Let’s Talk About the North

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Huge reactions poured into the Nigeria’s space following the recent appointments made by president Buhari. Two narratives instantly sprung up. One complaining lopsidedness and the other defending it. Among the critics are the genuine PDP members whose task is to act as opposition. For right or wrong, they have the privilege to act even mischievously.

There are also diehard opponents who invest their hope in the failure of any administration that is not headed by their own. The ethnic patriots, which also applies to Buhari, especially that he has recently become a small god among his people,  appeared to distance themselves from being citizens of Nigeria and tried to convince the rest of the ‘non-northerners’ and ‘non-Hausa’ that the lopsidedness thus far is their own problem for voting the ‘evil’ they have warned initially. The spiteful characters are there ready with fire to burn the house and are earnestly putting pressure to drag the discussion into religious perspective. It is disturbing!

For those who believe in this and feel that the country belongs to their ‘enemy’ and stepped 

back in glee to tell the rest of the ethnic nationalities that this is an issue between ‘the North vs you,’ they are only demonstrating reclusive, inferiority and submissive inclination that makes the North look big.

In the height of Hausaphobia, they scream domination when they hear Yakubu Dogara, Babachir Lawal, Bukola Saraki, the wiring in their head has sent signals of a monolithic block of a North, a microcosm of illiteracy, poverty and parasitism, housing Hausa-Fulani Muslim community alone and who, with their domineering ‘born-to-rule’ attitude, overseer the affairs of the country and ‘whose intent is to bring all other ethnic communities under their rule.’

It seems pedestrian. But among those picking this line, there’s a former federal minister who acts like a local Messi who feels accomplished from dribbling little kids and enjoys the yelling encomiums of his local supporters. This, however, raises the question of what defines a “northerner” since the moment the “North” is mentioned there are heavy, loaded and solid attachments and exceptions.

Anyway, Buhari aggravated the matter himself – despite that some of the appointees are neither Muslim nor Hausa, as some people claim, but still are northerners - and Buhari has to pay the price. Recent survey in what media barons call data journalism showed that he has lost so much in reputation and popularity measurement as a result of lopsidedness in his appointments.

I was initially hoping that he would make huge sacrifices when he came to power since the entire ‘North’ is always seen as a region that assumed the status of a ‘Big Brother.’  But what about other minority groups in the North?

The stark hypocrisy is when a southerner defended clannish government in the past and now suddenly found a new temerity to dissent after realizing how dangerous such arrangement is, and a northerner feels comfortable now on the basis that Jonathan did it first.

I am afraid, if you give leaders soft approach, they are gonna amass too much power that ought to be in the hands of the citizens. And someone did bad thing isn’t an excuse for repeating it. There is always difference between the past and the present.

Lookia a northern Buharist, government was run in the past by“my people and I” who descended upon the country’s wealth as spoil for themselves and on behalf of their ethnic folk; desperately like they were hopeless they won’t come to power again. 

Apart from fellow countrymen from other parts of the country, whose main concern is Nigeria at the centre, there are ethnic patriots among Buhari supporters. They would counter the Jonahiddeen who want to burn the house while their man is inside. To many of them, any Buhari critic is an enemy. Those are chest-beating, truly, proudly and fully-born northern men and women in the sense of northern Nigeria, who, although not entirely dropping their support for Yakubu, courtesy of the presence of Buhari, they will suddenly reduce it when they hear he is a Christian and can become angry with Buhari for appointing a Christian Lawal and not entirely sidelining the ‘Others’ in his appointments. This is still happening in the face of new technologies that are obliterating barriers to create new dimensions of what a Nigerian critic likes to call ‘post-ethnic youth demographics.’ We need to put immense pressure on this idea.

Some of the northern Buhari supporters also presented an impeccably biased argument.  That the appointments are on merit and henceforth, Federal Character should be abolished. 

I agree, the Quota System is a snag on its own. I want to see a time when merit will triumph over place of origin as consideration for job employment. It's my believed capital as ‘I’.

But some of our folk don't like to hear the truth about Quota System.

The ‘conventional’ North is a close society and controlled by the wealthy few and aristocrats. Imagine, if not by the modern which is rapidly unraveling the society, that someone could be a federal minister without this that title in their family name.

The little jobs you get in Kaduna or Kano or Katsina or an obscure post in a federal ministry are totally out of rigorous contest. You will be given such jobs under Federal Character Principle simply because they are inconsequential and below the social standing of the members of the big and privileged northern family. Until you want to cross over into no-go area of highly valued, highly esteemed, fortune-maker jobs reserved for those raised in pomp and fanfare - homes with posh residential address - then those who will submit your name under Quota System will ask about your family name and you'll realize that in the North you're come from a family of virtual Nobody.

