Connect with us

Opinion

Murder so cruel

Published

on

 

 

The murders of Kehinde and Bukola Fatinoye, a few hours after the new year, have made me pensive and downcast since the news broke. That dastardly murder is one event of 2023 that throws me into spasms whenever my mind reflects on it. Unable to reconcile the gravity of this evil with the aesthetic beauty of life as God’s creation, this murder made me dust up my handbooks on the philosophy of evil and wickedness. I wanted a clue as to why this horror happened and why our world’s most fitting alias is wickedness and cruelty.
The Fatinoyes were killed in their home located in Ibara Government Reservation Area, Abeokuta, Ogun State, a few hours after the celebration of the birth of a new year. According to newspaper reports, the duo, who worked at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta respectively, had just returned from the yearly church ritual of Crossover Service when their assailants struck. Not only did the killers snuff life out of them, but their corpses were also set ablaze, ostensibly to shroud the motive of and railroad investigators from the alibi of the assassination.

As they escaped the scene, the killers dragged with them the Fatinoyes’ 23-year-old son, Oreoluwa, who they abducted. Three days after, the lifeless body of Oreoluwa was found floating in a river along the Adigbe-Obada Road, Abeokuta, his hands tied behind him. Very few murders of that cruel brew have made my heart this brittle, getting me inconsolable and distraught. It was as if I knew this hapless couple while they were alive.

What juts out for all to see in this heartless murder is a literal wiping off of the Fatinoye generation. It is united by the grisly undercoating of the assassination. On its surface, this killing is callous and reeks of inexplicable wickedness that lies at the heart of man.

Globally and almost on a daily basis, heart-wrenching wickedness and evils of frightening proportions and dimensions are unleashed into the public space. Only on Christmas day, Nigerians were aghast to hear of the killing of a Lagos-based lawyer, Bolanle Raheem, gunned down by ASP Drambi Vandi at Ajah in Lagos State.

To be sure, our world is bespattered with evils and wickedness of unimaginable proportions. On December 14, 2012, for instance, a 20-year-old boy, Adam Lanz, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, fatally gunned down 20 kids and six other grown-up staff members of the school. It was a mass murder that was considered to rank, as at then, as the second deadliest mass shooting perpetrated by one person in American history. History also recorded it as an American school’s second deadliest mass murder. Adam had gunned down his victims multiple times, shooting many of them at close quarters. You would think you were reading any of the famous crime thriller novels of James Hadley Chase.

What has been considered even the most intriguing and a major issue for consideration for criminologists and psychologists is that Adam was very calm, cool and devoid of emotions as he inflicted mayhem on his victims. If your immediate conclusion was that Adam was suffering the pangs of drug usage, you were wrong. Investigations later revealed that he had none in his system nor even a residue of alcohol or any mind-wrenching substance. Adam shot with his sobriety intact and as philosopher, John Phillip Togado, said, “he was in his right mind doing the most wrong thing… was in his sanest state doing the most insane thing.”

It will thus be wonky analysis to submit that, in the world today, there is a recent implosion of evil and wickedness; or that modernity has made the global atrocity paradigm shoot up. Far be it from the truth. From the creation of the world, even by the account of the holy writ and its narratives of immediate post-creation, man’s wickedness has been of heartrending stature. Like a serpent, man hatches and curates evil every single day. The seeming implosion of the narratives of evils and wickedness only get amplified by the multifarious media outlets available to man in this modern age. Parodying the holy writ, one can say that the heart of man has been desperately wicked, from his creation.

Listening to a track of late Ibadan Awurebe music maestro, Dauda Epo Akara, recently, I was reminded of how criminals concoct alibis for their psychopathic actions. I also got an idea of how musicians and society as a whole covertly lend a hand in the commitment of crimes. Done in the early 1970s, the song, while praise-singing the Oredegbe Society in Mushin, Lagos, Epo Akara sang the panegyrics of members of that Society who he said emerged from refined pedigrees. Omo eyan’re – he said of them. One of these was Lagos socialite and notorious land grabber, Jimoh Ishola, also known as Ejigbadero.

