Why this country is under the perpetual curse of being governed by the ‘worst eleven’ in years despite the substantial number of eggheads that we are blessed with remains one of the human mysteries. I want to agree, though, with the school of thought that a people get the kind of leadership they deserve. The country would remain in this state until something gives, whether willingly or otherwise because, as many of us have always warned, our present system is not sustainable. It is bound to crumble on someone’s head someday. Louis XV1 under whose reign the ancien regime collapsed in France was not the worst of French monarchs. It just happened that a series of events culminated in bringing down the regime and the old order in his time in 1789.
Let me start by warning that Nigerians should learn to sift the wheat from the chaff. We should be able to separate the message from the messenger. Otherwise, we won’t get the import of this piece.
For a political leadership that is not destined for perdition like the dog that wants to get lost and therefore would not heed the hunter’s whistle, the October 2020 #EndSARS riots were enough to make genuine and lasting reforms come from above in Nigeria. From what we see daily, it does not seem our political leaders have learnt any lesson from the protests. If they had, they would not be content with the largely cosmetic changes they were forced to bring about as an aftermath of the protests.
I am giving this background in view of the warning by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the about 15 million kids who are out of school today would constitute the new Boko Haram in the next 15 years if the ancien regime, particularly in the northern part of Nigeria does not dismantle itself. Obasanjo did not mention any region; but we know where most of such children hail from.
The former president bared his mind on February 21 in Abuja, at the 2022 Murtala Muhammed Foundation Annual Lecture, entitled: “Beyond Boko Haram: Addressing insurgency, banditry and kidnapping across Nigeria.” Give it to him, he is too experienced to be talking on this kind of topic as an ignoramus. According to him, he had been to Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, in 2011, to understudy the activities of Boko Haram insurgents and found out that they are angry because they have been denied education and consequently are jobless and poor. He even traced the history of the weapons that are in wrong hands in the country, some of which have found their way into the hands of the bandits. The former president said that “The population of Nigeria today standing in over 215 million. And 15 million children which should be in school are not in school. It does not matter how we deal with Boko Haram, bandits, kidnapping and abduction today, either by stick or carrot, those 15 million children that should be in school that are not in school are the potential Boko Haram of 15 years from now.” He therefore advised the government to get these children educated and create jobs for them rather than waste resources on the provision of unsustained palliatives.
This, for me, is the message in his speech at that occasion. Obasanjo spoke not only as a military general who knows that defeating an enemy militarily is pyrrhic victory if the sociological and other tendencies that gave birth to that enemy are not adequately addressed; but also as an elder who is street-wise. His advice perhaps stemmed from the latter, specifically from the Yoruba saying that ‘omo ta o ko lo ma gbe’le ta ko ta’. Literally translated, it means a child that is not trained or educated (built) will end up selling the house that one built. Pure and simple.
It is because the northern establishment failed to train these children years back that they have constituted a nuisance to the north and other parts of the country today. Many of the northern elites have abandoned their ancestral homes for fear of being kidnapped or killed by these angry children. So, in a sense, what Chief Obasanjo is saying is that the same way their parents cannotgo to their respective villages and towns today will their (the elites’ children) not be able to visit those places 15 years from now unless the elite change their ways and realise that children, whether from the rich or poor homes are all children deserving of some care, love, attention, affection, rights and privileges. Education is not an exclusive preserve of the children of the rich. If Quaranic education is enough, why do the cream of the northern establishment send their own children to the best of schools in the world? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
You may want to ask what Obasanjo did to stem the tide of out-of -school children, particularly in the north when he was in power. But, that, to me, is not relevant at this point. The fact is, Obasanjo is hardly affected by Boko Haram. But if he is suggesting a way out, it is in the interest of those of us who are likely to be victims to interrogate his prognosis. Moreover, the former president understands the north more than even some of the northerners. He knows how endemic some of their religious and cultural practices are enough, to know how far (possibly in vain) anyone attempting to put an end to the almajeri system would try to end or even reform the system. If you doubt this, did the Goodluck Jonathan administration not spend a whopping N15billion on the education of almajeris, what happened to that project after? Yet, these are some of the right things to do to reduce the number of out-of-school children.
