In Kano, We Are Not Ready

On this thing education, in Kano, we are not ready.

Public schools, we all know, have already been sinking deeper and deeper behind Stone Age standard. Nobody is doing anything really about the situation. Not even free education, which, in some ways, backfires.

Every year, like this time around, I voluntarily teach at a secondary school in my neighborhood while on vacation. I am not there for money. I am there for certain reasons, deep seated sympathy for the kids. I am there to put in little contribution realizing the kids’ peers around the world are on the verge of going out of the 21^st century. But that is not the problems when you look around and discover the majority of the continent is yet to arrive at the 21^st century in the 21^st century, living in a benighted world.

On second thought, I feel compelled to go to this school because I see that here in Kano there are kids schooling in high-end training environments. I want these poor kids to catch up with those African peers, or at least, to have some competitive training with students in Yandutse, Intercontinental, Kano Capital, St Louis and St Thomas etc.

I want to prepare them to have shaky foundation instead of the zero foundation they currently have. As secondary school kids, I want them to be like us when you were in Primary One. Like us, to be able to read Hausa texts and some kindergarten English phrases and sentences. To be able to read and write letters and understand simple arithmetic. 

Poor kids meet with a condition that ensures their total alienation from the ability to do what some of us did when we were in primary school while they were in secondary school. Thanks to free education.

Free education is good but is rife with atavistic deception and duping. It offers a cover with which officials use to shirk their real responsibility. The biggest problem is the sticking to the system when policy makers really know the initiative cannot be presently sustained.

In the school where I teach, the condition is Hepatitis A before it will slowly transform into B and C. When you compare the school with other public schools across the state, the school should be grateful. Only two set of classes are run in the afternoon where other schools divide the six classes three by three between morning and afternoon. Without telling, the situation comes from inadequate classrooms.

The school admits only sixty students per class instead of the one hundred and twenty plus students packed in a single roof. They have four computers, the envy of many schools.

The school management used to collect money from parents to fix broken desks between terms interval, buy few Mathematics and English texts books.

With this few resources, we want to groom these children.

To prevent the situation from escalating to Hepatitis B and C, I extended invitations to some of my friends to join me whenever they come on holiday. One is a final year student from the Department of Computer Science Usman Danfodio University, the second is from Pharmacy Department and the third from Political Science, both final year students of Ahmadu Bello University. But there is a big problem.

The school needs some funds to run its day-to-day activities. Government funding is very poor and nobody is certain about its coming on time. When I advised the principal to collect money from the students, she expressed fears: parents would report her in the media accusing her of imposing tax on the students despite government’s free education policy. They would curse her and abuse her and call her mean.

In the past, the school collected money from the students to buy aerosol, brooms, chalk, books and kill other small expenditures. Now free education forbids this. The school has been unable to pay a debt accrued for fixing broken chairs since last term.

Free education is not solution to the concomitant problems surrounding public schools system.  None of the policy makers enrolls their kids in public schools and they continue to pretend that what they are doing is right even when they believe that their kids won’t have quality education for free. You can’t take your child to a place where you pay top dollar and ask the public to send their kids to schools that offer free education. Except you have ill-feelings. When you hear Honourable A, B, C and X, Y, Z in government say the children are the leaders of tomorrow, categorically tell them they are liars. Like they rule you with impunity, they want their children to rule over your children.

Instead of this charade, officials should make it clear to the parents that they have a big share of responsibility in financing the education of their children. The truth should be unveiled to the public so that they would stop believing that next to God is Government in terms of abundant resources and possibilities as they are indoctrinated to believe for decades.

Free education is a short-run policy incentive until when government has put together adequate preparation. Considering our situation, this would be possible not in near future.

Sleep, sleep and time will come when you wake up to discover that almost everything has shifted hand to private sector and government is just a regulatory body. If you don’t start preparing by now, you will be in a great difficulty when the time comes.

We know the reputation of schools under Science and Technical Schools Board. They are not private schools nor free institutions. They are schools with some, should I say, backwater African school substandard funding and infrastructure. Seriousness and merit of the applicants come first as an utmost priority for enrollment. Even students from poor background have their families able to pay for their school fees. The school breeds generations of brilliant scientists and technologists in Kano.

