The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Abbas

  • Scholars’ Week

    Scholars’ Week

    This is the week in which Nigeria’s renowned ‘Citadel of knowledge Emeritus’, popularly known as Markaz, Agege, celebrates scholarship in full regarlia in the month of May, every year. In the first week of May every year,  great men and women of letters from all walks of life, and from most countries of Africa, Europe and Asia, assemble on the campus of that great institution for a whole week.

    This unique innovation began in 1998, six years after the demise of Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory, the great founder of Markaz.

    The ingenuous idea initiated by the current Rector of the Institution Sheikh Habibullah Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory, is aimed at keeping aglow, the illuminating touch of learning, which was the hallmark of the late Sheikh Adam Al-Ilory’s lifestyle while alive.

     

    Presentation of Papers

    In the week, scholarly papers on various issues of interest and of concern to Islam and the Muslim Ummah are presented. Debates and symposia are also organized to resolve some knotty contemporary and primordial questions hitherto unanswered even as plenary sessions are held to deliberate and decide on further way forward.

    Markaz Alumni

    For the alumni of Markaz who often come from various parts of the world,    ‘Scholars’ Week’ is a reminding forum of the good old days to update their knowledge and broaden their views of life. It also serves as an interactive session for professionals, clerics and scholars in other fields of learning. The week is like a modern day ‘Ukaz’ of yore in the Arabian Peninsula, where all valuable elements of scholarship used to compete for global intellectual attention.

     

    Languages of discussion

    The primary language of discussion, while the celebration lasts, is Arabic. This does not however limit the exercise to Arabic language alone. Presentation of papers in English, French and Yoruba is also welcome since no particular language has monopoly of knowledge. Nevertheless, Arabic is made the primary language of discussion for two obvious reasons. First is to provide scholars with an avenue to exhibit their Arabic knowledge and thereby boost their scholarly horizon in the language of the Qur’an and Sunnah.

    Second is to encourage the current students of Markaz and those of other Arabic and Islamic Institutions of learning who may be interested in imbibing the culture of scholarship par excellence which helped the founder of Markaz to pave scholarship way for others in life.

    The 100 Greatest Nigerians of the century

    At the twilight of the 20th century in 1999, the management of that magazine, led by Mr. Bayo Onanuga, (now the Director Geneal of News Agency of Nigeria), thought of putting together in a chronicled document, the most prominent 100 Nigerian men and women of the 20th century. The publication was entitled ‘PEOPLE IN THE NEWS 1900-1999: A SURVEY OF NIGERIANS OF THE 20TH CENTURY’.

     

    Contributors

    Some prominent Nigerian newspaper, editors, columnists and other versatile (but non-journalists) writers were selected and commissioned to write about the selected great Nigerians. Yours sincerely was one of them. And the two personalities assigned to me as an Islamic columnist were the late Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory and Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi. The 498 page book which was publicly presented with pump and pageantry at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos can be called Nigeria’s 20th century ‘Hall of Fame.

    Who is Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory?

    To know who this colossal personality was, please, read elow what I wrote and was published in that book about Sheikh Adam Al-Ilory and his established famous Institution called Markaz:

    “To Muslim communities of West Africa, two names (Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory and Markaz are synonymous and often used interchangeably. Only a few people know that Markaz is a name of an Institution while Sheikh Adam is the name of its founder. Both names jointly symbolize revolution not only in the method of propagating Islam in the sub-region but also in entrenching the divine language of the Qur’an in the heart and brain of those Muslims. The late Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory was both an Islamic scholar of international repute and a revolutionary.

     

     Profile of Markaz

    With the establishment of Markaz in 1952, Sheikh Adam introduced unp[recedented modernity and standardization into the study of Arabic and Islamic learning in West African sub-region, especially Nigeria.

    No 20th century Muslim scholar, dead or alive, has had such a profound impact on West African Muslim communities, in terms of Arabic scholarship and Islamic propagation as Sheikh Adam. Before he established Markaz, there were scholars and there were madrasahs, (Qur’anic schools) no doubt, but such schools operated within a very narrow scope as their teaching methodology was very primitive and anachronistic

     

    The old methodology

    In the old madrasahs pupils were merely handed over to muallims clerics by their parents for tutoring without any agreement on what to teach them and for how long. Thus a pupil could serve his teacher for as long as 20 years or more in the name of learning to recite the Qur’an.

     

    The Great Revolution

    Sheikh Adam, who also passed through this pseudo servitude, noticed the anomaly and resolved to change it. To succeed in doing that however, he realized that he needed to equip himself educationally. Therefore, he moved from scholar to scholar, as a student, searching for any relevant knowledge that could assist him in fulfilling his dream. Two of his teachers in that process were Alfa Namaji (a Nupe cleric from Niger State) and one Alfa ‘Esin nio bi wa’ an Ilorin man who settled down in Ibadan, (now Oyo State). He also studied under a number of other knowledgeable Islamic clerics.

     

    His academic sojourn in Cairo

    He arrived in Cairo, Egypt, in the early 1940s, where he had an academic sojourn at the prestigious Al-Azhar University which is the oldest University in the world today having been established about 970 C.E by one Jawhar, a ‘Fatimid’ front liner.

    In Cairo, Sheikh Adam saw with admiration how well organized madrasahs were and dreamt of estabkishing one on his return to Nigeria. He studied the Egyptian curricula of education and methodology of teaching both at the elementary and secondary schools levels.

     

    Establishment of Markaz

    With just meagre financial resources but relentless determination, he established his dreamt Markaz in Abeokuta, now Ogun State, on April 16, 1952. The Institution which was to become the centre of revolution  in the teaching of Arabic and Islamic education in Nigeria, started with just 19 pupils and four teachers including Sheikh Adam himself. The founder’s foresight, however, would not allow Markaz to remain in Abeokuta for long. He moved the Institution to Agege in 1955.

     

    Uniqueness of Markaz

    The uniqueness of Markaz is not to be seen in the quality of education taught to the students alone. The modern teaching methodology and reformation with which the Institution is characterized confirm that uniqueness. It was in Markaz that the use of chalk and blackboard for teaching Arabic and Islamic education was first introduced in Nigeria. Hitherto, the teaching instruments were wooden slates and local ink. It was in Markaz of all madrasahs, that a curriculum was first introduced which classified studies into subjects while pupils were distributed into classrooms according to their levels. It was in Markaz that pupils of Arabic and Islamic education first wore uniform and sat on chairs rather than on floor while writing with pencil or pen in notebooks. It was in Markaz that written examination was first conducted as a means of assessing and promoting pupils from class to class while certificates were issued to successful madrasah graduates as a measure of their level of education. It was in Markaz that such facilities as dormitories, library, printing press and clinic were first provided for students.

     

    Antagonism

    However, for doing all these and for teaching students such subjects as syntax, morphology, logic, semantics, philosophy, geography, History, mathematics, and literature, Sheikh Adam was confronted with implacable hostility by the local, traditional Alfas who saw the new revolution as a cultural affront. That hostility became aggravated when Sheikh Adam added a Central Jum’at Mosque different from that of Agege Township to Markaz where he translated the Friday Arabic sermon into Yoruba language. But the courageous scholar remained undaunted.

