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The blood on Buhari, Amaechi’s hands

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Prior to the July 11, 2007, coordinated bombing of commuter trains in India’s largest city of Mumbai, Indians, like Nigerians, were wrapped in the shawls of their innocence and naivety. On that day, terrorists violently yanked the terror purity shawls off India’s face. In a matter of minutes, multiple explosive devices were detonated in a near-simultaneity. The devices instantly killed at least 183 people, with hundreds of others sustaining varying degrees of injuries. In a replay of this Mumbai attack in Nigeria last week, at least seven passengers were killed after gunmen attacked a busy train plying Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and Kaduna. The terrorists were reported to have mined the track, ostensibly with IED explosives and subsequently forced the 840-capacity passenger train, with 362 validated passengers, to a halt. They then made a ring around the train’s coaches, opened fire on the defenceless passengers and abducted an unknown number of them from the train.

As worthwhile as a means of transportation as they are, train services in Africa came with resistance and revolt. While some African rulers like Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia and Abbas I of Egypt favoured its establishment, so many others disapproved of it, basing their resentment on the landscape of power and trade that it would tilt in favour of the colonialists. Major opposition to it was mounted by the Damal of Cayor, Late Dior Diop of Senegal. While voicing his rejection to French governor, Servatius, he had said: “As long as I live, be assured, I shall oppose, with all my might, the construction of this railway”. This notwithstanding, Africa’s network of railways got started in 1852, in Alexandria, Egypt.

The eyes of terrorists first opened to the mass murder weapon that trains constitute when, on September 13, 1931, a bomber, Szilveszter Matuska, derailed the Vienna Express train by planting a bomb that killed 22 and wounded 120 others. Since then, terrorists have targeted train services’ full infrastructure like ticket halls, railway bridges, trains, passenger stations, train depots, signalling and tracks. Indeed, urban commuter rail networks and subways, otherwise known as mass rapid transit rail systems, have been the soft target of the majority of terrorist attacks. These have led to approximately 1,000 being killed, with over 5,000 injuries, as well as economic losses of billions of dollars. The March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings held to be one of the most sophisticated terrorist attacks on a rail target which killed 191 people, for instance, there was a simultaneous detonation of 10 devices comprising Goma-2 Eco plastic explosive detonated by a mobile phone.

Like a water-dripping sore that naturally attracts a horde of flies, commuter trains have never been the same again after the 1931 Matuska attack. They have since been a special delicacy with which terrorists enjoy sumptuous a la carte meals of their victims’ flowing blood and mangled flesh. This is because train attacks come with a high fatality, mass disruption, huge national alarm, paralysis of the transport network and the national physiological and psychological trauma that goes with it. This is not to talk of the economic loss and long-term dislocation the people face in its aftermath.

The attacks are coordinated by terrorist groups with various attack methods. The list is endless, ranging from Al-Qaeda and its ancillary groups, Algerian and Chechen militants, Kashmiri separatists, South America’s left-wing guerrillas and Irish republican terrorists. London Underground and British Railways were said to have attracted more than 6,500 bomb threats between 1991 and 1997. On August 23, 1973, for instance, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) had targeted the mainland UK rail system by defusing a bomb at Central London’s Baker Street Underground station. Terrorists’ major modus operandi, tactical spectrum and operational template contain the detonation of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Asked why he caused so much pain to his victims, Matuska had told his interrogators that he derived sexual pleasure from watching trains crash. Since then, the global statistics of train attacks have mounted unconscionably like Nigeria’s national debt. Eight years after, on August 28, 1939, during the Nazi World War 11 German invasion of Poland, a German agent, Antoni Guzy, also placed a suitcase bomb at a busy railway station which killed 20 and wounded 35. According to the database of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, between the period 1998 and July 2006, at least 74 separate terrorist attacks were unleashed on heavy rail, metro subway systems and light rail systems in the whole world, as well as on trains and other rail infrastructure.

