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The Smart Alec called Achraf Hakimi

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The divorce epidemic in the world and its attendant crises in divorce property sharing assumed a different colour last week in the matter of Moroccan, Achraf Hakimi Mouh and his erstwhile wife, Spanish actress, Hiba Abouk. Hakimi is reported to be Africa’s sixth highest-paid player whose extreme popularity has stuck to him like a lapel since he led his home country, Morocco to the semi-finals of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The French magazine, First Mag, had reported that in her claim upon the grant of the divorce by the court, Hiba had requested for half of Hakimi’s assets and fortune. However, the actress, reported the magazine, was shocked when her lawyer found out that Hakimi literally had nothing in his name as the beneficiary of his salary and wealth was his adored mother, Saida Mouh, to whom he transferred his wages for several years. The news reverberated across Spain, France and Morocco and indeed, the rest part of the world.

Hiba is of Libyan and Tunisian descent. Full name Hiba Aboukhris Benslimane, she was born in Madrid as the youngest of four siblings. Her parents, who migrated from Tunisia, had earlier settled in Spain. Hiba studied at the French Lycée, Madrid and graduated at age 18. She thereafter underwent courses in Arabic philology, graduating with a licentiate degree in drama. Renowned for her roles in television series, the most exampled being El Príncipe, in a 2012 show, she starred in comedy series for the first two seasons. She later appeared in a debut El Príncipe crime drama series which was featured on a Spanish free-to-air channel called Telecinco. Watchers of the drama series were estimated to be in the neighbouhood of five million. From 2010 when her acting career began, Hiba was on record to have featured in six movies.

Her husband is the 1998-born Moroccan professional footballer who plies his footballing trade with Ligue 1 Club of the Paris Saint-Germain. He is known to be friends with Kylian Mbappe and recently gained global attention in the reported unusualness which his divorce from Hiba took.

Indications that the marriage between the duo had hit the rock was given by the actress when on March 27 of this year, she took to her Instagram account to announce that she and Hakimi had separated and were waiting for the court to finalize their divorce proceedings. The marriage was blessed with two sons, Amín, 3, and Naim, 1 who were birthed in 2020 and 2022. There was earlier fear that Hakimi’s investigation in Paris on allegation of rape had fuelled the divorce. On March 3, 2023, Hakimi’s indictment was pronounced by a Paris investigating judge who, on the pending allegation of rape he was ensconced in, placed him under judicial supervision. Hakimi had been accused of raping a 24-year old lady right in his Boulogne home while his wife and kids had travelled on holiday. The alleged rape, which took place on the Sunday night of February 26, was broken to the world by the popular tabloid, Le Parisien. Though his lawyer, Fanny Colin, put up a spirited denial of the allegation, the proceedings went on nevertheless. Replying to Le Parisien, Colin had been quoted to have said, “The accusations are false. He is calm and is making himself available to the authorities”. Part of the legal proceedings was a ban placed on Hakimi never to contact the victim of his alleged rape binge. He was however allowed by the court to travel out of the French territory.

Details of the divorce proceedings between Hakimi and Hiba came to the full glare of the world last week, indicating that the couple had been working towards separating legally even before the alleged rape matter cropped up. Suspicions became rife when Hiba expunged her pictures and Hashimi’s from her Instagram page which took place almost immediately the Moroccan international got embroiled in the February rape case. From what was known about Hiba, she had a fortune of hers and probably made the claim to have her pound of flesh on her allegedly adulterous husband.

In comparison with her husband, Hadi is said to be worth the sum of $2million while Hakimi’s net worth is $24 million, eighty percent of which is in the possession of his mother. She is said to be responsible for all the purchases made by Hakimi which included cars, jewelry and clothes. Hakimi’s monthly earning from PSG is said to be $1million, sharing this high worth with Lionel Messi and Neymar da Silva Santos Jnr. The 20 per cent of his paycheck that he keeps is also said to be in the neighbourhood of about $215 weekly. Were the Moroccan defender’s wife to succeed with her claims in the divorce proceedings, she would have got a whopping sum of $8.5million awarded her.

