Opinion
Osinbajo: Senator Adeyeye and his dishonest thesis | By Ajibola Basiru
I read with deep interest an article published in Premium Times by my predecessor in the Senate as the representative of Osun Central Senatorial District, Senator Professor Sola Adeyeye. I believe the description of him at the foot of the article as “the senator for Osun Central in the National Assembly” is clealy erroneous as since June 2019, I have been representing Osun Central Senatorial District in the Senate Chamber of the National Assembly. Nonetheless, I find it curious that a news organ will not know that the Spokesperson of the Senate is the Senator representing Osun Central Senatorial District.
The central thesis of Senator Adeyeye is that Professor Yemi Osinbajo is the preferred aspirant of President Mohammadu Buhari on the account of what he considered to be the loyalty of Professor Yemi Osinbajo to the President and alleged inadequacies of other aspirants particularly Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In pursuing this thesis for which he is apparently expressing the eventual triumph of Professor Osinbajo, he predicated his thesis on the following contentions: that a person can only attain the office of the President if he is supported by those he referred to as the establishment: that religion has almost lost relevance ultimately in the Nigeria political context; that the President was referring to Professor Osinbajo when he answered the question on who is the favourite among the aspirants in a live television interview; that President Buhari will anoint Professor Osinbajo as appreciation of the later’s loyalty; that most Buhari men are against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu; and of course making defamatory and denigrating remarks against Asiwaju Tinubu.
The Theory of Establishment as the only route to the Presidency appears to be the typification of Nigerian democracy by the writer. Senator Adeyeye asserted and I think rather firmly that “if the establishment does not want you, you can never win the presidency”. I am at a loss to see the factual and empirical basis for this assertion in view of the recent political history of Nigeria that saw the presidency of President Buhari dislodging an incumbent President and a political party that has controlled the Presidency for about 16 years before the 2015 electoral loss. Which establishment want President Buhari and the APC in 2015. I see here a clear attempt to use a banal assertion to becloud the spirited efforts of the coalition that ripened to the APC and the struggle of our leaders like President Buhari, Chief Bisi Akande, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu among others that ensure the presidency for the APC against all odds. Perhaps, Segun Adeniyi’s book with the title “Against the Run of Play” comes to mind.
Another banal assertion by the Distinguished Senator is that “religion as a factor in Nigerian political outcomes is overrated, especially at the national level.” Beyond this mere assertion, I am yet to see the empirical study that support the assertion. His further assertion that “when it matters, realpolitik always trumps religion” leaves the gaping questions of “when realpolitik matter?” and “who determines when realpolitik matters?” I see in the assertion an overly dangerous assumption that mass of the people and their opinions can be easily discounted in a democratic polity. To dismiss with a stroke of pen the possible effects of religion in a largely traditional society like ours in democratic choices is far from being profound. Is the Senator oblivious of the fact that Professor Yemi Osinbajo became Vice President in 2105 largely due to the orchestrated campaign again a Muslim/Muslim ticket because President Buhari was perceived to be an Islamic extremist and hence the party needed a Pastor from the South West to ensure the candidacy is sellable to the southerners?
My sense in reading the article is that people are outrightly discounted in our democratic enterprise, what matters from his theory is the predisposition of what he termed the “establishment”. Therefore, the mission for the Distinguished Senator is simple, market the aspiration of Professor Osinbajo and make disparaging and even outright defamatory assertions against other aspirants, particularly Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to curry the favour, nay the endorsement of “the establishment” for his aspirant. I indeed find very interesting that the Senator readily asserted with apparent finality “that Nigeria is not a land of political revolution.” These are indeed very interesting times!
According to Professor Adeyeye, “If the North thought Osinbajo a problem on religious grounds, he wouldn’t have been accepted as the vice president to a Buhari as president”. So, we are being told that it is the “North” that accepted Osinbajo as the Vice-President? Are we being taken on a journey of amnesia on how Professor Osinbajo became the Vice President by mere assertion and deliberate distortion? So, it is the “Northern establishment” that suo motu “notice(d) the genius behind the string of legal victories – Professor Yẹmí Osìnbàjò” and his emergence is not part of the negotiated political arrangements with our party Leaders in the South West after the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC)?
While, I am not denying the astuteness of Professor Osinbajo as a legal scholar, to simply attribute his emergence as the Vice President to being “noticed” by the “Northern establishment” as a “genius” is to distort and deliberately falsify political development and history we all know and partook in.