     

    First graduation ceremony

    With the first graduation ceremony of Markaz in 1957, however, which many people watched with admiration, Sheikh Adam won a landmark victory for his revolution. Following that graduation, some ambitious local Alfas swallowed their envy by shelving their pride and enrolled in Markaz as students to improve their knowledge and undergo tutelage in the modern teaching methodology.

    Some of these Alfas came from various parts of Nigeria as well as neighbouring countries like Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cote de Voire, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Cameroon as well as Sierra Leone and Senegal. After graduation, each of them went back to their home countries to establish similar Institutions in their domains under the umbrella of Markaz.

     

    Products of Markaz

    Today, thousands of products of Markaz and those of the affiliate Institutions are University graduates in various fields of discipline. Scores of them are highly placed in their professional callings.

    Today, Markaz can proudly regale in the galaxy of its products who are holding sway in virtually all fields of human endeavour. Among these are Professors such as Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin and now the Registrer of JAMB; Professor Abdur-Razak Deremi Abubakar, a former Vice Chancellor of Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Kwara State; The late Professor Shuaib Uthman, formerly of Usman Dan Fodio University, Skoto; Professor Murtada Aderemi Bidmus, a former Dean of the Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, to mention but just a few. There are many other Markaz products with Ph.D. degrees. There are also Medical Doctors; Lawyers; Engineers; Ambassadors;  Journalists (including yours sincerely), Architects; Accountants; Bankers; Pharmacists; Surveyors; Civil Servants; Business men and women as well as Secondary School Principals and teachers; name it. They all exemplify the great Institution’s anthem which we often chant emotionally with relish.

     

    His ascetic lifestyle

    Despite Sheikh Adam’s financial constraints, and his close relationship with the Arab world, he never sought financial aid from any foreign country. Not only did he believe that such a quest was capable of diminishing one’s social status and dignity, he also resented begging in whatever form as a means of fulfilling an ambition. Naturally, Sheikh Adam was an ascetic person who shunned avarice in all its ramifications. And due to his ascetic nature, he was highly respected by personalities like the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late General Murtala Muhammed, the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the late General Abdul Baqi Babatunde Idiagbon and even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

     

    League of Imams and Alfas

    In 1963, Sheikh Adam initiated the formation of the League of Imams and Alfas of the South West of Nigeria. He was a co-founder of that League to which he served as Secretary General till his demise in 1992 after turning down his nomination as President. He was also the initiator and leader of the ten man team that translated the Qur’an from Arabic into Yoruba.

     

    Awards

    He was the first black African to win the coveted Egyptian intellectual Gold Medal Award in Arabic Literature, which was presented to him by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 1989. He had earlier, in 1975, won the Muritanian International Award for Islamic Scholarship, which was presented to him by the late President Moukhtar Ould Dada of Mauritania.

    Sheikh Adam traveled far and wide in the Arab world, Europe and Asia attending many academic and Islamic conferences where he often presented scholarly papers. He was a member of many international academic and Islamic bodies in Africa, Middle East and Asia.

    Born in Ilorin to Alfa Abdul Baqi and Madam Aisha, in 1917, Sheikh Adam who died on May 3, 1992 was married and blessed with many children. One of those children, Sheikh Habibullah Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory, is the current Rector of Markaz.

  • Nigerian media and the Presidency

    Preamble

    The media is like a spider web. A small object that approaches it easily gets ensnared. But if the object is big, no time is wasted in attempting to tear the web apart. That is the parable of the media in the hands of power wielders.

    It is no longer news that the State House correspondent of the Punch newspaper , Olalekan Adetayo, was expelled from the Presidential Villa in Abuja last Monday. And the expulsion was allegedly carried out on the order of the Chief Security Officer (CSO) to Mr. President without any consultation with the Presidential media team in the same Villa. Thank God, a fine professional like Femi Adesina was up to the task as he immediately rescued the situation and thereby saved Mr. President of another embarrassing media dent that could have dangerously robbed on his image with a lasting effect. The incident is a further confirmation that the Presidency lacks synergy in its internal operations and the public is not oblivious of this.

    Going through the history of Punch newspaper, one will discover that the paper was founded on a platform of radicalism in 1976 by two gentlemen of professional competence. These were the late Chief James Olu Aboderin, a Chartered Account and Samson Oruru Amuka Pemu, an Editor from the then Daily Times stable. The latter is now the Chairman and Publisher of Vanguard newspaper. The radical background of Punch newspaper was the reason for adopting the slogan: ‘Pack a Punch’ which was popularly known with the Punch in 1970s and early 1980s.  It was for the same reason that the Beattle Car was used as its hypothetical symbol of ruggedness. “You can’t kill the Beattle”.

     

    Media waves

    When the Nigerian media waves throbbed with the breaking news of Punch correspondent’s expulsion incident, it quickly became a reminder of several similar incidents in that same Villa since the inception of the ongoing 4th republic. It will be recalled that the first Presidential media spokesman in that Villa in 1999 was Dr Doyin Okupe (a medical doctor) who was generally perceived as a square peg in a round hole as far as that office was concerned. He had to be unceremoniously removed by President Olusegun Obasanjo after two years of intolerable performance in office.

    But the generality of Nigerian journalists as well as the enlightened members of the public had known that Okupe’s sack was just a matter of time. The office required professionally trained personnel in the field of information and communication management. Thus, putting a medical doctor in that office was like putting a bull in a china shop.

     

    Tunji Oseni’s Era

    When the first experiment failed, the same President Obasanjo went out in search of a versatile journalist of international repute, as a replacement for Okupe. That impeccable qualification was found in the late Tunji Oseni. And the gentleman’s appointment brought a great relief to most Nigerian media houses in the belief that with Oseni in the saddle, the practice of journalism in relation to governance at the federal level would strengthen democracy in the country.

     

    Obasanjo’s perception

    Unfortunately, however, President Obasanjo did not see the job in that light. His seeming perception of the post of Special Adviser to the President on media was to use the office to silence the opposition and curb the perceived recklessness of the media. But Tunji Oseni was too refined to engage in such a butcher’s job. Thus, in less than two years again, President Obasanjo became fed up with Oseni’s civility and professional handling of the Presidential publicity management. What he (President Obasanjo) seemingly wanted for that office was brutality and not civility. He therefore fired the gentleman called Tunji Oseni through a humiliating radio announcement and then searched for another crack journalist of international repute who would however do the bidding of the President, irrespective of professionalism.

     

    The late Remi Oyo

    It was that presidential search that brought the late Remi Oyo to the Presidential Villa as Nigeria’s first female journalist to occupy the seat that was hitherto seen as a special preserve of the male gender. Although Mrs. Oyo was well equipped for the job, it was another matter if she would do it according to Presidential expectation at the expense of her professional prowess.