In as much as you are underprivileged in the North, this oppression uniformly works to keep you out of what you call ‘juicy’ opportunities, no matter the ethnic and religious affiliations. Personal effort is the only capital – which is good to you and the society as well.

Do not depend on any system that discourages critical thinking and promotes low IQ. Your effort in achieving competence will expose the pampered child who can’t use skills to drive exceptional ideas that will engineer social and economic changes and who rather chooses to hide their incompetence safely in doing things free of charge to run government as charity home.

There are people among my generation, aged 20, 25, whom I can beat chest and boast of their competence and capabilities, some of whom are mentor friends. I respect their intellect; they are formidable individuals once having an opportunity.

However, some of our people pretend to be equal to the southern parts of the country in terms of Western education, although beyond Western education alone there are other things that shape the intellectual development of a ‘northern character.’  It is obvious because people don't have a wide network of activities to realize their erroneous thinking.  

My Wiki account got a problem and wanted to be fixed. It was so simple but it required the assistance of an old Wiki member. It has been a hard job to find one; perhaps such individuals are rare in my locality and whom I have no contact with. It is not just like creating a software app or computer program where I would simply take an evening stroll to Farm Centre and have an unschooled IT nerd to do it for me.  

Initially, I decided to have Wiki membership account to correct some data anomalies and misrepresentation of facts on the internet which I found other people uploaded who do not actually know the intricacies of our people's culture and history, and perhaps did this out of mischief. But where are those to do their own job and advertise themselves properly to the world? 

It's unfortunate, however, some of the young men in the North, especially in Kano, do not even know the century in which they live. Besides some commercial activities and trade which I am not satisfied with the way they are run, most attentions are gravitated on love and other superficial things. Of course love is great. But it is disturbing how our people hate reading. I once tried to build a group of young men 17, 18, below my age, considering that majority of my mates are already in business ‘rolling cash’ in the market, so that brilliant and fine minds would be incubated in the future.

But my effort was thwarted. Whenever I gave them a book to read or a 3 to 6 page article that captured what I wanted them to know, they would exclaim ''Kai wannan yayi yawa,'' and preferred to return to their Instagram and Whats’up. Smart guys, they never say Instagram. They say Insta.

They even began to warn me I should not approach them with anything if I knew it was lengthy. Don’t give it to me, they say. Imagine, I did not just recommend it. I wasted my data and wasted my energy to reach them.

Some three years back, I kept listening to the BBC and VOA Africa English Services. Most audience comment and opinion from Nigeria came from south-east of the country. I have been sending opinion before I was overwhelmed by other activities, meanwhile, there was only one person I kept hearing from Kano, and he's from Sabon Gari.

Sadly, even at the local level, comments and opinions from Kano on the national issues are too scarce and embarrassing considering the size of our population. Majority of our people do not care much about issues in government. You will have a man rolling hundreds million of Naira in his shop or an average northern man but couldn’t tell how government works.  That is our North. 

I don’t really see any way how society that intends to progress would be chopping its own feet. Societies can learn from others by comparing their social dynamics instead of pretending nothing is wrong and ignoring everything.

Yet, the one devastating problem that is killing the South is the issue of academic forgery and cover. Recently, Nigerian University Commission (NUC), has released a list of fake and substandard academic institutions. In the ‘North,’ hardly can you find a professor ‘Mai Fitila’ who couldn’t read his own handwriting and or such people bragging Powerful High Degree.

(@abubakarsulai13)

The Right to Be Forgotten: A Gift to Nigerian Politicians

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

While attention is centered on the issue of committees and panels on what to do with the family of corruption, I stop to offer some useful pieces of advice to Nigerian politicians on how this corruption issue should be resolved. I don’t want to mention names; I would have loved to see fathers of the land like Atiku and Tinibu and some selected former governors with impeccable integrity record like kwankwaso, Fashola and Nyako to be on the jury committee to help in hearing this case. 

Already Peace Committee and War Committee have been formed, panels which are occupied by community and religious leaders established to discuss how to go about this saga, who should be probed and from which date the probe should commence. Should it start from the beginning of the 18^th century, that’s from the ancestors of Queen of England during their colonization of Nigeria, or should it start from around 1960s onward when Nigeria got her independence?

There’s so much contradiction and contention but there is a point of consensus between these committees upon which an agreement is reached. That corruption is deep. That it constitutes a huge stumbling block to development. That corruption is not bastard nor created itself. It has mother and father and even relatives. Everyone believes this.

The impasse of the  argument is mainly on how to treat the fathers and mothers of corruption. Some members of the other table on War Committee say that it is high time to start doing something about corruption but to unearth files from 1975 will be mismanagement of precious, scanty time and can detract  attention from the work at hand. Some of the patrons of corruption in 1970s have already made their footprint difficulty traceable.  