Since that last week’s attack, Nigerians have been wrapped up in the shroud of sadness. Newspaper features focusing on the victims made matters worse, evoking grim and tears in the people. Sijuade Oyetoso, TUC chairman, said to have been shot in the head inside the train, as well as Dr Chinelo Megafu, the young medical doctor graduate of the University of Port Harcourt evoke sessions of tears. Just a few days before this attack, heavily armed terrorists had attacked the Kaduna airport, and by the time they finished the operation, a security guard was shot dead. This led to flights cancellations.

Only yesterday, a news report said that no fewer than 1,545 persons had been killed by terrorists in the first quarter of 2022. Quoting a joint report by the Community of Practice Against Mass Atrocities and the Joint Action Civil Society Committee, under the aegis of Nigeria Mourns, the report also said that at least 1,321 persons were abducted by these terrorists between January 1 and March 30, 2022, with Nigeria’s north-western states of Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and the north-central state of Niger, coming under intense shelling by these cadaver-loving terrorists. While kidnapping for ransom has become commonplace across Nigeria, this selfsame Abuja-Kaduna highway has acquired the notoriety of one of the most dangerous roads in Nigeria. Kidnappers string around it like ants make a ring around the pee of a diabetic, ambushing vehicles at several points on the expressway corridors, killing many and constituting selves to lords of the Manor on the road.

With the above unflattering statistics, it will appear that, by still being shocked by attacks from terrorists, Nigerians, like the proverbial ostrich, are in the first stage of the psychological state of denial of the reality that their country is a terror corridor. In the architecture of terrorism, mass commuter rail transport is one of the most vulnerable weapons of terrorists and terrorist attacks. Indeed, global graphs of terror attacks since Matuska’s have shown clearly that Islamist militant groups have a notorious interest in specifically targeting rail transport because of the mass casualties that often come from such attacks. The question to then ask is, were the minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, the national security adviser, Babagana Monguno, their commander in chief, Muhammadu Buhari, and the coterie of so-called securocrats who surround the seat of power, so naïve about the pleasure that terrorists derive from attacking trains, so much that they didn’t know of this elementary fact?

Whether out of ignorance, the usual lackadaisical attitude of Nigerian leaders or their oft quest to always put financial interest ahead of the people’s welfare, when the train attack is reduced to its brass tacks, it will be difficult not to ascribe the deaths of these innocent Nigerians to a deliberate wastage of citizens’ lives that is the familiar penchant of her leaders. The logic is that since it is no longer news that Nigeria has become a notorious terrorism corridor, how does one explain why the government had to be picking its tooth while train commuters plied the Abuja-Kaduna notorious route, or any other train route in Nigeria, without adequate security? Apart from the fact that Kaduna state has become one of the most dangerous places to live in Nigeria, it is a known fact that the Abuja-Kaduna highway is one of the most dangerous roads in the country. It is full of a swarm of kidnappers who are known to ambush vehicles at several points on the expressway. Taken all together, one can then safely say that the blood of these innocent citizens, shed violently midstream, bears the government’s vicarious hands.

With the subsequent leakage of a memo said to have been presented by Amaechi to the federal executive council (FEC) but which was rightly rejected, it becomes a necessary conclusion to say that this wastage of the people’s lives in that train attack must have been due to one of three probable reasons, or even all: Sabotage by those hungry to prove a point, the government’s deliberately naive trivializing of the destructive powers of terrorists and third, the cruelty of government’s act of placing the cart before the horse. By preferencing the publicity stunts inherent in rushing first to shore up the sagging government’s public credential through the launching of the train “revolution” in 2016, rather than putting in place a simultaneous installation of security gadgets for the protection and safeguard of people’s lives, the Nigerian government can logically be said to have the blood of the people dripping from its hands.

Amaechi was said to have presented the wishy-washy memo to the FEC presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on September 24, 2021. In it, he had requested FEC approval of N3.7 billion for a contract on surveillance systems along the Abuja-Kaduna rail track. In presenting the proposal, Amaechi, the two-term governor of Rivers state and a seven-year minister, had recommended a firm, Mogjan Nigeria Limited, with very manifest incapability and nil track record of previous handling of such contract, as his preference. The company, incorporated on August 6, 2019, less than three years ago and with a turnover of N84.9 million, was Amaechi’s best for the execution of such a humongous job. To worsen matters, this leaked memo was said to have revealed so many more incongruities which, were it to be in a saner clime, Amaechi should have been fired for gross misconduct and laxity. Upon the attack, however, while fielding questions from journalists, Amaechi had claimed that he predicted the imminence of the attack and, ostensibly gloatingly, condemned the rejection of his memo presented before the FEC.