It is not a rational decision to offer free education, especially at the grassroots level, to a people, whose majority, are not serious about the education of their children, parents who are reluctant to pay Parents Teachers Association dues. You should not offer free education to people who are unwilling to pay weekly alms to the Alaramma that teaches their children the knowledge of their own religion. You can’t offer something for free to somebody who does not value that commodity.

If government in Kano has genuine intent towards education sector, massive overhaul of the entire public school system should be undertaken, so as to make schools operate like those under Science and Technical Schools Board, making quality education accessible to only those who have genuine desire for it and would pay for it.

I am not capitalist, I understand the harsh reality of our people. While teenage Rukah and each of her friends can spend half a million naira to organize a show on campus, some families have to struggle for a month before they be able to get one thousand naira to pay for the school fees of their kids. But little money as charged in secondary and primary schools won’t kill. 

However, parents have their own lion share of the blame. I am yet to come across a family that has married off a daughter without furniture. It is the rule rather than the exception. Such cultural rule must be obeyed no matter the economic condition.  Family, relatives and even neighbors must produce such article to save their face. Insha Allah we will turn the situation around.

If people are always able to provide such costly commodities, why the society would fail to afford the education of their kids? If we do that, what we come for here on earth?

Our problems, poverty, disease, begging etc, will not vanish until we become truly educated either Islamic or Western. I seriously need to find reconciliation of the apparent contradictions between what religion says and what people are doing.

The only thing that can explain this deteriorating condition of education is unseriousness and mutual deception from the part of the officials and the parents. While official are deliberate and tactical, the masses are gullible and uncaring. I don’t know why people are very unwilling to care for the education of the children they have produced. They view education as unworthy endeavor that should be given for free. Free education seems to me like free ignorance.

If I will Die…

If I would die, I may not wish to die in mysterious circumstances. When I die, I want my family to be able to tell mourners that I died of little fever at night, brief stomach or headache, renal or any cause that clears off doubt.

I will not be happy from my grave to know that my family is in confusion as to the circumstance surrounding my death, whether I die of poisoning or stampede.

If Saudi authorities could not issue convincing statements for the families of victims of stampede at Jamraat to be able to know the cause for the death of their loved ones, certainly there is a great suspicion.

Statements are always oozing, and from the reported features of those injured, lying in coma, receiving treatment in Saudi Hospitals, the situation raises a lot of questions. So far, there have been serious doubts cast on the Saudi version of the event.

I may want to trust evidence statements from experts only, but frightening eye-witness accounts gushing forth should not be outright ignored.

Nobody is contending the death incidents, and the Saudi authorities are already on defensive. They act like the lives of people, especially the blacks, are inconsequential, and took to racism, heaping the blame on the black Africans, more nauseating, the fellow Africans here in Nigeria have echoed.

If I get several opportunities to travel to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage currently, I will rather personally wait till the next several years to see what will become of the situation. If people continue to die in these breathing spaces and the benefit of the doubts I have extended to Saudi authorities, I will not attend hajj in my lifetime except on special capacities where I would be distinguished from the crowd so that when I die a comprehensive investigation will follow to explain the circumstances of my death. 

Even if I become rich, I will not risk my life to go to Saudi Arabia. I would rather stay in Nigeria to redoply my resources to build a house for a poor Alaramma, boost school enrollment for the children of the poor and donate books to local schools, buy sanitation equipment and distribute them to my local community and continue to do my normal act of ibadat from my home country. When I die and find myself on the smiling side, I would request the Almighty for my special hajj in the paradise.

Most of the pilgrims did not intend to go and die in the Holy Land. If we are talking of the proximity of blessing, the residents of the land should be dying first. You cannot tell me I die in blessing while when I die my children will be exposed to hardship.

I am not scientist, but my field of study is one that has to do with history and philosophy of science. Especially in the study of renaissance humanism, you will get to understand the tremendous power of human mind.  Next to God, is human being in terms of powers and possibilities. When humans are scheming things, Satan has to keep aside and watch mouth agape.