I once travelled with my uncle to Kaduna to attend a weeding of a family member some seven years ago. We were passing through Ahamdu Bello Way when I saw a big mansion with posh cars scattered around. That was my first encounter with flagrant and lavish display of wealth. I asked my uncle if the place was an automobile sales point. No, that is not - it was an event taking place in Umaru Dikkos’ house and now lapse of time from 70s to date can now legitimize Umaru’s loot.

What has happened recently diminishes the intensity of what happened ten years ago, let alone twenty or thirty years. Gods are emerging every day in the political scene. Who is Dikko now in the province of corruption and theft in the face of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala or Diezani or Maina Waziri?  Many politicians are grateful that they are lucky to be part of the recent governments and not in a regime long time ago, say Shagari era for instance. You may know the reason yourself. Nigeria has got to catch up with the rest of the world but there is the need to look at immediate past and do something.

The other Peace Committee members  counter-argue that the issue of charging suspected individuals who served in the last regime should be forgone even when it is clear that corruption and stealing have indeed been perpetrated like paying seven hundred million dollars as consultancy fee to a foreign firm in preparation to build a bridge and still there has been no bridge, the hundreds billion dollars looted from security budgets, the 20 billion dollar allegation unremitted to the Federation Account, the brazen theft of crude oil, the NIMASA and NNPC mess and whatnots.

The most effective way of eliminating drug abuse is to legalize it. What the Peace Committee faction is agitating, in loud and clear terms, is the re-echo of the axiom of the cardinal principle which says that stealing is not corruption and vaguely seeking the ‘The Right to be Forgotten’ which advocates that when events have become past they are irrelevant and should be forgotten.  

Rehabilitation of Offenders Act says that after a certain period of time which many criminals and convicts have spent, the information regarding them should be forgotten. ‘The Right to be Forgotten’ will allow a person to “determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized  as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.” They can demand data controllers to remove certain articles that feature their names on the internet in order to assume a silent role in the society.

In line with the above dimension, Abacha should be forgotten for dying at a right time when Nigerians were in dire need of democracy. Obasanjo should be thanked profusely for accepting to be Nigeria’s president for eight years and Nigerians owe him apology for curtailing his intention to amend the constitution and extend his term to third tenure in office.  IBB should go to Heaven for resigning as a military Head of State after cancelling June 12 election. Abdussalami should also go to Heaven for keeping his words in 1999 to hand over power peacefully to democratically elected president leading us to forgive his Hilliburton affair. 

‘The Right to be Forgotten’ covers all this.

Now I seem to take side in this argument.  The difference between one group from another is that while one has the desire for the continuation of collecting loan and looting the loan and emptying the state treasury,  the other has the desire to see where the monies have gone and what are the projects being executed.

I simply can’t understand the kind of patriotism some people have for this country when they say the idea of war on corruption and stealing should not be broached. One man, who has benefited from the same mandate, should be forgiven for handing over power peacefully as though he has done a favour to Nigeria. You will understand the kind of pain many Nigerians are sustaining in their struggle for good governance from the Nigeria’s psychology and its inability to understand the content of civic education being released daily, modules after modules, to liberate Nigerian minds and hearts from the mental poverty programmed by the vulturistic grip of the opportunistic leadership. People whom you think are supposedly perceptive would certainly make your blood pressure rise when you discover that they maintain primitive mind and retrogressive thinking, believing that we should be grateful to some of ‘our good leaders’  even if they ‘stole all the money in the world’ and defending  them on ethnic or religious line. Thieves in our faith and community that can’t even donate or rehabilitate a classroom, hospital block, or build public water system to ease the guilt of their loot and make it look like  productive corruption. Even doing this is not justification of stealing public funds.

As citizens, we shall always subject the power structure to constant and sustained pressure and scrutiny, demanding good governance and accountability. Some changes will not happen so soon but keeping silence will mean accepting the existing situation, it means we are okay because what we don’t grumble about does not count. Apartheid would not be defeated if the section of South African oppressed and marginalized communities folded their arms and kept silent in hopelessness.  

I am always fascinated with this fact that guard who sleeps over in a college, living there for long, day in day out, despite being so close to the classrooms could not be given certificate because sitting at the doorstep does not carry him to the classroom.  We have got to do something to make things happen. Changes start from the little grumbling and conversation we do in our places.

Everything starts at a certain time and this is the time, though belated, that the war against corruption should start. Now the gap between the Third world to the First is one heaven interval. If much ado is given in fighting corruption then the gap between development and underdevelopment will keep increasing too many heavens. When do we expect to progress to be able to have basic things as good road, education, healthcare etc, from which funds the politicians loot?