     

    Professional parasites

    It was that uncertainty on the part of the President that led to the employment of two ‘rental criers’ to handle the unprofessional angle of Oyo’s job. One of them was Femi Fani-Kayode. The other was Akin Osuntokun.

    Sensing that Remi Oyo might not be courageous enough to operate differently from the way Tunji Oseni did, the President decided to rely on the duo of the bulldozers who were given different innocuous titles to justify their pay.  Thus, through their bulldozing approach to publicity at the Presidential Villa, those men relieved Mr. President of his professional allergy and thus prevented him albeit inadvertently, from ending up in hiring four Special Advisers/ Assistants on publicity in eight years of his tenure. But it is on record that he used three Advisers with the period.

     

    Tunji Oseni’s narration

    Narrating his ordeal after leaving office, Tunji Oseni said Mr. President suddenly walked into his (Oseni’s) office strangely one day and said to him: “Tunji, I am thinking of making you an Ambassador in one of the foreign countries.” And, when he (Oseni) mildly objected to that proposal saying that he was satisfied with the job at hand, the President just walked away without uttering a word. About ten minutes later, he (Oseni) heard of his sack on the radio. And within a couple of hours, some security men told him to quit his official residence within 48 hours. That is the extent to which professionalism is accorded respect in Nigeria. Tunji Oseji never got over that shock till his death.

    If a renowned professional of Tunji Oseni’s status could be so humiliated what else is there to say about the expulsion of a correspondent from the Presidential Villa by a boss of another sector?

     

    Expulsion of ‘The Monitor’ correspondent

    While Remi Oyo held sway in that office, the State House correspondent of an Ibadan-based newspaper, ‘The Monitor’, was not just expelled from Aso Rock, he was physically bundled out of the Villa on the order of Mr. President who was supposed to be the father of all. The young man’s offence was to have asked a question that was considered as obnoxious to the Presidential power of that time.

    From all these, it became evident that calling the media the Fourth Estate of Realm is a mere political nomenclature that is totally abhorrent to Nigerian political class. Perhaps that was why President Olusegun Obasanjo vetoed the Freedom of Information Bill for about five years from 2002 to 2007 and refused to sign it into law till his exit from that office.

     

    Whistle Blowers’ risk

    It was the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who first blew the whistle by drawing the attention of the world to the extent of corruption in Nigeria. He said emphatically that “Nigeria is a fantastically corrupt country”. That could be called his parting gift for our country on his way out of office as Prime Minister. But he had hardly completed that sentence when the noisy Nigerian press descended on him and took him to the laundry. As usual, our press rained abuses on him and asked him to proceed to the gallows. But now, less than six months after he made the statement, who is right? And who is wrong? Today, the man is globally acknowledged as a speaker of the truth at least in that respect.  And ever since, the Nigerian press has kept silent on the matter burying its ugly head in shame.

     

    Not patriotism

    Patriotism is not about blindly defending one’s country even where the truth is obvious. Going deep into the causes and effect of corruption in Nigeria, our press can hardly exonerate itself. Here is a press that blatantly paint the truth black and shamelessly clad falsehood in a cloak just for selfish reason.

    Yours sincerely is not just a veteran journalist but also a member of Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE). But whatever the situation may be, calling a spade a spade is the hallmark of patriotism. Those who claim to love this country must show it not in words by in action.

    Whistle blowing is yielding positive results. The looters of this country and their satanic accomplices must be ready to go to the gallows if need be. A trillion barking dogs cannot stop the surging train on its rail. Nigeria must survive.

  • This mysterious world

    Preamble

    What can we say of a man who fixes his eyes on the sun but does not see it? Instead, he sees a chorus of flaming seraphim announcing a paroxysm of despair.

    That is the parable of the country called Nigeria. Like the Israelites of yore, most Nigerians have become unbelievable gypsies wandering aimlessly in the wilderness of forlornness and wallowing helplessly in abject poverty even in the midst of abundance.

    Our world is mysterious. And the more efforts made to demystify it the more complex it becomes. Not even humanity’s greatest footprint (science and technology) has succeeded in demystifying the phenomenal web we call “the world”.

    In retrospect

    A few years ago, while yours sincerely was browsing through the internet, I fortuitously stumbled on a strange news report that was nearer to fiction than to reality, yet it was real. In the report, far away in Thailand, a young man of about 28 years of age was reported missing for some days by his relatives. By the time his dead body was eventually found somewhere in a thick forest, journalists in that country were bracing up for writing an exclusive

    Story.

    First mystery scene

    Incredibly, bruises of snake bite were found all over the young man’s body. And, surprisingly also, a monstrous python was found lying lifelessly by his side. On examining the python, the police discovered human bites all over its body. There and then, it was concluded that perhaps a furious duel had taken place between a man hunter and a reptile which led to mutual death. But the story did not end there.

    Second mystery scene

    The young man’s body was also found to be pants down with a dangling condom firmly fixed to his manhood. This unbelievable scene suggested the possibility of an attempted bestial sex that could be linked to a ritual act. Could the young man have attempted to rape the python? That was a mysterious question begging for a mysterious answer.

    Personal reflection

    On a personal reflection, yours sincerely arrived at a guess that the young man might have lured a beautiful damsel into a hideout perhaps for an illicit sexual orgy. But on getting to the point of action, the damsel decided to show her true self by turning into a python, and a duel ensued. Or why would a young man wearing condom be found half naked in such a circumstance with such a brutal reptile? This strange story quickly reminded me of an article I once wrote in this column which was entitled “THE WORLD OF JINN”.

    Linkage

    Linking that article to the episode in Thailand, just relayed above, may provide a possible clue to the mystery surrounding the death of a man and a python almost arm in arm. The similitude of the above episode is like that of Nigeria and her epidemy of corruption. I therefore decided to recall that article here today as an illustration of the linkage between the two articles if only to enable those who did not read the earlier article when it was first published. Please read on:

     The world of Jinn

    “…The world of Jinn is, to man, an imaginary world entirely wrapped in mystery. The details of how man and Jinn came to share the planet called the earth are known only to Allah. But who actually, are the Jinn? Jinn are living beings created by Allah from the flames of fire and given free will. They live on earth in a world parallel to that of man. But they are invisible to human eyes in their natural form. The Arabic word “Jinn” is from the verb “Jannah” which means to hide. Some other words from the same verb root are given names such as Janin and Janan meaning embryo and heart respectively to reflect their hidden nature.

    Categories of Jinn

    Jinn, like human beings, are as much in genders as in races and tribes. Their activities are elicited by their various cultures and traditions. Some of them are called fairy. Some are called demons and some are called devils depending on their roles in the lives of human beings. In Islam, the unbelievers among Jinn are called Shaytan (Satan) the plural of which is Shayatin and their paramount king is called Iblis. We first heard of Iblis in some Qur’anic verses revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) by Allah in the city of Madinah.