Ishola had arranged a child naming ceremony, attended by the crème-de-la crème of society, to coincide with his murder of Jimoh Oba who he hoped to dispossess of a land. For an alibi, he pasted Naira notes on the face of the invited musician for the ceremony, changed his clothes and drove, through the backdoor of his house, to go kill Oba in the farm, returned to the ceremony and continued with the event. Ejigbadero had virtually all musicians singing his praises. No one was able to bell the cat of where his obnoxious wealth emanated from, including a famous musician who sang that as inscrutable as it is to know how liquid enters a coconut pod, so was the mystery of Ejigbadero’s wealth. By the way, till today, one of my major regrets is that, in one of my off-handed discussions with Late Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, the famous king had told me that the Nigerian state and the military rulers of the time connived in Ejigbadero’s eventual conviction by the court and his subsequent execution in 1979, four years after his murder of Oba. I blame myself on why I suddenly lost my inquisitiveness and didn’t interrogate Alaafin of Oyo further on that submission. Now, the Alaafin, an iconoclast, a walking encyclopedia of ancient and contemporary history, has gone with what may be a valid information in that regard.

The cases of Adam, the murder of the Fatinoyes, point blank shooting of Lagos lawyer on Christmas day by ASP Drambi Vandi and so many others which occurred and are still occurring in the world, have provoked so many unanswered or unanswerable questions. They range from, as posed by Togado, “why do evil people find painful choices neither difficult nor painful?… Must (we) become evil to fight evil?” So, I ask, why do atrocities, evils of frightening dimensions, wickedness in high and low places, outweigh good in this world? Are human beings naturally evil?

Already, due to the multiple evils associated with the Nigerian policemen, the general impression is that the Nigeria Police Force is the natural domicile of the Nigerian Devil, in its imperial and unpretentious wickedness. I shuddered at a Twitter post I stumbled upon last week which seems to sum up the general impression of Nigerians about the Force. The post had read, “If I see a policeman dying by the roadside and needing help, God in heaven knows I will not help. I will jump and pass. I hate you guys. All of you, Nigerian policemen. My experience with you guys have (sic) left me very bitter. Even you, Mr. Ben, I hate you. You guys irritate me.” Even Benjamin Hudenyin, Lagos Police PRO, was seemingly speechless as he tried to spin the good deeds he attributed to the Nigerian police. You can imagine the ounce of wickedness from the police the fellow who wrote this must have encountered.

Philosophers say that evil is actually the parent of actions that are considered by humanity as wicked. Wicked actions are ones considered to be at the same gruesome level with that of animals or beasts. Stanley Benn, a research fellow in Philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra, said wickedness is one of the extracts of evil.

In distinguishing different varieties of wickedness, Benn dimensioned them into self-centered wickedness, psychopathic wickedness and conscientious wickedness. According to him, self-centered wickedness can be likened to narcissism where the sufferer from this selfish wickedness defines what is good according to what is good for them. The second, psychopathic wickedness or what he labeled “moral imbecility,” happens when the sufferer does not factor the wellbeing of others into their action. The last, conscientious wickedness occurs when its perpetrator sees their action as reasonable and necessary.

While it will seem that evil is latent in the heart of man, irrespective of race, colour or religion, many underdeveloped or developing countries contribute to the pervasiveness of evil in their societies. This they do by their peremptory treatment of humanity. If we universalize humanity and remove compartments of class and other identifiers which we put different humans into, we may be on our way to protecting every man from evil. By doing this, we will be protecting ourselves as well. The ongoing trial in Moscow of Brian Kohberger, the lone suspect in the murder, on November 13, 2022, of four University of Idaho, Moscow students — Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20 and Ethan Chapin, 20 authenticates the above assertion. Typical of students, they had spent the preceding Saturday night out of campus in a revelry and returned home in the early morning hours only to be knifed to death around 4 a.m.