This fight is beyond a single individual, it is Nigeria’s business because it is our collective wealth that has been looted. We shall rally our support around anybody who sets the stage.  We have been in perpetual defeatism and absolute hopelessness by the inability of the past leaders to fight corruption. This is not to say that certain individuals shall be conferred more privileges on them than others and should be spared on account of political affiliation. We will love to see all corrupt persons treated on equal terms. Lagos pig is no more than Bayelsa and Rivers goat and Katisna donkey. All animals are equal.

On technical ground, courts have washed a number of people with scented soap of their petrified odor. Now Femi-Fani Kayode is as pure and fresh as untrampled dew, Timpere Sylvia was acquitted by the nation’s anti-corruption agency some months ago this year, and one Diepreye Alamieyeseigha enjoyed presidential pardon even when he was clearly convicted by British court in the last regime. Many are awaiting quittance. The list goes on and on, and these people wish to enjoy “ The Right to be Forgotten” to lead a private life in silence. Atiku in particular, has kept so low his profile that we don’t hear him these days. We say amin to this, let them all go to oblivion and their phone will no longer ring.  

“The Right to be Forgotten” does more harm than good for when we talk of rehabilitation there is the sense of damage in the first place about persons with unsavory past. For your information, even if your name is deleted from the digital world, it won’t be a total erasure of memory or rewriting of history, there will always be a digital and mental cache resurrecting horrendous conjecture of horrible images in our mind upon hearing your name as a thief.  Like when I hear A, B, C or X, Y, Z, nouns and adjectives, abundant meanings and interpretations always fill my mind.

(@abubakarsulai13)

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)

Why I hate love

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Love is a pleasant thing if you are in a nice relationship. It is painful if you are in bad. It is also interesting if you are watching from afar. You often wonder why so and so person you hold in high esteem are behaving in certain ways. Love is a funny thing. It drives people crazy.

Different people have different meaning for love. Whatever kind of meaning you give to it, one thing is certain. The destination. The aim you want to achieve. I am not the one to tell your destination or the aim you want to achieve but the destination is always there.

Whether you are a president, a governor or a top government’s official, great men are daily threatened by love and have their career destroyed.  Take Sani Abacha for example or a man who was badly in need of kiss and furiously grabbed public phone in his office and called his female secretary. Are you crazy, you want me to mention a name? You also want to have my career destroyed. I won’t.   

In achieving his aim and destination, that university professor was possessed by desire for something. Of all the places on earth he couldn’t find any rendezvous to make love with a girl other than to masquerade as a lady to get into the female hostel. Love pulled him down.  Another person was caught in outrageous scandal inviting his female student for special lessons in Organic Chemistry and in the end the whole business ended up in Organic Matter. The other man, overwhelmed with love, had no prior thought for venue and simply chose a public road believing it was a perfect place to make love.  And he was caught.

Granted, love is something beyond human control and all these pent-up emotions do not augur well. When you have something in mind and you suppress it, your soul will trouble you until you express it consciously or unconsciously. So I embrace love. I embrace love anytime a chance presents itself because emotions bottled up don’t yield good result. But I have a problem.  

Relationship is notorious in depriving people of their freedom and liberty. You need to watch your steps from dressing to walking to speech mannerism. A lot of pretensions to conform to the demand and culture of love community.

My problem is that I am a person who recognizes my individuality and struggles to defend it, at least in my mind. I don’t accept some attributes that people will throw at me to define my life, and love is notorious in doing that. I want to live authentic life and I will begin to behave defiantly the moment I learn that someone is trying to control how I behave. I want to be a full human being. Unpredictable. Inconsistent. Because I need absolute freedom, I sometimes struggle with the idea of the kind of battle my wife will have when I get married. I wish that the woman will be understanding.

So when I see a girl but could not summon the courage to approach her, I learnt to bear my anguish in silence. My eyes will coolly appreciate her until she realizes that there is something unusual.

My silence is not because of cowardice. It is because I am meticulous about my dignity and there are problems of dignity crisis here that may arise. What if I talk to her and she ignores me and it is in the full view of the public? It was enormous disgrace trailing after ‘Yar Gidan Hajiya with all the public eyes on me. I no longer have such moral courage now.

In our part it is men who mostly make the first move and strive to maintain the relationship while women always want to be in control. Most of the girls I meet are relatively below my age and I feel uncomfortable to have the whole of me and all my intelligence controlled by a girl the same age with my sister.

Women sometimes want to make men fool, unintelligent and unperceptive. For you to remain in love you have to sometimes be a deliberate fool and pretend that you don’t know anything.