    Analysis

    According to the contents of those verses, shortly after the creation of Adam, Allah (SWT) asked the Angels (with Iblis in their midst), to prostrate to him (Adam). They all did except Iblis who bluntly refused. And, when asked why he refused to obey the commandment of Allah, he said he (Iblis), having been created from the flame of fire was superior to whatever was created from the earth. That was the beginning of hostility between man and Jinn as declared by Iblis on the premise of envy. Noting this hostility, Allah warned Adam and Hawau (Eve) to steer clear of the antics of Iblis and his disciples in order not to be lured into perdition. But with cunning and intrigue, Iblis succeeded in demoting the first human couple. The rest is history.

    Types of Jinn

    Jinn are of various heights, sizes and colours just like humans. They also have different languages and cultures depending on the race or tribe to which they belong. But one unique feature with which they are commonly endowed and, which man lacks, is the ability to transform into anything they want at will.

    Jinn’s earlier life

    Jinn are believed to have lived on earth for millions of years before the creation of man.

    It was from the experience of their lawlessness and bloody existence while they held sway on earth that the Angels got the idea which informed their initial objection to the creation of man. Without such experience the Angels would not have attempted to advise Allah “not to put on earth again those who would vandalize it and shed blood therein”. Q. 2, Verse 31.

    Environments of the Jinn

    Jinn are everywhere in the world today. They are in every home, community, country and continent. The Jinn live in trees, mountains, rivers as well as in people’s homes and in people’s hearts and wombs. It is possible to marry jinn as a wife or as a husband without knowing. This may sound odd but the truth is that most people keep jinn in their homes even in the name of children. There are Jinn in schools, in the markets, in the industries, in the offices, as well as in the Mosques and Churches. They share the lives of humans anywhere, everywhere.

    The Jinn in human environment

    The constant human tampering with the ecosystem has compelled the Jinn to change their style of living. Hitherto, they lived exclusively in places like forests, mountains, rivers, inside trees and in certain animals. But as towns and cities emerge from the ravages of the forests and mountains the Jinn take to human homes as abodes thereby sharing man’s immediate environment in all aspects. Today, Jinn do not only live in human houses, farms and offices, they also live inside their hearts, brains and blood.

    Colonisation

    If there is anything called colonization in the real sense, it is the occupation of human space and time by the Jinn. That human marriages which were once sacred do not last any longer and societal harmony, once taken for granted, has become a luxury are a sign of Jinn’s demonic grip on earth.

    Human Jinn

    Most people in authority who we call Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens, Governors, Ministers Legislators and Judges have significant traits of Jinn which have transformed into humans. Politicians are particularly fitting very accurately into a Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) which described hypocrites as persons who lie with relish while speaking and renege on promises and betray trust.

     

    Why are Jinn so called?

    The word Jinn is originally Arabic. And in In Arabic language, a person is said to be demonized (majnun) when his/her conduct is devoid of human feeling. To be demonized is to act deliriously especially where human touch is expected to take the front burner. It is not a surprise, therefore, that some people in authority reflect some traits of lunacy or that of megalomania in their bid to display power. Such people are, no doubt, from the yoke of Jinn. However, Jinn, as special creatures, do not represent all that is bad. There are good ones among them. Some of them are even more pious than human beings. In Islam, the good Jinn are said to be the disciples of Ifrit.

    Jinn in the Qur’an

    In the Qur’an, Jinn are mentioned about 35 times in relation to their activities and good or bad nature. A whole chapter of the Qur’an (chapter 72) is dedicated to the Jinn especially the good ones among them. It is about this category of Jinn that Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “Say it is revealed to me that a group of Jinn listened to Allah’s revelations and said: “We have heard a wonderful revelation (The Qur’an) giving guidance to the right path. We believe in it and shall henceforth serve none besides (Allah) our Lord. Exalted is His glory. He has taken no wife neither has He begotten any child. The ignorant ones amongst us have uttered wanton falsehood against Allah even though no man or Jinn is supposed to say what is untrue of Him…” Q.72, Verses 1-7.

    Explanation

    Just as good people are scarce so are good Jinn. The latter associate only with good people and relate to them as comrades in faith. In the same vein, the evil Jinn relate to evil people in the spirit of give and take. No evil Jinn can be so friendly with any human being as not to demand 10 advantages in return for only one he has offered. Men who cultivate friendship with Jinn for the purpose of getting rich quick usually and invariably pay dearly for such. When you hear of mysterious death of a wife or that of a husband or even that of a child, watch out, a Jinn is at work somewhere around. Such Jinn are not known for serving man for free.

    Rivalry

    The Jinn see humans as permanent rivals who must be dealt with for displacing them on earth. And their active way of dealing with human beings is to offer carrot which they know that evil men will not reject. To them, carrot is not a free offer. It must be followed by stick. It is not by accident that children are born these days with two heads, four legs and at times without faces.

    The workings of the Jinn

    The workings of Jinn are more effective in the dead nights or in the day when the sun is at its peak. Pregnant women who wander about at these odd times are likely to have encounters with the evil Jinn. And, in such a situation, the Jinn easily supplant the foetus in them leading to the bearing of strange monsters in the name of children.

    Cohabiting with the Jinn

    While good Jinn live or mill around Mosques and cemeteries with the intention of cleansing those environments, the evil Jinn live in the toilets, refuse bins and the like. That is why Muslims are not supposed to talk inside the toilet except for emergency. And they should not stay a second longer than necessary therein. Most people do not know the danger inherent in leaving the toilet doors of their homes ajar especially when such toilets are un-kept. It is an ignorant way of providing abode for evil Jinn who fuel matrimonial crises from time to time and use reptiles and insects like spiders and wall echoes to harass the inhabitants. The situation of the world today is such that human beings are the ones living in the midst of Jinn and not vice versa.

    Jinn’s Working Instruments

    Using wealth, women and wine as fetters, Iblis seems to have conquered the world from the orient to the occident by gild-washing evils and trivializing good even as his agents are actively furthering his course on all fronts. Today, there are men everywhere but no husbands are available. Women are as numerous as the sands of the desert but only a few of them can be called wives in the Islamic or African cultural sense. Today, on the instruction of Satan, parents are scorned by their children, students treat their teachers with disdain, teachers take undue advantage of their students before letting them cross the huddles of examinations. Doctors and nurses who were once seen as good Samaritans are now the merchants of death and sellers of foetus and human parts. People who are designated judges are the custodians and incubators of injustice. People trusted with our treasury are the thievs looting the same treasury with impunity.  Religious sanctuaries have been turned into satanic shrines where men and women are duped or satanically hypnotized daily. Those we once venerated as clergy have audaciously become Lucifer reincarnates. Fathers impregnate their daughters. Mothers seduce their sons into abominable sex even as gays are consecrated as Bishops.

    Allies of the Jinn

    All the abominations against which we were warned in the Qur’an and the Bible have now been turned into ‘profitable’ trades and professions. And the yardstick for measuring which crime should be punished and which should not is the social status of the criminal. If, for instance, you are not a legislator, a minister, a Governor or a chief executive of a bank or a politician of note, do not pilfer. If you do and are caught, you will liable to the full wrath of the law. And on the other hand, you can only be said to have embezzled and not stolen if you are one of those wielding power in the country. In other words, embezzlement is for the upper class while theft is for the pedestrian masses. And the one deserves official forgiveness while the other must be forced to pass through the whole length of law process. The law of the land has no meaning to the satanic forces governing the country. Once you belong to the right cult you are above the law. As a result of this, Nigeria, a country of natural boom is now a nation of satanic doom.