Kohberger, 28, a doctoral student of Criminal Justice at the Washington State University, was fingered as suspect in the killings. His doctoral research’s area of interest is said to be criminology as he studied the mindsets of criminals. One of his classmates told investigators that days before the killing, Kohberger was engaged in discussion with his colleagues on DNAs, forensics and was a teaching assistant in his university. Harvesting a major lead of a knife sheath discovered by investigators beside the stabbed bodies of Ms. Mogen and Ms. Goncalves, the CCTV camera recordings of neighbours of the murdered students, which revealed that the killer rode into the neighbourhood in a white Elantra car around 2am and then the DNA on the knife which was picked up from the Kohberger family trash bin site in Philadelphia, the police traced and arrested Kohberger. One of the surviving roommates of the stabbed victims also reported seeing the masked killer and her description of him fitted Kohberger.

Most murderers are psychopathically wicked and do not factor others into the outcome of their actions. If ASP Drambi Vandi and the murderer(s) of the Fatinoyes had bothered about what becomes of their victims after their actions, other than theirs, they most probably would not have committed those gruesome murders. Did Vandi know, for instance, that by killing Raheem, he was killing three persons at a go? Or, as Police PRO was recorded to have said, he was a victim of the Yoruba edi, traditional African invocation used to railroad a victim into doing what they otherwise would not have wanted to do?

The killing of the Fatinoyes has all the trappings of revenge, cult or drug peddlers’ assassination. Or that of an organized crime by the mafia. This pattern is also found in southern African muti killing. The brutality in the murders was not dissimilar to mafia killing.

Those who have encountered the Nigerian police in action have said that, sans corruption and pristine investigative equipment that they still grapple with, the Force parades brilliant, competent and effective officers whose eagle investigative eyes, with clinical certainty, can spot the pregnancy of a snail, even as it is ensconced inside its shell – apologies to this Yoruba aphorism which references deftness and precision. I have engaged brilliant Lagos ex-Police Commissioner, Fatai Owoseni, countless times on Nigeria police officers’ efficiency and his statistics are believably fascinating.

However, place the Moscow police efficiency in tracking Kohberger, within few weeks of his alleged psychopathic killing of those four students, side by side the possibility that the Fatinoye killers may never be found, and you will shudder. The tendency towards evil and violence of blood-curdling dimensions are seemingly comparatively higher in advanced societies than in developing ones. For instance, the Gun Violence Archives in the United States recorded that in the first 24 hours of 2023, America recorded “59 gun deaths, 150 gun injuries, six mass shootings, two children shot… and six unintentional shootings.” However, the certainty of being caught in America and in advanced societies as a whole is a huge deterrence and disincentive on the road to perpetrating evil. Criminologists say that certainty of arrest and severity of punishment lower man’s natural inclination towards embracing his ape and beast ancestors, thus lowering rates of atrocities and reducing paradigms of evils.

In Nigeria, certainty of arrest and justice are sickeningly low. This is worsened by enveloping darkness of power outages which does not encourage individual or public installation of CCTV cameras. The distinguishing difference between Nigeria and saner climes is in technology and a people who see the police as working for them. In Moscow and Philadelphia where Kohberger lived with his father and where he was apprehended, the people cooperated with the police. In Nigeria, the people have seen too many instances of police wickedness that they don’t believe that the police work for them. Police brutality, pandemic corruption in the force and a Nigeria that is apathetic to modernization of its society are the bane of the possibility of reaching the amazing investigative level that the Idaho killings reached. I have often argued that the moment Nigeria gets the issue of electricity right, she would have solved fifty percent of her existential crises, chief among which is crime investigations. This has encouraged and flourished the pandemic of corruption among police officers who, like the flamingo, are feeding fat on the failure of the system. The flamingo, you will recall, can only eat when its head is upside down. The Nigerian system is upside down and corrupt elements eat from it.

It is why, in the buildup to the presidential election, Nigerians must be interested in the candidate who can break the curse of darkness that hovers over the country like a deathly apparition. If we have electricity, corruption will be trackable and will serve as a disincentive to the crime; economy will be revivified and our society will be run as they do human societies of the world.

By the way, all must be done to track the Fatinoye murderer(s). Not tracking them will incentivize their killers and make such killings grow rotund in Nigeria. Apprehending criminals is not for the sake of their victims, many of whom have come face to face with their gruesome fates, but for the sake of the living.

 

Dr Festus Adedayo writes from Ibadan 

Comments

Opinion

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

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Opinion

The Fuji Music House Of Commotion

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Opinion

Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Trending