To ni fa matsala ta ke nan! This is what I hate. I don’t have a big heart to tolerate everything. I don’t tolerate anything that will hurt my esteem. I don’t tolerate an open deception. I don’t accept a vivid lie. I don’t tolerate a move from someone trying to hide an open secret. I hate pretension even though it is human nature.

Mata ikon Allah! See this girl. We communicated on phone and agreed that I was coming to see her at night. You would pity me how I abandoned everything and covered miles to reach her place. I arrived there and picked my phone to tell her that I was right in front of her home. When she picked up the call she told me that she could not come out.

“But you knew I was coming.” I said to myself in staggering amazement.

I carried myself all the way to your place and this was my reward. I felt hurt. Yet I somehow managed one more time to tell her that I could wait if she would come out when she had finished what she was doing. She told me once again that she was caught up in a schedule she could not get out of.  

 “I am busy,” she said, “but we can meet tomorrow. Good night.” I was just listening, feeling a kind of acute low esteem.

“Thank you,” I muttered grudgingly. You are not allowed to complain. It will backfire against you.

I dan za’a so ni to a so ni but I hate pretension. If she does not love me why taking the pain to have good wishes for me and suggested that we should meet tomorrow.   What is very amusing is that it was the girl who came to me when we first met and initiated the conversation that eventually led to our relation. I didn’t need to hire a Harvard Symbologist professor to explain to me the message she had been sending.  I hate pretension and that’s the reason why I have parted with ‘Yar Gidan Hajiya. I am not picking on her, this thing is not the monopoly of Hausa girl, it is everywhere among Nigerian girls.

It is very easy for me to part way with pretentious girls. The reason why I don’t go deep into this love business as a whole and take it seriously is that I don’t see love at this stage of my life as something very important. It is waste of time. I am not ready for getting married. I am not believer in doing love without doing anything. Just meet, chat and leave without doing anything tangible. Where is love in this? Maybe I will be deeply involved when I am ready for getting married. By that time a new generation of beautiful girls was borne. Rush is bad business.

What is disturbing now is that the girl would narrate the whole story of what she did to me to her friends. I heard a low voice at the background when she told me she couldn’t come out. Those friends of hers who have been looking for a chance to establish an overture would come out the next day and feel that they have triumphed over me. They would be happy by what one of them did and they would giggle and have pity for me. They would say “Allah Sarki, of all his dignity, look at how he has been disgraced.”

Why women are doing this? They believe that they have something you want. I would say women are playing into the hand of negative stereotype for narrowing their understanding and definition of self into a severely limited view. I would also say that when they allow a man to strive for the love alone, they are, in their subconscious mind, submitting that men are stronger than women. Don’t eject me out I’m still a feminist. They said we should all be feminists.

Why am I saying this while I cannot say ehem somewhere? It is because I believe that whatever I say here would not be gossiped back to the girl I am talking about. Even if somebody carries a word to her or any other girl they think I have a relationship with, she cannot see herself in this story and the only explanation I can offer is what you have read here. So, let’s stop speaking in whisper and have a conversation on this.

(@abubakarsulai13)

Wait Father, Let This Girl Be Prepared

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

It is something we all witness in our remote and immediate relation or in other families in our society. It is disturbing and could affect one’s health if they fervently concern themselves with the disheartening situation at all times, seeing people who are actually involved, willfully abdicating their responsibility to arrest the problem considering the pathetic condition it brings on the weak and vulnerable members of our society.

If it is not my biological sister today, it would be a girl in the next door neighbor and perhaps your sibling, right inside your home, if you’re a resident of this community. It’s pervasive in our society women quitting school for marriage. Unfortunately, if the marriage is tied without due diligence and thorough investigation, the man might turn out later to be a wrong husband. For some circumstances, largely inadequate or lack of preparation - physical and psychological, the union would soon end in separation few months after the marriage. By that time the girl might have been conceived and is expecting a baby in no time. She would come back to live with her family; judgmental eyes and gossiping words would be going round, reaching men’ ears, hoping one of them would show interest in her. After another ill-advised move for second trial, because she is seen as burden to her family, another marriage would hastily be solemnized. She is divorced again. She is already bored with tedious family life, the heavy pressure coming from the society; she would become eager to be in her own home and be forced to accept a man, any man who asks her marriage.  Like the previous experiences, her man would send her out, the third marriage fails. She would try another husband, on and on it goes throughout her life.    

Effort to educate her parents about the consequence of sending her out this disgraceful way will always end in vain. Parents always never seem to understand the grave implication they cause, acting like they are getting rid of a burden, and or auctioning her out like a tomato seller offering vegetables at a low price when the closing hour begins drawing in and marketsgoers start dispersing.

One is always assailed by  a nagging and disturbing question on how society perceives marriage. A temporary life with her husband, having sex experience for a little while, show the society you’re once married and then get divorced few moons after to return to her parents.

