Being Dan Boko Without Being Educated and Without Being Dan Boko Haram

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Being Friday, I know the day comes with a lot of businesses. So I will be brief. But there is this anguish in my heart which I want you to know. I will tell you now.

Key Words: Dan Boko, Educated, Boko Haram.

Translation:

Dan Boko, he who is educated.

Educated means being educated.

Boko Haram. Modern education is forbidden.

And Dan Boko Haram means an opposer, hater and a fighter against modern education.

I will explain.

Being educated without really being educated and committed to the mission and safely emerging as educated without being a hater of learning, in other words, Dan Boko Haram.

Especially in Kano, because people have some folk in their family who attended schools and have become  bureaucrats, doctors, teachers, bankers, pharmacists, lawyers etecetra, (I see someone is looking at me, there are also professionals in my family) you will hear people say so and so family members are ‘Yan Boko – those who are educated. They will make you have the impression that those ‘Yan Boko are well-lettered and truly educated. Until you go to their rooms to borrow some books then you will realize that they don’t have anything. They are not readers. In fact, they hate reading. They would look you with horrible eyes and ask “what kind of reading after the university?” We are in terrible situation.

I wonder how a person would be educated or simply called Dan Boko without reading books, restricting themselves only to prescription in the curriculum. There are even those who will die without reading a single book. And they are still ‘Yan Boko, everyone in society saw them go to school since childhood and now they work in offices. We are in a lopsided society with a tiny fraction of readers, where those who don’t read overwhelmingly outnumber those who read. When I hear people beating their chest because they have this and that in their family, staff this, staff that, I feel like committing suicide.

Questions assailed me when I first read in articles written by some Nigerians calling some folk as diseducated, half-educated, miseducated, this and that. Imagine a lawyer asking why should I bother to study Political Science in the university. All those politicians do not read Political Science before they become politicians.  That was a moment of shock. A whole lawyer saying this? I know there are diseducated people and educated illiterate but I have never thought of having miseducated lawyer.

Now my doubts are washed away by the unassailable fact that our people are greatest enemy of books and deep reflection. Teachers and students are oppressed by what Paulo Freire called the ‘banking concept education’ where teachers deposit what they consider to be objective facts into the minds of their students and expect no flexible, no fluid thinking, no varied and independent opinion from the students but accept them as rigid and unassailable and the students make no effort to free themselves. Imagine a student complaining that his score in an examination is not correctly written and the whole department is furious about that. Because I know I have poor memory, I have never thought of getting Firs-Class certificate in my university education. I have an existentialist view of knowledge and not mere certificate. 

The criterion is that many can go to school, attend colleges and universities, become successful in life, hold MA, PhD and even become professors, but only few can become truly educated and enlightened. When you find that you are a member of the community of readers, those who are lucky to get to marry books, and not in the colony of haters and divorcers of books, you simply have to be grateful. Whenever I remember this fact a peace of mind descends in me.

It is disheartening how you will hear folk asking “and you will read this whole book” when they see 400+ pages book in your hand.  For them, that’s insurmountable, something impossible. They have forgotten that somebody has written it and your work will never be as daunting as the writer’s.  

My friend Aliyu told me the same torment he receives daily from the public, how people abuse him with insulting questions and silly remarks. Because pictures of the authors at the back of African Writers Series publications sometimes come blurred and unclear especially with pirated copies, someone once sympathized with Aliyu and said “I hope you will not be like this,”  pointing at the wretched writer.

Anytime I come across this incident of someone raising doubt about reading a whole book, I feel a bit embarrassed. Those people are your colleagues on campus. I show pity and understanding. I will simply be looking at the head of those vomiting these words thinking what are they really thinking, do they really know  joy in life, are they really normal,  and also to see if I could see where the wire of reasoning and perception in their head gets disconnected. Human without reading? A man isn’t a man!

The reason you will be grateful when you are lucky to be among the tiny fraction of readers is because reading is everything and what truly human beings do. It broadens your mind, your horizon, your perception and liberates the operation of the constitution of mindset. The secret of life lies in books. The joy of life lies in books.  There are uncharted territories in books. Individual gets lost in their own world. The modern sciences and technology that you think are unconnected with arts are actually connected with arts. Read the history of invention.

Now some folk in sciences have began to recognize this paradise they have been missing and are reconsidering their allegiance. Some renowned Nigerian writers were originally in sciences and now have imported into this business of books.

One day I was in a bookshop to buy a novel. I spent a great deal of time searching across the shelves. I could not get the book. It was unavailable on the stock. Somebody in the shop had been following what was happening and had listened my conversation keenly with the bookseller. 

“What would you do with the book?” He asked, not because he did not know what people are doing with books. The manner at which he was speaking showed a gatekeeping process and assessment to make sure my quest for the book was genuine and committed. Before I answered I quickly said “Mallam ko kana da shi?” Do you have it?

We made arrangement to visit his home.  He gave me his card.  When I read it I found that he’s a professor of Medicine at Bayero University kano, and a consultant with WHO wing of the United Nation Organizations and a Medical Director at Aminu kano Teaching Hospital. The surprise in me was unmistakable, knowing how people in sciences and medicine have removed themselves from reading culture.

We had a nice intellectual discussion when I visited his home. He asked me which school I was attending and I told him that I was in college doing IJMB and wanted to read Law in the university. He felt unease. He suggested that I should read English Language. In fact if I would do that he would help me secure admission in that university. He is a Dean Faculty in the School of Medicine, professor Abdulrazaq Habib. He revealed to me that if he were to return as a graduate student, he would go for anything that will have to do with books, especially fictional works. He really loves his job because he is a successful professor in medicine and health related issues but he also has an unquenchable yearning for books. I asked him how he came about reading books. He told me it was a habit he acquired while flying across the geographies of Europe to pass time while attending conferences from America to London to Paris. The book he would lend me, he told me, was bought in Paris. It was this man that introduced me to Franz Fanon and gave me one of his books in addition to the one I went specifically for.

It is not only those in sciences that have signed memorandum of misunderstanding and dissociation with books. The other time I was sitting in a lecture hall and one of my colleagues whom I have little acquaintance with spoke to me sarcastically. He saw me reading a copy of Henrick Ibsen’s Doll House play. The writing was too small and he asked was it French or Arabic I was reading. I didn’t understand his ridiculous sarcasm at first, and with genuine heart; I replied that it was English. He said I was doing two jobs, the task of straining my eyes to read the text and the task of reading the text. I told him this was not a job. For me, reading is like breathing. I do it effortlessly, unconsciously, without me knowing. People pay to bring their books to read it for them and get them the summary when they couldn’t read them because they are bulky.

I worked briefly in a media consulting firm before I proceeded to university. My employer was always wondering if I did not have other needs to do with money. I divided my salary into two: one half for maintenance, one half for books. That was when money was money.

I feel guilty anytime a day passes without reading. In the last five years since my encouragement and initiation into this business of reading by Mallam Aminu Dele Gwammaja. I could only remember one day that I did not pick a book and read. That is why when I got admission in the university very late, I easily caught up with the earlier students because none of the texts we were going to study that I did not read before. That day which I did not read a book was the day of our graduation from college. I was enveloped in mixed feelings, feelings of excitement and resentment. But even that I had read a newspaper in the morning that day. I have never paraded myself as Dan Boko. It is a long way.

We can excuse our ancestors for not having opportunity of reading those books. But you who is now in school, beating your chest and parading yourself as Dan Boko, there is no rationalization that would justify your inaction to exonerate you. No if, no but, no let’s consider the situation. Except if you are diplomatic Boko Haram! In every generalization there is exception.

(@abubakarsulai13)