While it was not an issue when they got married, the African conservative abhorrence of a wife older than the husband in matrimony was said to be one of the reasons that triggered the move towards the divorce. A sizeable age gap exists between the duo. While Hakimi is 24, Hiba is 36, a whole twelve years separating them. In an interview in March with El Cierre Digital, Hiba had said her decision to get married to Hakimi was her desire to have a home life, in concert with her husband and children but found out that Hakimi relished the life of a sybarite, partying and living the reckless life of a bachelor.

On the March 27 statement she released via her official Instagram account, Hiba defended her silence on the rape issue but doubled down on her divorce plans. The El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, had quoted her as having said, “After having taken the decision to legally separate and to stop living together whilst awaiting the divorce procedure, which you can imagine, on top of the pain brought about by the separation, as well as having to accept the sadness that a failed project, which I gave my body and soul, brings, I was supposed to face up to this disgraceful act? I needed time to come to terms with this shock. One must trust the legal process, especially considering the gravity of the accusation. Nonetheless, in my life, I always have been, and always will be, on the side of victims.”

Since the details of the divorce property sharing in the proceedings were made known to the world, stands have been taken by people from all walks of life for and against both Hadi and Hakimi. When a legal action is instituted to terminate a marriage, one of the issues that come out of it is how the property which was accumulated during the pendency of the marriage must be shared between the two parties. While this is alien to most of Africa where patriarchy is the order of the day, which is a major bequeathal from traditional African practices of centuries ago, in many other civilized countries, the sharing is pegged on a matrimonial property system. This depends on the particular type of system the parties chose when they were embarking on the marriage.

The African traditional system is in support of divorcing women, for various reasons. Ezinna E Enwereji of the Abia State University’s College of Medicine, Uturu, in her paper entitled Indigenous Marriage institutions and divorce in Nigeria: The case of Abia State of Nigeria, named these reasons as “infidelity, infertility/barrenness impotence, probing a husband’s sexual life inability to reproduce male children and/or large number of children, laziness in taking on assigned gender roles, including farming, cooking late and/or inability to cook delicious food, disrespect to husband and his kinsmen, deviant actions like stealing, prostitution, witchcraft, fighting, especially in public, cases of leprosy, tuberculosis, epilepsy and sexually transmitted infections.”

Though divorces were frowned at in Africa, whenever they occurred in the pre-colonial era, the wives lost totally, even losing the right to custody of the children of the marriage. In some societies of Africa, it was even a taboo for a wife to demand from her spouse whether he had extramarital sexual relationships, catching him red-handed notwithstanding. If she does, she might get divorced for this audacity. When such husband divorces the wife, he will return her to her parents and defrost her of all the resources she might have acquired during the marriage or even which they both labored for. He will then demand the repayment of the bride price he paid on her. It does not matter who initiated the divorce. When the bride price is returned, it is a signification that the marriage had come to an end. Even in the case where a marriage is dissolved by the order of the customary court, the court will still hold that “it is the refund of the bride price or dowry that puts to an end all incidents of customary law marriage and not an order of any court dissolving such marriage. Any order dissolving any customary law marriage without a consequent order for the refund or acceptance of the bride price or dowry is meaningless”. The woman thus divorced is visited financial hardship and most of them never recover from it.

While the customary law marriage pretends that there is Settlement of property in it, it is applicable in theory only as an available relief while, in practice, it is non-existent. Among the Igbo, for instance, wives are still viewed traditionally as one of the chattels and property or possession of the husband and thus, whatever she must have acquired while under the roof of the man, stricto sensu, is the man’s. In such a case, it is always very difficult to ascertain what property belongs to the woman upon divorce. Even when assets are singly or jointly acquired, they can only be ceded or parts given to the woman upon the “magnanimity” of the man. Thus, in settlement of property under customary law, it becomes a discretionary relief for the man to grant his exiting spouse settlement of property.