A few questions arise from this macabre atilogwu dance that Amaechi and the federal government are making on the graves of Nigerian dead. The rail services “revolution” was commissioned in July 2016 by President Buhari and this same Abuja-Kaduna train was the anchor. Speaking at the train’s main station at Idu, Abuja, Buhari promised that government would link all states and commercial centres of Nigeria with the rail lines. He later took a ceremonial train ride from Idu to Kubwa. This was at a time when terrorists’ bayonets were penetrating the nooks and crannies of Nigeria.

If Minister Amaechi was then presenting a memo for the procurement of security gadgets on that corridor in 2021, five years after the train services commissioning, it will mean one of three things; that Amaechi was totally naïve about the destructive powers of terrorists, that he was unapologetically simplistic about it or was grossly unmindful of the need to provide ancillary security of the rail systems to go simultaneously with its commissioning. Or could it be that he just didn’t care? By presenting such an embarrassingly empty doggerel as a memo to the highest decision-making body in Nigeria, it seems to point to the fact that such a regime of laxity, rigourlessness and, I dare say, fakery must have marked previous presentations to FEC which their sponsors got away with and which strengthened him to present a similarly vacuous memo. The memo may just be pointing at a pedigree of maggot infestations in procurements and contracts at the highest level of governance in Nigeria.

It will appear that the Nigerian government and its so-called securocrats are only excellent when it comes to filching budgets of security. For a Nigerian military that went to field operations across the world, garnering laurels and badges of honour for its performance, the only explanation for this feigning of counter-insurgency inability by the Nigerian military must be the gross national larceny sense that has infiltrated the high command of the Nigerian security. Like Eddy Iroh said in his ‘Toads of War’, Nigerian military generals have grown rotund bellies and cheeks like toads out of this terrorism calamity in Nigeria. It is why there is mutual suspicion, jealousy and efforts at cross-purposes across the forces.

Otherwise, in the rest of the world where terrorist attacks occurred, military generals, working with the entire national security architecture, took time to study the psychology of the attacks, with a view to countering them. Russia, Germany, Pakistan, Angola, South Korea, Colombia, Japan, UK, France, Spain, Italy, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, among others, have witnessed a worse form of terror on their railway networks than Nigeria did. Immediately after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11 2001, the New York subway became a recipient of its disruption as almost a quarter of a mile of its tunnel got filled with debris from the bombed twin towers, in addition to structural damage to three stations. After these attacks, counter-insurgency experts went into spirited work to prevent further attacks. One, they found out that, aside from the mass murder that trains pose to terrorists, the long-term economic loss, as well as massive scare on the collective national and corporate psyche, are the garlands that terrorists are obsessed with, which make train attacks their most desirable option. The 2004 Madrid rail bombings, as well as the 2005 attacks on London’s transport network, are good examples here.

In Nigeria, however, knowing the ancient predilection of our leaders for being lax and greedy, train attacks like the one of last week are likely to intensify. Terrorists are far more committed to their craft than those paid to keep watch on the people. Security experts know that bombers don’t just strike without doing reconnaissance and survey of targets. In the Abuja-Kaduna train attack, some of the terrorists were said to have been on board. Did our security know this?

With the soft target that bombing and attacking trains pose in terrorism corridors worldwide, chief of which Nigeria is, it will be gross criminal laxity or inexplicable compromise for the Buhari government not to have anticipated the Abuja-Kaduna train attack. By seeking to install that security equipment in 2021, it showed that Amaechi had an awareness of the threat terrorists posed. So what has happened between then and now? Did he fold his arms? Those who claim that there is a dalliance between top government officials and terrorists may have had corroboration material in this train attack. It reminds me of Willo Davis Roberts’ Blood on His Hands, the story of 16-year-old Marc and his bloody travails and confrontations. One thing that is not in doubt is that the blood of the murdered is crying for vengeance from the Buhari government.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Fuji Music House Of Commotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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