I hereby refer to the above caption: an article published by the widely read Leadership Sunday, July 7, 2019, page 5. This being a phrase as part of a statement credited to the incumbent governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir Ahmed el-Rufai. It reads thus: “the North is more honest and less corrupt than other parts of the country”. He further categorised Nigeria as two countries of developing South and backward less educated North, respectively.
The el-Rufai dichotomous logic needs a serious critical analysis in the face of the present unprecedented socio-economic debacles witnessed by Nigerians regardless of geo-political entity.
To the chagrin of this author, Governor el-Rufai again blatantly remarked that: “You hardly can find someone from Northern Nigeria convicted of 419 or being a yahoo boy (Internet fraudster)”. It is seriously regretful if a leader of Governor el-Rufai calibre is still of myopic thought at this loop era whereby Nigerians long for absolute unity, so that the country can forge ahead in areas of inter-personal relations without regard to ethnicity, religion, state and locality. This speech of his, is synonymous to hate speech against which the ruling party, of which himself belongs, has vehemently condemned and abhorred in recent times.
The current writer is an educationist. It is along this line I stand to correct el-Rufai’s misleading opinion between Northern and Southern Nigeria. The North and South interacted peaceful and almost harmoniously during the pre-colonial period. In other words, there was what is known as associative social interactions among the rank and file of people from various ethnic backgrounds.
Then, from the 18th century through mid 20th century, Nigeria was created and ruled by British or Colonial authorities. Most importantly, the Northern and Southern Protectorates were amalgamated on January 1st, 1914 to form a political unit, by Sir Fredrick Lord Lugard; hence, the coinage north and south dichotomy.
By and large, the country (Nigeria) was divided into three regions – the North, the West and the East. Along the line, funds were disbursed to each autonomous region for the benefit of their people. Western Region, under Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in 1954 created Universal Primary Education (UPE), making education compulsory for all school age children within the region. In the same way, in 1956, Eastern region emulated the West by establishing UPE for its children. At such a period, the North used its allocations for administrative purposes; that is, lesser attention was paid to Western education than the two other regions. There and then, the gap began to be widened till date.
It should also be noted that between 1967 and 1970, a civil war was fought where education in the Eastern Region was adversely affected. Thereafter, the Federal Government saw the need of serious educational reform to unite the country and to break the backbone of the dichotomy existing between the North and the South through curricular reform. This gave birth to a statutory document tagged National Policy on Education first published in 1977, revised in 1998, 1999 and 2004 respectively and with some reforms in 2012. Under the aforementioned series of reviews, the National Policy has really moved education forward through such systems as UPE (6-6-4), UBE (6-3-3-4) and UBE (9-3-4).
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) was established in July 2005 to provide funds for 9-3-4 system. The ‘9’ in the current system represents free and compulsory basic education for nine consecutive years for school age Nigerian children from 6 to 14 years in three stages thus: Lower Basic Curriculum representing former primary 1 – 3 for 6 – 8 years children (Basic 1 – 3), Middle Basic Curriculum representing former primary 4 – 6 for 9 – 11 years children (Basic 4 – 6) and Upper Basic Curriculum representing former JSS 1 – 3 for 12 – 14 years children (Basic 7 – 9). The philosophical underpinning of the current system is that the Federal government has given equal opportunity to all the 36 states including Abuja for free and compulsory basic education. Under the programme or the system Nigerian children, irrespective of tribe, ethnicity, religion, state and locality, should necessarily acquire appropriate levels of literacy, numeracy, manipulative, communicative and life skills. Along with the above are acquisitions of ethical, moral and civic values for solid foundation in life-long learning and as a stepping stone for scientific and reflective thinking. Every state leaders including their governors are to provide enabling environment for effective implementation of the contemporary universal basic education. Governor el-Rufai was lamenting for grinding poverty in the North as at today, thereby accepting better educational advancement of the south tinted with element of corruption. There is an absolute self-contradiction here which shall be picked up soon.