All those sciences courses are not over there in the university departments for merely paper calculation only.  As a student in humanities, my job is to think ahead of the scientist about some critical issues for the advancement of humanity so that based on my reflection; the scientist can create models ahead of the impending phenomenon.

You think science is totally separated from arts? 

Crowd Science, Crowd Management, Crowd Movement and Behavior, are all growing fields that stemmed from humanity which are going hand in hand with Mathematics, Architecture, Environmental Design, Geometry, Astrophysics and Geospatial Information Sciences in solving crowd problems.

The stampede is preventable, not merely a twist of fate.

    

An MTN Bill Gate Who Eats Warmed Tuwo And Drinks Koko

I couldn't tell actually where I was at the moment when the news broke. But one thing has sure stayed in my mind.

Since two days ago when a girl nearly shocked me with her call, considering the longevity of time she spent with me on phone chat and one Biggy introduced me to MTN credit giveaway, the bell never stopped ringing left, right and centre. Such huge amount in my phone,  #33,500, was no small matter. I called and people called; a lot of friendly phone calls from family and friends.

Someone has spent months without calling. The last time you parted was in quarrel. Now they would call you for greeting. “I just call to greet you.” When you hear something like this, you know there is smoke behind a fire. So now when I see a call from A, B and C, I know the reason. I know it is free credit season.

In the past, when I was a school kid, I was poor. I normally went back home to eat warmed Tuwo at break time. The same Tuwo that my university colleagues have now written a petition against me to declare it an abomination, embarrassment and harmful to the status of a college boy to devour it and proceeds to the morning lectures. Eat something fashionable, light and exotic, they warned, food like Indomie or any kind of pasta. Koko? - no, is also abominable. Drink tea.

Now I must confess that the biggest concern is not for the boys. I pity all these girls in the university! They didn't know that I have been stuffing my stomach with Towu before coming to the classrooms to set one foot after another in classy swag, staggering majesty and conceited arrogance. But I couldn’t help it. I was brought up with Tuwo and Koko and I pray they would forgive me for cheating on them. God bless those who give us what we love.

Now since MTN has made me a millionaire, I no longer have to drink Koko or begin to worry when it is twilight, and eight o’clock mode is activated. There has always been tension in the households throughout the country at this hour. Tuwo in the north, Eba in the Middle Belt, Amala in the west and pounded yam in the east. Every night, no change, for long, since Adam. Children begin to question the rationale of their parents behind this repetitive and consistent food culture at night.

With busy phone call engagements, you did not see me here nor heard from me. Yesterday was a complete write-up, the night extremely busy and it’s likely this morning would not be different. With such amount in my SIM card, the frequency and the number of phone calls will continue for the next few days. My only fear is that if this goes on, the body of network up in the sky is going to be harmed and the company's capital will suffer. Who will give us another bonanza in the future? I call all Nigerians to be less aggressive and pursue this free gift with consideration.

Imagine, you call a person and he or she will not pick only to call you back to tell you that they also have credit in their phone.  When you become a rich even for a week’s time, you will feel a sort of power and arrogance. I call one of my Hajia relatives and because she knows me, when she picked the phone she kept saying ''kashe na  bugo, kashe na bugo'' very agitated, not knowing that I too have become an MTN millionaire and I kept replying ''don't worry, don't worry'' like the other girl  told me.

She called. I knew this wasn’t her habit besides her notorious flashing. I was surprised and told her to hang up I would call back. My friend retorted that “don’t worry” and proceeded to inform me that she was also getting into prayer and I should not mind her credit. “Just hold the phone. Today you will hear my sweet voice reciting fatiha.” God bless the mother and the father of MTN.

I have done with the contacts in my phone and the credit did not show signs that it was going to shake soon. I began lending the phone out to friends to also chat with their friends. So please, you're hereby requested for God's sake to leave your number so that I would call you to be able to exhaust the credit before the validity period.

But one thing was annoying. Those who didn't get the money, I mean the poor, looked me horribly with jealousy and envy in their eyes. They kept flashing me, flashing and flashing, and because one has become rich, I simply called them back to show them the difference. That's the responsibility of being rich - taking care of those who are less privileged.