I am always angry when discussing this topic because it is one of the inequities in the Nigerian system that even the political elite do not factor in whenever they are talking about federalism. A second reason I am angry is because money that would have been spent wisely on other developmental aspects across the country is being wasted to prosecute an avoidable war and fix infrastructure over and over again because bandits would not let them be. Nigeria’s constitution allows freedom of movement. I have no issue with that. But I have issue with a situation when a child that one has shown love to and trained with a lot of personal resources gets killed by another child who does not value life and for no justifiable reason. And, in all honesty, it is not the fault of the poor child: the system that produced him never showed him love and so he does not know the colour of love. Readers conversant with this column will always remember the reference I usually make whenever I am writing about this topic. It is about what one of my seniors in the university wrote in the acknowledgement column of his undergraduate project which I stumbled on when doing research for my first degree project. ‘Perrow’, as we fondly called him then wrote acknowledging the role of various people in making him whatever he was then and to his parents “who gladly embraced poverty” to see him through university education.
But poverty is not pepper soup; so, it is oxymoron to say some people gladly embraced it. Even when the country was relatively prosperous and better run, some indigent Yoruba parents still did not mind selling their clothes to pay their children’s school fees. That tells you the extent some people can go just toeducate their children. That is the spirit in the western region. Unless we want to deceive ourselves as most of our politicians like to do just for political gains, we may all be Nigerians but we are not the same. Our erstwhile National Anthem recognised this difference: ‘though tribes and tongues may differ…’ It is not just tribes and tongues that differ, even our cultures and religious perceptions too.
While the average northern elite may hide under religion or culture to limit the children of the poor to the worst form of Quaranic education, that is one without provision for their upkeep or that of their trainers, their southern counterparts cannot do that. That is why more people in the south are educated irrespective of their religion. That is why Christians marry Muslims and live in peace with themselves here in the south. Today, many of us get nervous seeing these children being brought in droves down south not because we naturally hate them but because we know the implications, which, unfortunately, is no fault of theirs, either. Societies will always live with crime and criminals. But it is a different ballgame when the crime borders on terrorism and advanced banditry caused by the denial of basic rights like education and other cares and privileges.
It is not late in the day for the northern elite to reverse this trend which they brought upon themselves. I get angry and have this sense of, ‘oh, it does not seem to me that these people have got the message from Boko Haram that things must change’, when some of their leaders continue basking in their huge population. They must realise that huge population is no longer trendy if there is no value added. That value added is education. The mistake that the northern establishment has been making and keeps making, which is costing not just the region but the entire country dearly is to think that some people would perpetually accept to play second fiddle in any system. Like one of my friends used to say, anyone who assumes that his child loves to drink gari with sugar and groundnuts is making a big mistake. The day you feed that child with bread, fried eggs and corned beef, marks the turning point. It is then you will know he/she has really never loved gari and sugar, etc. It only appeared the child loves it because that is what you have been feeding him/her with; that is all he or she knows. ‘Baba ta ni ise wu’? (Who likes penury?)
Now that the system has shortchanged the poor too much for them to notice and be up perpetually in arms against that system, that system must know it is time for reform.
But, even as the north must reform for peace to reign in the country, I am afraid the south needs some rejigging too. I fear for the south as well. And my fear is exacerbated by the perceivable insensitivity and arrogance on the part of some of the southern leaders. If they do not change for better, the entire country might become one huge ungovernable entity. And it is worse when educated people decide to unleash their knowledge dysfunctionally, taking advantage of modern technology that they are very much conversant with. Yes, infrastructural facilities are being provided or rejuvenated in some southern states, there is little by way of job creation to absolve the millions that the educational system is churning out annually.
In essence, what Chief Obasanjo is saying, and which I support wholeheartedly, is that beyond taking out the Boko Haram terrorists by military force, the northern elite has to ensure that potential ones that would trouble us in the future are not allowed to travel the same trajectory that today’s bandits travelled. That is to say, the elite must begin to pull down the foundation that produced that archaic and unsustainable system that condemned the children of the poor to waiting to pick the crumbs falling from the tables of the rich. These 15 million unfortunate kids must be educated. There must be job opportunities for them. Otherwise, the Boko Haram we are seeing today, as Chief Obasanjo rightly observed, would be a child’s play to the one that is coming.