Poverty in the North is not because the people are lazy in a way, but it is partly because northern leaders from the colonial regionalism have not prioritised education like their Southern counterparts.
For instance, the North in the pre-colonial time was very rich. Let me make a particular reference to Kano and Katsina: these people had prosperous textile industries, so much so that, we learnt Kano textile was better in quality than European textiles before the industrialization in Europe.
Furthermore, Governor el-Rufai labelled Southern Nigeria as agents of corruption and the North remains angelic in that respect. Well, some few questions suffice here: What killed the Kaduna gigantic textile industries of colonial and a little after post-colonial? What made prosperous companies of 70s and 80s in Kano collapsed? What made the Kwara or Jebba Paper Mills to fold up? Why many Northern Governors could not pay workers salaries as at when due? What do we say about unpaid promotion and step arrears of public workers in all states of the federation including Northern states? What about unpaid arrears of monthly pension of retirees and their gratuities in Northern states? What do we say of some governors from the North who sacked innocent teachers with their wealth of experience and replaced them with novices?
Governor el-Rufai is embarrassingly sentimental to have pinned issue of corruption on a given section of the country. Perhaps, he knows not the very deep meaning of the word? Corruption has been a collective failure in Nigeria including Kaduna State he is governing. This makes him an armed-chair philosopher coupled with I am-holier-than-thou-attitude. This reminds one of a Caribbean musician of 80s who asked a rhetoric question: Everybody is crying of crime, then who are the criminals? Put in another way: Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So, is the case of el-Rufai on his perception of corruption in Nigeria.
To my own stand point, Governor el-Rufai is busy chasing the shadow instead of the object. He failed woefully to address the real problem militating against the Northern youths and children. This is knowledge-driven age whereby any leader who has the privilege to address youths must make special reference to education and acquisition of relevant knowledge, rather than self-praise or boasting.
To be very frank and emphatic, the problem of the Northern youths which their leaders or governors need to address very squarely is education. Poverty and other prevalent problems such as drug abuse, high rate of divorce which el-Rufai lamented about are as a result of poor education. Today’s world needs youths who are properly and highly educated for both economic and societal development. War, insurgency, terrorism that is all over the place are relics of neglecting education over several decades. I do not know what el-Rufai wants to say about North-East, North-West and others in respect of pulling down worship houses, killing holy men, racing down school buildings, kidnapping school children of both genders, killing large number of teachers and assassinating professors? Where is the morality he is claiming?
It takes about 40 to 50 years or more to produce a professor. It may then take such an environment another 30 to 40 years to get his or her replacement, especially in core science areas, so what are we saying and what is Governor el-Rufai saying?
Education is about everything in the modern time. Whatever you want to acquire, including moral up-rightness is education. For instance, the former Union Soviet Socialist Republic collapsed because it was competing with another Super Power (USA) whose educational system is more powerful than its own. USA embraces all cultural entities with numerous value differences to consolidate her educational system. The USSR was very conservative when it comes to tolerating major religions of the world – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is not the only reason why USSR collapsed, it is just an example.
Before rounding off, I still want to cite two more examples about educating the youths. The first example is from former Communist (Russian) leader, Lenin. He was asked by young communists how best they could contribute to the growth of the communist state, his reply or answer to the question was: study, study, study. The second example is credited to former US President, Bill Clinton who was once asked about what he would focus on if he has the chance to lead his people again. He said education, education, education. Finally, we need to look far ahead of present dispensation. To do this is to sensitize our youths North or South to be abreast of modern education so that they can compete with their counterparts in other parts of the globe, especially in the developed countries. Hence, morality as projected by Governor el-Rufai without modern and scientific education by our youths is like Kubewa soup without necessary ingredients: it must have a sour taste. After all, morality is present all over Nigeria, not only in the North: it is our cultural heritage.
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