“Let’s her go so that we won’t be the butt of joke and gossip subject of the society,” parents always think. 

The fear for the small talk that would follow won’t allow parents to let the girl be well-equipped and well-prepared so that she could face the challenges ahead – capable of handling nasty situations that might arise in the future from unforeseen circumstances. Divorce, God forbid, not because it will never happen the couple being educated. It is because we hate it. Like Death.

The source of my anger and frustration that’s damaging my health besides the daunting task of explaining to the parents the situation they’re putting in the girl, which as usual they seem never to understand, is not the divorce per se or the subjugation she has been receiving from the husbands.

You can feel the thud-thud of my heartbeat, thundering rapidly and having difficulty sleeping whenever I try to explain to a girl that her life has worth and meaning beyond marriage and she fails to understand. Life having worth outside marriage? I must be crazy, she would think. And then I realize she is already in condition of:

Losing her self-esteem, running from bed to bed to display her deepest secret to several men, the core seat of her feminity.

That her life is now neither here nor there, residing in limbo and dancing on the brink of destruction.     

I am not condemning marriage institution because marriage in itself is not a problem. But it’s actually gnawing up a caring heart the way some people are manipulating marriage as an effective tool of committing injustices against women.  Granted, some parents are well-meaning regarding their intent to choose the best for their daughter, working to prevent a gift coming to the family before her marriage. While they are at it, the good intention of raising their children to be morally sound, they often choose to ignore what boys are doing and seem to forget that the punishment is the same in the sight of Allah. The society believes males are not going to be seriously affected by their illegal sexual activities like females. The society feels that the harm will be graver on females and therefore should be saved before getting involved into activities that would bind them to bitter consequences. They might also be unconsciously working in the hand of some opportunistic elements who are lurking around silently and ready to take advantage of an aspiring, but helpless, young lady to disallow the continuity of her education immediately after the marriage.

I always struggle with the thought of how people understand the injunction spelt out in our religion that says “dalabal ilmu farithatun ala kullu Muslim wal Muslimati:  knowledge is as compulsory to women as onto men”. Considering this prescription, my thinking is that knowledge should come first before marriage.

It’s my opinion to assert that a mind filled with goal, intellectual drive and aspiration is not a space where sexual thoughts would dwell and thrive, unless you have a base mind. I can see that now you begin to ask what if she has a great sexual drive or is inherently bad? In such case, this isn’t exclusive to school girls alone. The society is poisoned and decided to be unjust against female right from the beginning since there are already  negative stereotypes and preconceived notions attached to college girls as prime suspect of premarital intercourse.

Some women are also not helping matter when they are in high institutions of learning to engage in behaviors that society believes deviate from the conventional norms.  Convinced they have their freedom, they tend to be ruthless in getting back at the society. Seeing this, the patriarchy is provoked to punctuate her excess. And what next? - she got married.

But anyway, marriage is not a problem even though I can understand that some people inclined to see it as such, a conclusion wrongly drawn. I can only see it as an impediment in cases where the girl is never to continue her studies on account of marriage. We should not overlook the financial and logistic difficulties that parents and husbands struggle with.

Education doesn’t coexist with oppression, injustices, disease and poverty. It is apt to say arming a girl with education is a weapon to protect her from wickedness and lack of it creates rooms for the girl to be easy prey in the hand of a wicked husband. However, some parents are stubborn and helplessly rigid in their stand, which sometimes brings about another unhelpful situation. If a lady desires to get married while doing her studies, her parents should have to listen to her in order to avoid falling into unnecessary trouble. Care must be taken by the parents to ensure the prospective candidate is a man that would respect the girls’ right to education to honor her wishes and aspirations.

If her husband wakes up to the other side of the bed after having a good night to allow her to continue her studies, it serves as an advantage to her as a college married woman. This will prevent bad guys from making amorous advances courtesy of her status and commands revered esteem and nice treatment from her male colleague sympathizers. She may realize that someone pities her and is doing her a favor. Better to remain independent, proud and dignified.

I observe that not all people in the society do view women education as a problem and possible threat to the men’ position as commander-in-chief in their little republic where she is always expected to serve as a ceremonial head. The society is very skeptical and suspicious of anything they suspect to be an agenda of imperial mission and even worst, introduced with haughty arrogance. Otherwise, the culture of allowing every single woman to peruse higher education would have gained massive acceptance, as it appears to be an old injunction in our religion.

I doubt if there are people who hold negative view on ‘this education’ other than the acquisition method and its frequent wrong application, in which case such negativities can be found in any other education system. People have realized too well, by everyday experiences, that the benefit of ‘this education’ outweighs its disadvantages, with opportunities or otherwise coming to individuals according to their educational status: ignorance vs knowledge, college diploma vs degree and high degree.