The writer is obviously claiming to have conducted census of the President Buhari’s foot soldiers against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as he claimed “let him name one Buhari foot soldier in Tinubu’s camp and I will name a hundred that are not there”. Perhaps he can oblige the public with result of his census of anti Tinubu Buhari foot soldiers to back his assertions! In making comment on President Buhari’s comment that the presidency is not for sale to the highest bidder, perhaps the Senator is oblivious of the fact that the President has access to information of the camp already reported as wooing delegates with cash gifts in Naira and Dollar. Surely, we wise citizens are paying attention!
That the Senator is not content with selling his aspirant to those he called “the establishment” without attacking Asiwaju is revealed by this obviously deprecatory and defamatory assertion unfortunately penned by a personality I have so much respect for:
“Yes, Tinubu has the structure, he has amassed the money and is already throwing it around left, right and centre, but the truth is that many are just fleecing him at the moment. Many signals within the party and within the establishment indicate he is on a hiding to nothing. Many see Tinubu as a greedy blackmailer who must be kept away from Aso Rock because he has the capacity to create an entirely different political patronage structure that can alienate the ‘Class of 1966’.”
The above remarks revealed a desperate move to disparage the character and reputation of Asiwaju Tinubu and must be interrogated to reveal that they were made with bile and guile. Asiwaju Tinubu has been out of office since 2007 and has not held office and has never been indicted for corruption and breach of public trust. So, we can ask our Senator, when has it become a crime to be rich. Where is the evidence of Asiwaju throwing “money around left, right and centre”? Baseless allegation from a Distinguished Senator is rather mind boggling! It is rather outlandish to hide under the one finger of “many” to call Asiwaju Tinubu “a greedy blackmailer”! Let the Senator identify a single patronage given to Asiwaju Tinubu since the inception of President Buhari’s administration. Then talking of blackmail, who is Asiwaju Tinubu blackmailing? President Buhari or Professor Osinbajo or “the establishment “? It is quite unfortunate that a mind trained in science will make disparaging remarks without any evidence and hiding under unidentifiable “many”.
Apart from unfounded denigrating remarks, there was also the intention to rally the “establishment” against Asiwaju Tinubu when he commented that Asiwaju is someone “who must be kept away from Aso Rock because he has the capacity to create an entirely different political patronage structure that can alienate the ‘Class of 1966’.”
The apparent desperation of the commentator to rally the “establishment” against the candidacy of Asiwaju Tinubu was brought out with more potency when he again asserted: “Incidentally, Tinubu went full throttle to politically terminate Ambode when the latter tinkered with the patronage structure in Lagos. As far as the establishment are concerned, Tinubu has been amply rewarded with the free rein they’ve given him over Lagos and its purse strings. Giving him Aso Rock is class suicide for the establishment.”
Many issues may be raised from the above. Of what relevance is issue of Ambode to the choice of Nigerian presidency? Is it that it is “the establishment” that gifted Lagos to Asiwaju as a reward? And reward for what? The innuendo of control of purse of Lagos is another evidence of the liberty the Senator took in making defamatory assertions in his article. The assertion on “giving” out Aso Rock depicts the obvious understanding of the Senator that our democracy has become a spoil of war. Perhaps, the Senator will need to elucidate how Asiwaju Tinubu winning the Presidential election will constitute “class suicide for the establishment”. I think this is a mere exercise in scaremongering and calling a dog a bad name to kill it.
I don’t think it is necessary to comment on equally defamatory assertions against Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank Governor, as it has become a pattern in coming against any perceived opponent of the writer’s aspirant. However, I find it rather strange the “new revelation” that the late Abba Kyari “was said” to have been working closely with Tinubu to frustrate the nomination of Professor Osinbajo as the Vice President in 2019. Apparently, the Senator was not sure of himself on that fact and therefore used the phrase “was said” which in legal parlance means what he stated was mere hearsay. It speaks to the motive of the commentator that such revelation could be based on what “was said! Also, as a student of logic, I cannot find the sequence in the contention that because Buhari did not replace Osinbajo as vice president in 2019 “is a strong indication that Buhari thinks him worthy of succeeding him in 2023”. That is a rather outlandish proposition!