    The big question

    Who will rescue this land from the scourge of demons? Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had proffered solution to all these evil forces when he asked the Muslims to listen to the words of Allah by reading the Qur’an and speak with Him (Allah) by prostrating to Him in prayer. Those are two things that the evil Jinn do not want to see or hear of. They flee from where the Qur’an is constantly recited and from where human beings often prostrate to Allah. Who says evil Jinn do not have strong Dallis in Nigeria?

  • MUSWEN’s train in Ile-Ife

    MUSWEN’s train in Ile-Ife

    Preamble

    It was another day of history, last Friday, at Ile-Ife, Osun State. The actively mobile train of the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWEN) moved to the ancient city that is the cradle of Yoruba nation.

    The delegation was led by the President of MUSWEN, His Excellency, Dr. Sakariyahu O. Babalola, OON, who is also the Deputy President General (South) of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). On his entourage was a galaxy of who is who from all the six states of the Southwest. These included MUSWEN’s BOT Chairman, His Eminence, Justice (Prince) Bola Ajibola SAN (retd), KBE, LLD, D. LITT who was represented by Alhaji S. O. Aweda and the Executive Secretary of MUSWEN, Professor Daud O. S. Noibi, OBE, D. Sc.

    Others were the Chairman, MUSWEN’s Finance Committee, Alhaji Rafiu Ebiti FCA, (from Lagos); the Chairman, MUSWEN’s Task Force, Barr. Y. K. O. Kareem (from Lagos); the Chairman, MUSWEN’s Education Committee, Professor M. O. Opeloye (of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife); the acting Chairman, Osun State’s Muslim Community, Alh. Mustapha Olawuyi; the former Chairman, Ekiti State’s Muslim Community, Alh. S. Afolabi Ogunlayi; the Chairman, MUSWEN’s 2017 General Assembly Planning Committee, Dr. Wole Abbas (of the University of Ibadan). Also on the entourage were the National President, National Council of Muslim Youth Associations (NACOMYO), Alh. Kamal Akintunde (from Ogun State); the Chief Imam, Ife Central Mosque, Sheikh Abdus-Sami’ Abdul Hamid and a host of others.

     

    Mission

    The mission of that visit was to pay a sympathy and solidarity visit to the people and residents of that city over the recent fortuitous crisis that pitched the Yoruba residents of the city against their Hausa counterparts. Coming unexpectedly, the sad incident held the nation spellbound.

    MUSWEN’s first point of call in the city was the palace of His Royal Majesty, Oba Kayode Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, the Ooni of Ife, where the delegation was received with the grandeur of customary royalty and uniqueness of Yoruba traditional hospitality.

     

    MUSWEN president’s speech

    Below is an excerpt from the speech delivered by the President of MUSWEN who led the delegation of prominent Muslims from the six states of the Southwest of Nigeria:

    “Your Majesty, first, on behalf of the leadership of the Muslim Community in the Southwest region, under the auspices of the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWEN), I want to congratulate you on your ascension to this great throne.

    We had planned last year to pay a courtesy call on Your Majesty after your coronation, but owing to some unavoidable circumstances, the plan could not materialise.

     

    Peaceful coexistence

    Your Majesty, we are glad that Allah has chosen you to occupy this majestic office at this particular time. Your efforts to promote peaceful coexistence among the peoples of the Southwest region and beyond are widely acknowledged. Indeed, within this short period of your ascension to the throne, you have earned your place of honour as a global ambassador of peace.

    Incidentally, this is what Islam teaches as accentuated in the Qur’an thus:

    “O mankind! We (Allah) created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know (and interact positively with) one another. Verily the most honourable among you in the sight of Allah are the most righteous of you. Allah has full knowledge and He is well acquainted (with all things).”[Qur’an 49:13]

    In Islam, home is wherever a Muslim finds himself. Islam neither makes a distinction among people on the basis of ethnicity nor elevates any race or tribe above another. Rather, Islam treats as sacred the life of every human being.

     

    The recent crisis

    Your Majesty, against this background, we were greatly alarmed on learning of the recent disturbances within this ancient city that has all along provided a peaceful home for indigenes, settlers and foreigners alike. However, we were greatly relieved by your words of assurances and  actions in providing the much-needed balm with which to calm the unwarranted tension thereby  preventing the crisis from escalating. Your royal action in the circumstance especially your call for forgiveness rather than retaliation and your strong words of caution to those who wanted to give the sad incident unnecessary ethnic and religious colouration further confirmed your standing as a model of the well-cherished ‘omoluwabi’ values.

    This extraordinary display of grace is in concomitance with Qur’anic characterisation of believers as:

    “Those who control their wrath and are forgiving toward mankind; Allah loves those who do good” [Qur’an 3:134]

     

    Commiseration

    Your Majesty, on behalf of all Muslims in the Southwest region, we commiserate with you and all the good people of Ile-Ife on the recent crisis. We pray Allah to grant you more wisdom and courage to do what is right, just and fair at all times.

    I want to use this opportunity to appeal to all Muslims and indeed all the people of Ile-Ife, the Southwest region and Nigeria to choose the path of peace in the interest of all as no people or nation can develop in the absence of peace.

    We must also remember, at all times, that we are all citizens of the same country and brothers and sisters in humanity. As members of the human race, we all are indigenes and settlers, once and at the same time depending where we find ourselves individually or collectively.

    While praying the Almighty Allah to grant us sustained peace here in Ile-Ife, in Yoruba land, in Nigeria the entire world, I wish to thank Your Majesty for granting us audience and royal hospitality despite the short notice of this visit. May your reign continue to be peaceful and prosperous”.

    Ile-Ife Muslim Community

    After leaving the palace, the delegation also paid a visit to the city’s Muslim community at the Central Mosque where Jum’at service was jointly observed and peace prayer was collectively offered to the nation. Thereafter, the delegation proceeded to pay a similar visit to the Hausa Community in its Sabo settlement where the Sarkin Hausawa with his chieftains and other Hausa residents received the MUSWEN delegation. Each group expressed delight over MUSWEN’s visit and gesture.

     

     In retrospect

    Last Friday was not the first time that the topmost echelon of Nigerian Muslim Ummah paid a courtesy visit to Ile-Ife. The President-General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affiars (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, had severally paid similar visits to Ile-Ife in the recent past. On one of such occasions, His Eminence drew the attention of all and sundry to the symbiotic relationship between the Hausa community of Northern Nigeria and their Yoruba counterpart of the Southwest. Yours sincerely was on the entourage of His Eminence on every occasion he visited Ile-Ife and below is an excerpt from an article I wrote in this column on a particular occasion:

     

    Confluence of cultures

    It was a confluence of cultures at Ile-Ife, Osun State where a galaxy of Nigerian juggernauts assembled on the invitation of that ancient city’s monarch the late Ooni of Ife, His Royal Majesty, Oba Okunade Sijuwade. The Sultan and a retinue of Emirs from the north, the Obi of Onitsha and several Ezes from the East and the South-South as well as a galaxy of Obas and Chieftains from the Southwest were all present in full regalia. The venue was Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University (OOU). The State’s Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, was not represented as the chief host at that occasion. He was personally present. Some other Southwest Governors who could not afford to come were ably represented by their Deputies.

