. While the list of its preys is endless, Napoleon Bonaparte, George III of England, and Simon Bolivar are its famous victims.
Hemlock as a poison was popularised in tales of the Greek philosopher Socrates’ execution. It has two variants; poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and water hemlock (Cicuta species and Oenanthe crocata L). When administered, it presents with such numbing paralysis that, though the individual’s mind is continuously working, their physical movements grind to a halt by stealth and gradually lead to death. It is the same for dimethylmercury, known to be an extremely poisonous material known also to be a slow killer. Its victim is only aware of a problem when they have begun to sing the nunc dimittis. Even dosages as low as 0.1ml are renowned to be very lethal. This was the case in 1996 when a Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Chemistry teacher had a drop of it trickle down her gloved hand. It went through the glove’s latex and an autopsy on her body ten months later indicated that the dimethylmercury led to her death.
It is the same for the rest of the poisons. While mercury could be sprayed in the air for victims to sniff to their death, tetrodotoxin is an uncommon poison found inside marine animals like Pufferfish and Octopus. Atropa belladonna poison is also found in plants. Aconitine, like Atropa, resides in plants and gained notoriety in history as the poison with which the 4th Roman emperor Claudius, also known as Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was killed by his wife, Agrippina The Younger. Murdered at the age of 63, the empress merely mixed aconite with the mushroom meal she gave Claudius, a man who had been afflicted with a limp and slight deafness — the aftermath sickness at a young age. Traditional Yoruba medicine also believes that the sundried bile of a leopard ranks as one of the deadliest poisons on earth. Some of these poisons can never be captured by any autopsy and even if they do, manifest as organ failure
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This is however not to conclude that the tea offered MKO by Rice contained the poison that killed him. He indeed could have died a natural death. The strongest motive for anyone to murder Abiola and Abacha however lies in that, taking them out would ensure a tabular rasa political equation for the Nigerian polity, with both Nigerian and American political and governmental elites put in the stead to reap bountiful dividends therefrom. Abiola’s trial by ordeal in detention in the hands of Abacha could as well have been the gradual poison that killed him. Indeed, knowing how maniacal Abacha was, the general could have caused any of the above poisons to be administered on him, in the hope that his expiration would come gradually. While America will look too sophisticated to allow its topmost officials to be amateurishly present at a proposed murder scene, especially with a not too salutary global renown in targeted killings, sometimes, confidence has been held to lead to slips and errors.
Suspicions of Nigerian and international complicity in MKO’s death were further reinforced by the not too dissimilar pattern of his and Abacha’s expiration. While Abacha gradually bloated in his latter days on earth, with a noticeable podgy face seen in his far-between TV appearances, his corpse allegedly distended at burial point. Abubakar, while attempting to disclaim the government’s hand in his death, would seem to be saying that the sudden sickness that took Abiola’s life was the result of heart disease. But heart diseases don’t come suddenly. The fact that a government doctor allegedly attached to treat him in detention didn’t identify hitherto that his heart was tensioned will show suspected lax or nil medical attention from the government for him.
Like Naipaul’s ‘Half of Life’, in the fullness of time, the world may – if indeed they were killed – someday get full disclosure of what or who actually killed MKO and Abacha, as well as other suspected targeted killings by the Nigerian state. It is scary that individuals take out their fellow beings in the name of the state and manage to maintain straight faces, as well as keep their scotched hearts from view.
Unlike in the west, Nigeria does not have shamus agencies and organisations whose operations are independent of the state and who help to puncture these bloody balloons of knotty state and individual murders. Such efforts, aided by a police organisation that knew its onions, led to the unraveling of the killing in May last year of prominent Brazilian conservationist, Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo da, who were ambushed while riding on a bicycle in Para state, near the city of Maraba. The bodies of the couple were found in Praialta-Piranheira, the nature reserve where they resided for 24 years, with Claudio’s ear wickedly cut off. He had repeatedly warned that those who issued persistent death threats against him, consisting of loggers and cattle ranchers, might not relent until they got him.
Of course, like every other sector of Nigerian life, journalistic investigative reporting is almost as dead as a dodo. Otherwise, well-funded media investigators could also undertake to unravel targeted killings. Though the investigations could take years, they will ultimately remove the shawls covering the identities of assassins covered in state clothing which many of our leaders are.
Dr. Festus Adedayo writes from Ibadan, Oyo State
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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