The above must be the reason many men, including Hakimi’s countrymen and women, were fuming at what they considered Hadi’s “legal ploy” to take a half of her husband’s wealth upon the dissolution of the marriage and their excitedness that Hakimi “outsmarted” the actress.

However, many jurisdictions are conforming to the advocacies of feminist activists who have argued that such system was too punitive against the woman and should be reversed. One of the countries that has tinkered with its own divorce property system is South Africa. There, the legal system is based on the inherited colonialists’ model and codified in the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984. It controls the property sharing model. This Act spells out the different matrimonial property systems which are available to couples in the country, depending on the type of marriages or unions that they choose to bind them legally, from civil, customary marriages and civil unions.

In the civil matrimonial property system of South Africa, there exist three main matrimonial property sub-systems. They are, out of community of property and in community of property. The last is what is called the accrual system. In the out of community property system, if a divorce proceedings is instituted, the property in the marriage is very easy to share and the marriage easier to dissolve because each of the party owns its own estate and their individual assets and liabilities, from the beginning of the marriage, have been known and delineated by the two of them as held separately.

In the in community property system, the estates of the spouses are merged to become a single joint estate during the pendency of the marriage and thus, the husband and wife, during divorce proceedings, are forced by law to share all their assets and liabilities. In this system, when dissolution of the marriage is effected, the court will pay all their liabilities and the balance of this joint estate will be divided in equal measure between the spouses.

If the spouses got married through the accrual system, as their estates multiply during the marriage, they will equally share them but retain their individual estate. Whatever is the accrual from these estates will go into their individual separate estate. Another feature of this system is that spouses cannot be held liable for debts incurred and during divorce proceedings, this sharing method automatically governs the dissolution of the marriage and the asset-sharing system.

The Nigerian matrimonial divorce systems under the Act and Customary Law are both clones of the old traditional practice that sees women as chattels and undeserving of partaking in the property of their spouses, upon dissolution of marriage. It is why Nigerian men have been most vociferous in the celebration of the “feat” of Hakimi. There is no doubting the fact that the ordinary rules of property law which are applied in the determination of the property rights of spouses in Nigeria have wrought financial hardship on women who are seen as weaker vessels. It should be known however that, while men are perceived as ones who go out to provide for the home, no financial or material wealth can surpass the glue and hold that women provide for the family.

While the Hakimi case will look as if he was a Smart Alec, there are some pivotal issues that favour him against Haidi. One is that, the marriage was only three years old. Thus, if the request of the Libyan-born actress had been granted, she would have reaped from where she didn’t sow because the footballer must have been amassing his wealth before their marriage. The second issue, which would have availed that marriage, is the benefit of conciliation which Africa usually witnesses in matrimonial disputes but which, I guess, was not available to the ex-spouses due to the nature of the individuality of the west. Now that potential wives have seen the Hakimi case, subsequent men who try to be smart like Hakimi may not be lucky as potential wives will most certainly begin to poke their noses, with audacious scrutiny, into the process and procedure of the wealth of their future husbands.

All said, the Nigerian property sharing model during dissolution of marriage is repugnant to natural justice as it affects women. There should, as a matter of urgency, be a reconsideration of the matrimonial property rights arrangement among spouses that is operational in Nigeria today. This piece calls for a review of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1970, the main law that governs matrimonial relations in Nigeria. This should be done with the view that the concept of due and equitable sharing of “matrimonial property” can be made applicable and operational during the pendency of marriages, as well as the critical stage of divorce in Nigeria.

 

Dr Adedayo, a journalist, lawyer and columnist writes 

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Opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Fuji Music House Of Commotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Almajiri: Why Northern Leaders Must Look Themselves in the Mirror

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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