    The occasion was for the public presentation of a book on the history of Ile-Ife, Yoruba monarchs and their domains.

    Apparently, the Ooni invited those great Nigerians to the event not much for the purpose of the book presentation as for the symbolic national unity which Nigeria needs very much as a country.

     

    Sultan’s speech

    What interested the column called ‘THE MESSAGE’ most on that occasion, was the speech delivered by His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto and President General of NSCIA. It went thus:

    “…Let me start by expressing my deep gratitude to the Ooni of Ife for his kind invitation and several reminders to attend this undoubtedly great occasion. I am particularly glad to be here not just to listen and learn, but also to witness an epoch in the history of the Yoruba people. I come from a culture and tradition that has great respect for books and which places a high premium on learning. As many of you may have known the founders of the Sokoto Caliphate together wrote over three hundred books and tracts. I therefore feel very comfortable with both the occasion and the location”.

     

    Components of identity

    “The history of a people represents a key component of their identity. It brings out their origin, their exploits and their relations with other peoples and delineates their culture and values. We have a lot to learn from our pre-colonial history, particularly the appreciation of those values and precepts that inform the frame of mind of the majority of our people. Our post-colonial democratic institutions will do well to take into account these values which still dominate our socio-cultural environment.

    Your Excellencies, your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Guests, please join me in congratulating the book’s author, Prince Adelegan Adegbola, a renowned Journalist, who has been widely acknowledged as a Custodian of the history and culture of the Yoruba people, for his hard work and dedication, in coming up with this masterful work. We commend him most sincerely and we earnestly call upon other writers and intellectuals to emulate the worthy example of Prince Adelegan Adegbola and to bring to light more of the hidden treasures of our history and culture”.

     

    Dissemination of knowledge

    “Distinguished guests, the history and culture of our people, precious as they are, must not be left as the preserve of the elders. We must endeavour to disseminate this knowledge especially among the younger generations. It is in connection with this important task that I wish to call upon the Federal Government, especially our educational agencies, to re-introduce the teaching of history as a compulsory subject in our Primary and Junior Secondary Schools. A situation whereby the majority of our school age population is totally disconnected from its past, and the cultural norms and values it embodies, is not only counter-productive but portends great danger to the development of the country. Our future leaders must be imbued with a clear understanding of the history of our diverse peoples, their character and identity and the value systems which mediated their societal life. We can only ignore this vital aspect of nation-building at our own peril”.

     

    Inter-relationship

    “…We must also understand our history as the record of our collective struggle to interact with one another, and to understand and accommodate one another. The ancient State of Katsina for example, because of these dynamic interactions, was aware of the developments in Yoruba land as early as the seventeenth century. One of its most erudite scholars, Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Umar Al- Kashnawi, popularly known as Dan Masani, who died in 1667, wrote a book which he entitled ‘The History of Yoruba Land’, under the Arabic title of Azhar al-Ruba fi Akhbar Yuruba. Unfortunately, that book is now presumed lost. Similarly, the Nupes and several other peoples also interacted actively and for several centuries with Yoruba land, thereby producing a complex web of relationship which subsists up till today. The point being   raised is that the interaction and the inter-relationship between our various peoples were not created by Lord Lugard in 1914. It goes much deeper. We must re-enforce these sturdy historical foundations if we wish to build a virile nation”.

     

    Triumph of history

    “Finally, I wish to state that the triumph of history and its attendant glories, should always serve to strengthen of our efforts in uniting our people and in bringing peace and harmony. We must strive to acknowledge the universality of our common humanity and the favours which God Almighty has bountifully bestowed on us. We must always remember the noble words of the Holy Qur’an when it says:

    “O Mankind, we created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know oneanother (not that you may despise one another). Verily, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he who is most righteous. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things) [Qur’an 49:13].

     

    From the hind view

    “From the available records, Islam is more than a millennium old in West Africa. From isolated Muslim communities in the 9th century to the trading entry ports of the 10th century, Islam grew by leaps and bounds. However, it was not until the 11th century that it began to emerge as a State Religion. According to Al-Bakri, a historian of the region, it was the Kingdom of Takrur which first acquired this status followed by the Kingdom of Kanem under the Syfawas.

    “By the 12th century, Ghana had become Islamized while Mali emerged in the 14th century only to be taken over by Songhai which hosted the Sankore University in Timbuktu in the 16th century. Sankore University was the first University in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Islamization of Hausa States of Northern Nigeria began in earnest from the second half of the 14th century”.

     

    Islam in west africa

    “The establishment of Islam in West Africa had always been predicated on multi-ethnic and multi-racial basis. Merchants and traders came from different parts of the world, including Morocco, Tripoli, Yemen, Iraq and Egypt. Scholars also came from those countries bringing various Islamic intellectual traditions which interacted and enriched local ones. These traditions flourished and helped to sustain veritable centers of learning including the famous Universities of Timbuktu and Birni Gazargamo as well as similar institutions in Kano, Katsina, Zaria and other Hausa States.

    “The emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate in the early years of the 19th century, led by the erudite scholar, Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio brought a dramatic transformation of the Islamic scene in West Africa. The Sokoto Caliphate was a political as well as an intellectual revolution. Politically, it initiated an extensive process of state formation which spanned across several states in Western and Central Africa. The political legacies of the Sokoto Caliphate could be found in present day Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and the Republic of Cameroon.

     

    Sokoto caliphate

    “Intellectually, the Caliphate also succeeded in putting scholars at the helm of public affairs. And as true intellectuals, they had to argue their way through almost every major decision they took and had the time and the foresight to record their thoughts, ideas and justification of their actions for posterity. The Sokoto Triumvirate, namely: Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio, Shaykh Abdullah Ibn Fodio and Shaykh Muhammad Bello authored over 300 books and pamphlets. Other Caliphate leaders were also prolific writers (despite the enormous state responsibility with which they were saddled). Nana Asma’u (a woman) alone wrote over 70 poems and tracts.

    “But despite these achievements, probably one of the Caliphate’s most enduring legacies had been in the areas of values. Next to this is primacy of Justice as the basis of good governance. Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio was emphatic on this when he said: “Seeing to welfare of the people is more effective than the use of force…. And the crown of the leader is his integrity while impartiality is his strong hold even as his wealth is the prosperity of his people”.

    From the above, it is evident that human life is like a building, the foundation of which is solid education, the structure of which is value-based culture and the roof of which is Justice. These three are closely interrelated. And whoever toils with them toils with life. Can anybody fault that?