When you become rich, the only connection you will have with the past if you like is to carry over certain titles and append them to your name for easy identification. Even those girls in the university are now allowed to know my relationship with Tuwo. There is no fear anymore since I have become rich anyway.

So for this, I hereby declare my intention to change my name from Abubakar without any introductory honour to Alhaji Bill Gate Abubakar Me Tuwo da Naman Kaza. He who because of wealth has turned hen meat into his daily night food. 

The Hero

Nigeria should not be dwelling on trivial issue to celebrate things that are too much not uncommon in the twenty-first century. Jonathan is a sore loser, so it is not any heroic act to give possession to its legitimate owner. The thought of the nature of the world has at last kept Jonathan to act to his conscience. They say one cannot enjoy his loot in the ICC. 

If anybody will be hero it is Buhari who contested tirelessly for twelve years and the masses who stood by him. Nigerians fought for our rights and protected our votes. While multi-billionaire people friends of PDP were donating billion dollars to fight against card reader, people like me were struggling to donate such little  amount as one-thousand , five-thousand and ten-thousand naira according to different sizes of our pockets. Our passionate support had turned the PDP, as my friend put it somewhere, the largest opposition party in Africa.

At the poll, some people had waited to see a final rehearsal in which the result had used to be written months in advance before the election. PDP had been making her way this way that contestants at primaries had fiercely fought a fellow party man, maimed, and gone to magicians to sacrifice blood to get nomination. Grabbing a ticket to contest on its platform was believed to be a one-way to the office.

It is the nature of the world that individual shall be responsible for their own actions. Perhaps the tweetering pomposity and dumpy-humpy  facebook  updates were more at stake to stop rigging. The belief that Nigerians had taken the election to social media and made it global issue, reporting any development instantly, surely has had to be terrible blow against the PDP’s crude rigging. 

Immediately the hunter became the hunted and began kicking and throwing rigging allegation. Free and fair election is not their wish. It is ours. After all, it was until secretary John Kerry had issued a statement that there would be visa restrictions on anybody who interfered with the election result and economic sanctions on military personnel then they allowed the votes to count.

Like the little Harriet Beecher Stowe’s subservient novel Uncle Tom Cabin, Jega was invited in 2011 to serve as INEC boss. This man has progressive mind who, unlike them, did not fight technology as if they were fighting for their life. He is not one of those Luddites of the twenty-first century.

The Fate of PDP

Meanwhile, while people like Sule Lamido of Jigawa and Ibrahim Shema of Katsina who, by virtue of the power of the then ruling party that until recently remained scourge and thorn in the flesh of Nigeria, often had proudly made reckless statement publicly bragging to win election at cost, were now put shame by an election that embraced technology.  This has exposed their rigging tactic where MPs who had been to the chambers for sixteen years, such as Faruk Lawan, Bello Hayatu Gwarzo and David Mark etc, had woefully failed to maintain their seat.  

Many officials who benefited from the several of its corrupt regimes could not stand as formidable opposition against the APC. That is another sin of the party. The party’s members had been accustomed to using public treasury to finance their candidacy and other personal expenditure where ministers are accused of spending public funds in buying family fleet, children school bus and domesticating public funds as personal allowances to take care of their family while their real income went as capital into their business. And since they could not do without government, for now, ex-governors and former ministers are not likely to regroup and pool resources to challenge the APC. Their body language has shown that they are most prepared and ready to withdraw back to the loot they converted to the personal wealth. 

The best that could happen to PDP after being rendered severely frail is facing extinction. We have seen a season of migration to the APC. Plus we can now roughly believe that the party has a single region as its stronghold. At this moment without the state treasury, in addition to the fact that money bag politics is becoming irrelevant where in the next few years the survival of a politician would solely defend on his character, and the terrible suffering the party has inflicted on the masse where the mere mention of its name creates horror and dismay in the mind of Nigerians, the party will certainly suffer if not die at all.

PDP can’t function in a just and proper arrangement.  But we pray they should make some changes to stay in business to replace horrendous faces with the trustworthy individuals and technocrats who could right the credibility damage the old crooks had done on the party. The fate of the country is the end of vulturisitc rule. We will never have another PDP’s cruelty again from whatever acronyms or persona. Never!

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)