I wouldn’t know that Distinguished Senator Adeyeye has developed talent for mind reading when he said the President was referring to Professor Osinbajo in a Channels Television interview with Maupe Ogun. However, if the Senator was cocksure of having read the mind of the President at that interview, one will think the subsequent paragraphs of his article campaigning to the President to help make the case with the “Northern establishment that Osinbajo is the best bet for Nigeria” is needless! It seems my Distinguished leader is not convinced himself of the mind reading. And I am at a loss to understand what the Senator meant when he said: “For a man who knows what Osinbajo has endured as vice president, he knew what he was talking about.” Is it that the Vice-President has been a beast of burden and Nigerian Presidency is a compensation and not about service?
Speaking about loyalty, is it the case that party leaders and supporters who are outside the government are not loyal to the government both in birthing it into power and sustaining it. The price for loyalty cannot and ought not to be exclusive preserve of those who have been in the corridor of power for about seven years. Can anyone in his right mind doubt the commitment and loyalty of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the emergence and sustenance of the APC and its government under the leadership of President Buhari?
Senator Ajibola Basiru, Ph.D. is the Senator for Osun Central in the Senate Chamber of National Assembly.
Opinion
NASS Pensioners: How Akpabio, Abbas Should Not Treat The Elderly
On Monday and Tuesday last week, workers and political operatives within the precincts of the new Senate building in the National Assembly complex, Abuja, were treated to a replica of the Theatre of the Absurd. This type of drama originated in Europe and later spread to America in the 1950s. It was influenced by existential philosophy and Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus.
In that work, Camus captured the fundamental human needs and compared the absurdity of man’s life with the situation a figure of Greek mythology, Sisyphus found himself, where he was condemned to repeat forever the task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, and repeatedly sees the same roll down the hill as he approaches the top.
He, thereafter, juxtaposed life’s absurdities with what he called the “unreasonable silence” of the universe to human needs and concluded that rather than adopt suicide, in frustration, “revolt” was required.
82-year-old Dr. Muhammed Adamu Fika, former Clerk to the National Assembly and former Chairman, of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), who calls himself the “smaller Adamu Fika,” must have come across the Camus essay in deciding to lead an emergency meeting of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries of the National Assembly on November 18. The emergency meeting, which was jointly held with members of the Association of Retired Staff of the National Assembly was meant to salvage the pathetic plights of the National Assembly retirees.
Eighty-two-year-old Fika can hardly gather the pace to navigate round the corners of the National Assembly, but he insisted on making the trip to enable him to preside over the meeting as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries. As his retiree colleagues, many of whom are far younger, saw him struggling to walk the required distance from the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Library, originally fixed as venue to the new Senate building, they had to provide some shoulders to lean on. At one stage, an office chair was converted to a wheelchair to ensure the elderly Fika got to certain locations. It was a sad tale, especially if you look at the essence of Fika’s trip to the National Assembly. He was there to preside over a meeting to press home the need for the payment of the entitlements of National Assembly retirees. An alarm had earlier been sounded on the different Whatsapp platforms of the retired workers of the National Assembly to the effect their members were dying in numbers. It was revealed that no fewer than 20 retired workers had died awaiting the payment of their entitlements in the recent past. Another set of retirees numbering 12 were said to have been bedridden in different hospitals across the land. That alarm was more than enough to prompt Fika and his retiree colleagues to an emergency meeting. But the sight of an elderly man, fighting a just cause on an improvised wheelchair was more than absurd.
Payment of the entitlements got stalled after former President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which mandated the National Pensions Commission (PENCOM) to hand over assets of the staff of the National Assembly in its custody after the passage of the National Assembly pension law.
In the beginning, there were no signs that things would go south on the implementation of the Act. Three months after the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act came into effect, PENCOM had written the management to convey its decision to hand off the pension assets of the staff of the National Assembly, while requesting the National Assembly management to provide it with account details to remit the accrued funds. The 10th Senate and the House of Representatives also provided hope for the retirees by providing a take-off grant to the tune of N2.5 billion in the 2024 budget. However, the NASS management could not comply with the request from PENCOM because the Pensions Board had not been inaugurated. Months after months, the retirees waited. Those who were already enjoying their benefits when PENCOM was administering had the payments terminated, while the waiting game ensued.
In trying to fast-track the implementation of the Act, Fika, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries had forwarded a letter to the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, intimating them of the council’s recommendations for positions in the National Assembly Service Pensions Board.