  • JAMB: The 2017 UTME brouhaha

    JAMB: The 2017 UTME brouhaha

    Monologue

    The world is dynamic. It moves with time and in space. And people who are inclined to civilization and dynamism move progressively with it. The only thing that is permanent in this world is CHANGE. Unfortunately, that is the word that most Nigerians do not want to hear of even when no man or woman can survive without change.

    Whether in terms of weather, taste or fashion, man has always been an agent of change. Yet, most people are resistant to the process of change. This is typically characteristic of Nigerians who regularly enjoy the benefit of change but constantly abhor its process.

    Without change, there would not have been anything called Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Without change, there would not have been Permanent Voters Card (PVC) that has now come to give respite to Nigerian voting system. Without change, the Treasury Single Account (TSA) that is now a major means of curbing corruption in Nigeria would not have come into existence.

     

    The new innovation in JAMB

    When the current JAMB Registrar,  Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, OFR, FNLA, assumed office in August 2016, he did not only indicate by his utterances, actions and body language, that further change might be pursued for the betterment of JAMB, he also embarked on series of consultations with people who know to solidify the new innovations. Besides, he has organized series of seminars, workshops, conferences and retreats with many stakeholders from all parts of Nigeria including some past executives of JAMB in attendance.

    The latest of those retreats were the ones held in Abeokuta and Kaduna recently. At those retreats, participants were classified into groups with each group deliberating on a particular segment of the new innovation and coming up with a relevant resolution collectively arrived at.

    Below is the opening remark of the JAMB Registrar at the Kaduna retreat held at Arewa House on Wednesday, March 29, 2017 and titled: ‘Strategic Planning Retreat on Monitoring and Supervision of 2017 UTME.

     

    Preamble

    “…..On behalf of the Management and staff of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, I happily welcome participants to this Strategic Planning Retreat on the Structure of Supervision and Evaluation of the Conduct of the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

    When we sent out invitation to you and gave you a very short notice, we were skeptical on your finding time out of your tight schedules to honour our invitation. However, this large turnout has further confirmed our identification and choice of you as critical stakeholders with genuine and undiluted interest in this Nation’s education sector in general and in its assessment and evaluation sub-sector in particular where the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board plays a major role. I therefore thank you and appreciate your presence here today.

     

    In retrospect

    On my assumption of office as the fifth Registrar of the Board, I pledged to revisit and revamp the original ideals of those who thought it most appropriate to have a body like this Board and to pursue with vigour and passion their original objectives. I therefore salute the vision of the Vice-Chancellors of the then six (6) Universities who introduced the idea of synergy of their mandate in the areas of entrance examination and admission into the few universities that the Nation had. If synergy, peer review, cost saving, elimination of wastages, collaboration, cooperation and enhancement of academic excellence were identified and recognised then with only six Universities, these salient attributes, ideas and ideals are now more than ever before the basic of all requirements that are most critical for the integration and cohesion of the Nation’s Tertiary Education.

    Though a lot of water has passed under the bridge between 1977 and today, the idea of inclusiveness is still as germane today as it was many years back. This is why between August 2016 when I assumed duties and this month, March, 2017, a period of eight months, I have visited various Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, where I met with the Managements of the various institutions in order to renew and restrengthen our relationship and partnership. The Management of the Board has also met with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, Committee of Rectors and Committee of Provosts. We have equally met with the Managements of National Universities Commission (NUC) and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). We have taken the Board’s major events and activities to the Bayero University, Kano, Baze University, Abuja, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri, University of Lagos, and others.

     

    Supervision and evaluation

    It is therefore in our stride and continuation at bringing all stakeholders on board our inclusive train that we have organiZed this retreat to take another look at the Board’s supervision and evaluation of its conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

    The aim of this retreat is to adopt an all-inclusive mode of examination supervision and evaluation. Recognising the stakeholding of major players in the Tertiary Education Sector, the Board wishes to give operational responsibilities to the major players in the administration of the Board’s examination. It is not enough for Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) to visit examination centres with sirens and large entourage of government functionaries with very little impact to show for their participation, other than to be under television camera lights and beamed same to the whole world when the outcome of the examination is laced with stories of examination malpractices. This time around, the major players with requisite integrity, intelligence and appropriate knowledge of the assessment would be fully engaged to actively participate in the supervision of the examination.

     

    Sale of application documents

    As part of our approach to the ideal of Inclusiveness, we invited all Central Bank of Nigeria approved commercial banks to participate in the sale of the 2017 Board’s Application Documents. Sixteen (16) commercial banks and NIPOST honoured attended the interactive session where we explained the reason and need for all of them to partake in the exercise.

    After the interactive session, thirteen banks as well as NIPOST signified interest to participate in the sale of the 2017 Application Documents. Between the date of commencement of sale on Monday, 20th and Tuesday, 28th of March, 2017, the following nine banks had paid for the number of Application Documents they required in the first instance. The banks are as follows:

    Zenith Bank; Union Bank; Sterling Bank Unity Bank; First City Monument Bank; Fidelity Bank; First Bank; Skye Bank and

    As a policy, no bank needed to know the Registrar or any Management member or even anybody at all to be patronized. Rather, every bank was given the opportunity to participate in the exercise. This is to affirm that JAMB is for everybody and belongs to everyone.

     

    The Pin Vending System

    Emerging from a retreat in Abeokuta, the Board introduced a new sale of application method that has come to eliminate scratch cards while adopting a cost-saving procedure of PIN Vending System. This is a secure system devised to address the sharp practices hitherto associated with the use of scratch cards.

     

    Problem of New Salr Format

    We are aware of the teething problems attendant to the introduction of the new sale format, and as a responsive body, we have taken steps to ease the initial challenges and in a few days, the results will be a seamless registration exercise all over the country.

     

    Supervision of UTME

    It must be noted that the JAMB has no university of its own. Thus, it is our desire that all stakeholders should take the UTME as their own and make it a successful project through cooperation in the overall interest of the examinees who will end up in our various tertiary institutions and eventually emerge as leaders of tomorrow.

    The current preparation being carried out by JAMB towards the conduct of the 2017 UTM examination should be viewed with good intention and trust because if that examination is not well supervised, it may not produce the expected results.

     

    A clarion call

    The Board is using this retreat as a clarion call on all stakeholders to ensure that all hands are on deck to make the conduct of this public examination better in Nigeria. It must be remembered that the conduct of the examination by the Board is the foundation of the quality of education in Nigeria. In view of this, I urge all the stakeholders to see this year’s UTME and their involvement in its process as a call to national duty and personal sacrifice.

    I also urge leadership of our tertiary institutions to be actively involved in the supervision of the Board’s examination as that will boost the quality of candidates that will be admitted into the various institutions in the country.

    Computer Key Board Without Mouse From the general feedback on the adoption of the Computer Based Test (CBT), we have noted the challenge of computer low level literacy of some candidates, especially the phobia of such candidates for the use of mouse. This has been partly responsible for the call by some people for reversal to the Paper and Pencil Test mode. Thus, in order to ensure equity and level playground for all candidates the Board has designed a system that will allow candidates to use only eight (8) keys without the use of the mouse.