Why people choose to remain deliberate obtuse if you ask me is in order to frustrate imperialist attempt at downgrading them where other people from other shores believe that they are introducing civilization - with blatant air of arrogance - for the first time to a people who already have culture and civilization spanning centuries and ages. The society is very, very determined to reject anything presented to them this way and which  they consider to be a clandestine mission, set to gradually destabilize and erode their traditional values and belief system.

This is why it always feels awkward and uncomfortable to me to categorize a sort of knowledge and call it as only ‘formal’ or simply term it ‘Western’ education. What becomes of those great architects who built a grand kano moat and those who excelled in Ajami literacy and calligraphy, trade, governance and diplomacy thousand years before the coming of Whiteman and the accomplishments of those great artists and heritages are still cherished and practiced in our contemporary societies? The impression is that their achievements are not formal and therefore should not be given status of formal recognition. This line of thinking is denying vast bodies of knowledge from across cultures and civilizations around the world its origin and existence, and even when recognized it’s often with denigration. If we go on this subservient way, everything is surrendered to a certain people when epistemistically appropriated as possession of a particular culture.

With the smug feeling of weaning people from barbarism and backwardness, you may notice that you are denigrating a sort of established culture. They would rather hold their stand than make concession even when it appears they are wrong. People aren’t actually rejecting knowledge, but the overbearing manner of its introduction.        

So if forces in the argument would come, with genuine intention and not in lethal determination and antagonism, to sit down and pragmatically approach the issue, the situation would not have been such worst and the difficulty confounded. The society will be the winner anyway. But it always seems each force in both side of the argument is determined and never willing to reach agreement.

Everyone is welcome to their views. Common sense has broad applications and if an idea is often yielding a bad result, it won’t hurt if the allegiance to the rule would be reconsidered.

The prayer is for the parents to be a little patient for a relatively short time so that the girl would complete her studies before getting married. It just looks like delaying something that will necessarily come. With education, there is likelihood that she can meet a partner with similar accomplishments and goals to have a lasting marriage. Things are not always easy for a married woman - juggling household chores with school assignments or a woman in college who was once married – bearing a lot of stigma and burden struggling to continue her studies.  

PS

There are also parents who never bear close investigation. They do not accept corrections and are quick to shut down any discussion that challenges their views. They hold extreme views and would threaten to curse their kids to a point one feels like she is committing a sin correcting her parents even when they go wrong.

The impression is like parents are above the humanly nature of making mistakes. They are very authoritative, giving the impression they own the kids and should decide their future without having the firsthand experience of the kids’ reality and experiencing their mental universe.  Convinced that they know more than the kid, they dismiss anything she says outright since she is still a little babe in arms. They don’t accept that their own kid could grow up to be ahead of them in thought and ideas. But our society believes a child can be richer than their parents. Where do we go wrong?…

You cannot be hostile to CHANGE and succeed. You cannot avoid change because the only thing that is not changing is change. Up and coming generations have understood this thing of modernity and are no longer thinking in the binary way of their ancestors, where the result is either 1 or 0. Be prepared, accept the change and alter the currents of the age to suits your needs or you fade away. 

(@abubakarsulai13)

Fresh Dawn, Difficult Morning

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Swearing in of President Buhari

Buhari came in during a tough time -  a situation that looks “like building Rome in one day without a Kobo.”  He is in position not many would love to be in their life, not even his sons and daughters if they are like the children of other greed politicians who enjoy living from the suffering of downtrodden.

The expectations are high despite the dwindling of oil price, armed struggle, massive theft of foreign reserve and mounting national debt. But such expectations could not be compromised because the masses whom Buhari climbed their shoulders to the post “have no water, no food, no road, no good education, no security, no light, no fuel and no nothing.” Said Pius Adesanmi, a key backer and campaigner at the intellectual core of Buharism. They are people left with only hope and trust in Buhari regime. 

He is expected to deliver those expectations. People believe in his integrity. He has had certain principles that prevent him, in his mind, from becoming like every other politicians. Numerous efforts had been made to drag him into the gutter to abandon his cause in exchange for lucrative offer. His dogma to remain with masses earned him the honorific epithet of “Mai Gaskiya” – the Hausa version of ‘trusted’ which distinguished  him as the  beacon of hope and champion of the underdogs.

He stood for the office for 12 years, fighting for the masses every election season since 2003. Frustrated, he publically shed tears in 2011 after election defeat to announce his intention to not vie for the office of the president anymore. After rigorous persuasion and lobbying, he reluctantly answered the call to contest again, which certainly if defeated yet again, would mark the end of his political career.