Fika said in the letter, dated February 27, 2024, that “Considering the pathetic health conditions of our retired colleagues, Your Excellency will agree with me that the establishment of the National Assembly Pensions Board is overdue five (5) months after Mr. President’s assent.” He said that his letter was premised on the provisions of Sections 2 and 17(3) of the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which indicate that the presiding officers of the National Assembly shall make the appointments subject to recommendations of the Council of Clerks and Secretaries. But some persons are insinuating that the undue delay might have been instigated by two strange bedfellows-politics and money. Where the two are involved, simply things hardly follow a straight course. However, nothing justifies the nearly 20-month delay in inaugurating the Pensions Board.
At the end of the emergency meeting on Monday, further meetings were said to have been scheduled at the instance of the Senate President, Akpabio, his deputy, Jibril Barau and others but there were no conclusive steps, yet.
A communique released after the meeting indicated that the retirees observed that the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023 went through full legislative process in the 9th National Assembly and was assented to by President Muhammad Buhari. It further noted that the delay in implementing the Act has caused undue and untold hardship to the retirees who are unable to access their retirement benefits, adding that while a number of the retired Staff have died, many others are bedridden due to sufferings occasioned by the non-payment of their entitlements.
According to the communique, the meeting decried the pains the retired staff have been subjected to and recalled that appropriate recommendations as per the composition of the Pensions Board have been made to the Presiding Officers of the National Assembly, in line with the enabling Act.
Opinion
The Fuji Music House Of Commotion
Like every lover of Yoruba traditional music, language and culture, I have of recent been inundated with requests to lend a voice to the newest raging fire in the Fuji music genre. Since the passage of Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Balogun, popularly known as Ayinde Barrister or Agbajelola Barusati, there have been longstanding tiffs on whom of the trio of Ayinde Omogbolahan Anifowose, KWAM 1; self-named King Saheed Osupa (K.S.O.) and Wasiu Alabi Pasuma, was the “King.”
These musicians’ recent quest for supremacy is not new. From time immemorial, supremacy battles have been part and parcel of Yoruba music. Apparently now tempered by modernity, in the olden days, the battles were fought with traditional spells, incantations and talisman aimed at deconstructing and liquidating their rivals. Mostly fought on genre basis, I submit that pre and post-independence entertainment scene would have been livelier, far more robust than it was but for the acrimonious liquidating fights of those eras.
In the Sakara music, Abibu Oluwa, a revered early precursor of this Yoruba musical genre, who reigned in the late 1920s and 1930s, had Salami Alabi Balogun, popularly known as Lefty Salami, Baba Mukaila and Yusuff Olatunji as members of his band. Oluwa praise-sang many Lagos elites of his time, especially Herbert Macaulay to whom he sang his praise in the famous track named “Macaulay Macaulay.” In it, he sang the foremost Nigerian nationalist’s alias of Ejonigboro – Snake on the Street and prayed that he would not come to shame.
Sakara also produced the likes of S. Aka Baba Wahidi, Kelani Yesufu (alias Kelly). It was sung with traditional Yoruba instruments like the solemn-sounding goje violin whose history is traced to the north, and the roundish Sakara drum, beaten with stick and whose appearance is like that of a tambourine. Sakara music is often called the Yoruba variant of western blues music because of its brooding rhythm though laced with a high dosage of philosophy.
When Oluwa died in 1964, he literally handed over to Lefty who, born on October 1913, died December 29, 1981. Lefty, a talking drummer under Oluwa, churned out over 35 records before his demise, one of which was a tribute to Lagos monarch, Oba Adele (Adele l’awa nfe – Oba Adele is the king we want) and another to the Elegushi family. I dwelt considerably on Sakara because it is believed to have had considerable influence on other genres of traditional African Yoruba music, especially Apala and Fuji, with the former sometimes indistinguishable from Sakara.
Apala music, whose exponent is said to be Haruna Ishola, originated in the late 1930s Nigeria. Delivered with musical instruments like a rattle (Sekere) thumb piano, (agidigbo) drums called Iya Ilu and Omele, a bell (agogo) and two or three talking drums, Apala and Sakara are the most complex of these genres of traditional Yoruba music, due to their infusion of philosophy, incantations and dense Yoruba language into their mix. Distinct, older and more difficult in mastery than Fuji music which is considered to be comparatively easy to sing, Ayinla Omowura, Ligali Mukaiba, Kasumu Adio, and many others were Apala leading lights of the time. The three genres have very dense Islamic background.