Buhari is not poor, he’s only a rich man with relative ascetism.  For what, and to whom is he doing all this? Buhari sees Nigeria as a family firm, an afflicting business  he could not watch continue suffer and felt duty-bound to rescue. He delved into the struggle for the young generation to wrench back hopes and save the nation’s throat from the vicious grip of the greedy leaders so that upon growing up the young men and women would not find their future entirely destroyed or mortgaged to the IMF. “Don’t collect any loan again,” the citizens cried, “it isn’t working here. It will only push us deeper and deeper into economic despair.

In Nigeria, the finance ministers and former and serving Central Bank Governors are people who read Economics mainly for private values, accepting exploitative conditionalities and doing all it takes to keep the economy going in line with the IMF directives. “I wish Buhari economic team would comprise of people who have idea about the terrible condition of our people,” working to benefit all and not entirely for the advancement of IMF policies which create anger and hardship on people who are already poor and rewarding those with awards as hero who help ensure the execution of the deals while our people are dying.    

There is one critical issue that needs to be addressed. Early in 2012 Nigerians took to the streets rioting in protest against government decision to end fuel subsidy. They insisted the price should remain cheap at the pump whether the subsidy existed or not. People are caught in dilemma, knowing the fuel subsidy is fraud, a business rife with tax evasion, patronage and corruption, which raised public suspicion if the subsidy has actually existed. It was elite fraud where friends of politicians are paid inflated figure for bringing little or nothing at all to report the kickback to the people high in government.  But believing they, and not the politicians, not the power structure, would be the biggest victims if the subsidy was to be eliminated, they fought for the subsidy to continue despite the fact they needed a competitive economy.   

But the notion that subsidy could not be good idea in creating healthy and competitive economy is nonsense from the ordinary citizens’ perspective  who couldn’t even have to listen to the economist’s bullshits that ignores the worsening state of people’s atrocious living condition.

“Then what’s the use of the state,” people asked, “henceforth, if healthcare, fuel, education, water and energy would not be provided at subsidized price.  Then the government ceases to be useful to ordinary citizens because these are the only ways the poor can benefits from the wealth of the motherland?”

We criticized Jonathan for his decision to end fuel subsidy, vociferous and outspoken, speaking scathingly anyhow in TV and public debates because we were not politicians and the politicians were in opposition, employing angry pens to write and draw repugnant caricature of the president and his cabinet, depicting a dog wearing a bowler hat for the president and a bitch with glass in her face describing the coordinating minister of economy.

And now there is a big question hanging perilously on the air:  what if Buhari administration seeks to end subsidy on petroleum resources - isn’t it hypocritical of us to defend the same policy we vehemently attacked as if we were fighting for our life?

Buhari does not believe fuel subsidy has even existed. If he is going to cancel the subsidy on petroleum resources in order to stop leakages to make the economy more vibrant, radical overhaul should be put in place to cleanse the sector of its corrupt practices. National refineries should be revived so that citizens can buy fuel at a cheap price for there is no way one will consume fuel from foreign refineries and expect the price to be low without government doling out subsidy.

What Jonathan administration would never do was starting the austerity measures from descending and not ascending order, a selfish move to oppress the poor by eliminating jobs and raising heavy tax on the ordinary citizens, slashing pensions and wages while the terrible reality revealing itself as severe hardship on the masses. It should start in descending order from the top leadership in order to avoid humanitarian crisis; cut the sinful executive allowances, cut corruption and the leakage in the economy, weed out the parasites in government to make an effective and sizable workforce so that with every cut, you help the state and those morons in office who blabbed their way through the universities as students so as to be optimally utilized on farmland since they find productivity a rocket science.

Jonathan and his cabinets were not the sort of men that Nigerians would trust since they could not exercise little restraint before descending upon the fuel subsidy trust fund. What they were selling to the masses was stark inhumanity - starving the poor, feeding the rich and having strong armed forces to keep down civil unrest. Under whatever regime, Nigerians can’t accept a deal where the coordinating minister of the economy would loot and then lied to Nigerians, loading it on the masses, emptying the foreign reserve to lead a life of luxury and buying big mansions in Zurich. All this as austerity measure?

Nigerians are ready to bear the brunt of cuts in government spending, with top officials setting examples. As the president identified the horrible condition in his speech, quoting from Julius Caesar, “the tide in the affairs of men is difficult” but not insurmountable that “we could not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems.”   

The new regime will concentrate its focus on the project of building new Nigeria. Only that we will continue working to document thieving politicians so that when their children grew up, they would read that their parents are thieves and dullards who only perfected the art of stealing and looting so that they would wish if they were born in another family. Those who’d run should run, the new regime is not going to chase after you. The past is the prologue.