The latest entrant of all the three genres is Fuji. Pioneered by Ayinde Barrister no doubt, for an Apala musician biographer like me, I am confused that Omowura, as far back as early 1970s, asked listeners in need of good Fuji music to come learn from him – “Fuji t’o dara, e wa ko l’owo egbe wa…” Sorry, I digressed.
While KWAM 1 emerged with his Talazo music from the ashes of his being a music instrument arranger for Barrister’s musical organization in the early 1980s, the feud in the house after Barrister’s death erupted when narratives allegedly oozed unto the musical scene that KWAM 1 referred to himself as the creator of Fuji music. He however promptly denied the claim. For decades, Osupa and Pasuma were locked in horns over supremacy of the Fuji music genre. In August 2023, the two however seemed to have decided to thaw their feud as they shared stage with Wasiu Ayinde, at Ahmad Alawiye Folawiyo, an Islamic singer’s 50th birthday celebration in Lagos. KWAM 1 glibly acted as their senior colleague at the event.
As an indication that they are no bastards of the teething and recurrent supremacy battles that emblemize traditional Yoruba music, the three Fuji music icons seem to have gone into the trenches again. It first started with Taiye Currency, an Ibadan-based alter-ego of Pasuma picking a fight with the musician who self-styled himself Son of Anobi Muhammed’s Wife. In a viral video, Currency had disclaimed reference to Pasuma as his “father” in the music industry. In another video not long after, KWAM 1, like some kind of father figure, was shown asking Currency to apologize to Pasuma.
A few days ago, a video of Osupa went viral. Therein, he was chastising a particular hypocrite he called “Onirikimo” and “alabosi”, who is “stingy and is ready to shamelessly collect money from those under him.” Osupa also claimed that this “shameless elder” had strung a ring of corn round his waist and should be ready to be made fun of by hens. Watchers of the endless tiffs among these Fuji icons swear that KWAM 1 was the unnamed Fuji musician Osupa was casting aspersion on.
The trio of Sakara, Apala and Fuji music also witnessed such petty squabbles. While many claim that the fights were promotional gambits aimed at having their fans salivate for their hate-laced musical attacks against one another, some others claim that the rivalries were genuine. In the Apala music scene, Haruna Ishola and Kasumu Adio fought each other to the nadir, with Adio, who sang almost in the same voice and cadence as Ishola, suddenly vamoosing from the musical scene. Rumours and speculations had it then that a mysterious goat bit Adio and rendered him useless. While Ayinla Omowura also fought Fatai Olowonyo, Fatai Ayilara, among others in the Apala genre, the duo of Yusuff Olatunji and S. Aka also feuded till their last days. This is not to mention the interminable fight between Kollington Ayinla and Barrister.
If the tiff between the trio of KWAM 1, Osupa and Pasuma is about age and Yoruba traditional respect for elders, KWAM 1 would easily go away with the trophy of the best of the three. However, if philosophical depth, musical elan, research of lyrics and deployment of Yoruba language are at issue, none of the other two musicians can unbuckle Osupa’s sandals. Osupa began his musical career in 1983 as a teenager and has gone through the mills, his late father being a musician, too and Awurebe music lord, Dauda Epo Akara’s musical contemporary.
Unlike their predecessors, the three Fuji musicians are literate and should thus address their musical issues in more mature manner. Osupa even recently bagged a degree from the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. One thing they should know is that, whether one is supreme to the other or not, their fans will readily queue behind the brand that delights them.
Opinion
Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror
Two incidents happened during the 1994/95 NYSC service year, which I was part of in Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi State, and they gave me profound culture shocks that I still remember till today. I would equally say that those incidents probably justified the Federal Government’s decision to float the scheme.
We were told that part of the reasons General Yakubu Gowon floated the NYSC was to ensure national integration, cohesion and exposure of young Nigerians to cultures of other parts of the country other than where they were born.
First was the shock of seeing a director that I was attached to in the then Government House, who had just taken a new wife, and sat among drivers, gate men and other junior staff to dine. I saw them seated round a huge iron pot of Koko, a local delicacy, exchanging one big spoon made of calabash, as each took turns to use the spoon to eat the delicacy. It was as if I was witnessing a scene where children of a big family were struggling to catch a portion of food or where people were eating Saara, as they say it in Yorubaland.
As I walked past the noisy crowd, I was transfixed seeing the newly-wedded director among the lot. He saw me standing still, as I couldn’t comprehend what he was doing there, and he got the message. ‘Taiyo, (as he used to call me) you won’t understand,’ he said as he waved to me to keep going. When we later saw, he explained that what he just did was a way of assuring the commoners that ‘we are all one,’ as they felicitated him on the new bride. But I could not fathom how the occupant of a ‘huge office’ as that of a director in a Government House , would sit among “commoners” on a tattered mat to share a single spoon and eat in public.
The other incident was quite pathetic. My friend, Tunde Omobuwa, was posted to a school in Yauri, in the southern part of the state, for his primary assignment. But he found the place boring on weekends. So, he arranged to always be with me on weekends.
One such weekend, we decided to take a stroll round the streets near the Government House. We took off from the place of my primary assignment, the Federal Information Centre; bought corn beside the office, and started ‘blowing’ the ‘mouth organ’ as we strolled. We were too engrossed in our gist and the sweetness of the corn to note that some young boys were trailing us, praying that some leftovers of the corn would drop for them to scavenge. Somehow, the two of us dropped the corn cob almost simultaneously. We were more than taken aback by a commotion that erupted at our back. Four eight or nine year-olds had descended on the supposed leftovers and broken the corn cobs into pieces. I was again transfixed as if one was hit by an electric shock. Remember that feeling when you play with electric fish?
I was moved to tears as I had never ever seen a group of children scavenging on nothing as it were. I beckoned to the kids and offered them N20, which was the highest denomination at the time, and with some smattering Hausa words told them to go buy their own corn from the same place we got ours. As they left, heading to the corn seller, I couldn’t erase that ugly sight from my mind. Was it really possible that some people scavenge on nothing this way? I was later to see incidents of children swarming around restaurants and pouncing on near empty plates.
These incidents told me clearly that the North was a different place and that the life of the boy child is not only risky and endangered but sold to stagnation and deprivation, unless you are one of the lucky few.
Having benefited from the free education policy of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) between 1979 and 1983, when the Second Republic was terminated, I knew that there is a lot the government can do in educating the children. In my secondary school days, I was the Library Prefect at one point, and so I saw an excess of books supplied by the government to our school. So, I was an example of the feasibility of free education. It was the same way the Action Group government had handled education in the years preceding Nigeria’s independence and the First Republic.
So why can’t the state governments in the North declare free and compulsory education for the young ones out there? Why should children be made to scavenge on empty corn cobs just to see if they can find pieces of seeds left over?
And why was my director giving drivers and gate men in the Government House false hope that they were all the same, instead of him to challenge them to seek to lift themselves up the social ladder?
I think there was no excuse for the North not to have adopted a free education policy, just as Chief Obafemi Awolowo did in the South-West. And if we say the North needs to look itself in the mirror, you again remember the efforts by President Goodluck Jonathan to educate the multitude of Northern children through the Almajiri Schools. That government built more than 400 of such schools, which were abandoned because it could upset the oligarchy. The oligarchs forgot the truism that the children of the poor they refuse to train today won’t let their children sleep peacefully.
But the governor of Borno State, Prof Babagana Zulum, appears to have got the message. Last week, I was thrilled to see him organise a summit to reform the Almajiri system.
The Almajiri education system is a traditional Islamic method of learning widely obtained across states in northern Nigeria. Through that system, which is tied to Islamic teaching, youths, especially boys are kept out of the formal western education system. I don’t know why the teachings by Islamic scholars cannot go alongside that of Western education as it obtains in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other Islamic countries that are doing well economically and in the world of science, technology.
While addressing the summit, Zulum had mentioned the need to address the root causes of insecurity through the provision of education for citizens of Borno, adding that improper teaching of Islamic studies has contributed to the emergence of Boko Haram insurgents in the state.
According to him, to curtail whatever is the adverse effect of Almajiri education; the Borno State Government has established the Arabic and Sangaya Education Board to introduce a unified curriculum for Sangaya and Islamic schools. He said that the reform would include establishing Higher Islamic Colleges to cater for Almajiri children and blending the religious teachings with the secular curricula as well as skills.
He said: “The Sangaya Reform is a great development. It will give Almajiri a better chance in life, particularly the introduction of integrating western education, vocational, numeracy, and literacy skills into the centres, which are also described as Almajiri and Islamic schools.
“Distinguished guests and esteemed educationists, government’s intention was to streamline the informal and formal education systems to quality integrated Sangaya School for admission into colleges and universities.”
One would have thought that governors with radical postures like Nasir el-Rufai and others before him would have proposed this type of reform, but it is better late than never. Zulum should be supported to get something out of this.
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