    By this new system, all that the candidates need to do is to press letters A,B,C,D as relevant for responses (answer) to the questions. The keys are arranged as follows:

    P = Previous Question

    N = Next Question

    S = Submit after candidates might have finished answering all the questions.

    R = Reverse (when candidates want to reverse their submission).

     

    Distribution of candidates to centres

    As part of standardisation of the Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in terms of capacity, two hundred and fifty (250), candidates would be distributed evenly to each centre without any discrimination. This means that no Centre will be favoured or discriminated against.

    The JAMB examination Schedule has been designed, streamlined and synchronized in such a way that the examination will start and end on the same day, except otherwise dictated by the number of candidates in a few states with low subscription.

     

    The Blind Candidates

    In order to expand the frontiers of equity and inclusiveness, we met with the Executive Committee of the Association of Blind Persons in Nigeria  at the Board’s Headquarters in Abuja in February 2017 and we also met with prospective blind candidates from a school for the blind in Lagos at the University of Lagos recently.

     

    Visually-Impaired Candidates

    Secondly, the Board has also approached the Digital Bridge Institute to partner with it to set up examination centres for the Visually Impaired Candidates where those candidates can be trained all year round. Now, the Institute has agreed to set up these dedicated centres in Abuja, Lagos and Kano in 2018 and the Board will support the centres with all necessary inputs that can make teaching, learning and assessment at the centres seamless. The centres will also have residential accommodation for the blind candidates and their guides.

     

    Awaiting result

    For the umpteenth time, I would want to seize this opportunity to emphasise that awaiting result candidates are eligible to register and sit for the UTME.

    However, since candidates would not be considered for admission on awaiting result status the Board hereby urges all candidates desirous of admission to upload their O’ level results on the Board’s portal the moment they receive them and before the commencement of admission exercise as their O’ level results would form a crucial part of their registration requirements.

     

    Determination

    We are determined to make a change with this examination as we are aware of the strategic role our examination plays in deciding the direction of tertiary education in Nigeria. We appeal to all Nigerians to give us the required support.

    The guiding principle would be to formulate ideas and map out strategies that would ensure the maintenance and sustenance of the integrity of the Board’s examination and the sanctity of its process.

    Thank you all and God bless”.

  • The Prophet’s medicine

    Preamble

    This article is a follow up to that of last Friday in which the bee was described as ‘The Insect that Heals’. Both articles are a deliberate diversion of readers’ attention from the economic and political   madness of this moment in Nigeria.

    Such diversion becomes necessary as a relief from the current overwhelming tension in a country where every news item is sad and every hope turns forlorn. A worthy columnist must know when to bite and when to blow editorially if only to sustain the readership of his/her column. This is the time of mental, physical and psychological trauma in Nigeria for which there must be a soothing medicament.

    Appropriate medicament

    Incidentally, the most appropriate medicament for all ailments including trauma is the one prescribed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) about 1,440 years ago which still remains as potent today as it was when it was prophetically prescribed. And it will keep remaining relevant for the rest period of human existence on earth.

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription was a practical fine-tuning of the coded medicine primordially prescribed by the first human being who bore the name Adam.

    Prophet Adam, the primogenitor of mankind, was hardly one hour old when he started prescribing medicine against ailments. He was commanded by Allah to teach the Angels the names of all things which they (the Angels) had confessed not to know. By teaching the Angels, Adam thus became a teacher to the Angels and this made teaching the very first profession of man. But, those in the information sector could, as well, argue that what Adam did was more of information dissemination than teaching or prescription.

    First human profession

    There is tendency that a fierce debate might ensue between teachers and journalists on the one hand and both of them and the medical experts on the other over what can be called the first profession of man on earth. But the truth is that all the three professionals are right. By teaching, a teacher informs. By informing, a journalist teaches. And by medicating, a doctor helps to dispel ignorance. Thus, the three professions are mutually complimentary.

    Prophet Adam as a doctor

    By teaching the Angels, what Prophet Adam really did was to cure the worst disease in them as well as in man. That disease is ignorance. Shortly before the creation of Adam, Allah informed the Angels that He was going to create a new living being and put him in charge of the garden to be called the earth. But, feigning knowledge, the Angels kicked against the plan and advised their Lord not to do it. Allah then told them in a tone of finality that “I know what you do not know”. (Q.2:31). It eventually took Adam, by Allah’s command, to heal those Angels of the disease of ignorance in them.

    If Adam had not taught them the names of all things on earth, as revealed in the Qur’an, the Angels would have remained ignorant forever. And, Allah’s messages to mankind, as contained in the divinely Revealed Books, would not have come mankind through them.

    Categories of medicine

    In ordinary man’s view, medicine is the substance required to cure an ailment. Such substance may be natural or artificial. It may also be as crude as herbs or as sophisticated as surgery. However, it is generally believed that a person does not need medicine unless he is ill. That is why the Western conventional medicine is rather curative than preventive. Illness resides in the body just as ignorance makes the mind its abode. Today, in most cases, people neither go to the hospitals nor take medicine unless they are sick.

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription

    Though unlettered, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known the different types of medicine before he diagnosed two basic ailments and prescribed two fundamental medicines for them. The first of these ailments is ignorance. The second is poverty. And poverty in this case is not lack of material wealth alone as many people erroneously believe. It is also lack of many things including health and conscience. Thus, in Islam, ailment is basically of two classes: ignorance and poverty. Many people are victims of one. Many more are victims of both.

    Analysis

    A person is said to be poor-sighted when he cannot see well without artificial aid. He is deemed poor in memory when his remembering ability becomes weak. He is also pronounced poor in health when some of his body organs malfunction or when he loses some active enzymes or minerals or vitamins. Thus, man may be poor, not in terms of money or material needs but despite his possession of both.

    As an antidote for ignorance, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) prescribed the Qur’an. And for body ailment, he prescribed honey.

    The role of the Qur’an

    Qur’an is the encyclopedia of life which personifies knowledge in all its ramifications. There is nothing about knowledge, whether spiritual or mundane, in this world or the hereafter that is not fully explained in the Qur’an.

    By recommending the Qur’an as medicine for ignorance, therefore, the Prophet simply provided cure for the ailment of the mind. And by prescribing honey for body ailments he encouraged elongation of life expectancy through a boost to human immune system. It is not by accident that a whole chapter in the Qur’an (chapter 16) is named after the insect that produces honey. Verse 68 of that chapter reads thus:

    “And your Lord revealed to the bee (saying): Build your homes in the mountains, in the trees and in the hives which men shall make for you. Feed on every kind of fruit and follow the trodden path of your Lord’. From its belly comes forth a fluid of many hues as healing (drink) for mankind. Surely in this, there is a sign for those who can reason….”

    Products of the Bee

    Contrary to general belief, honey is not the only product of the bee. There are six others so far known to man. These are: propolis; pollen; royal jelly; bees wax; bee venom and bee bread. More can be discovered as research continues in line with the Qur’anic challenge. Each of these products has specific functions in maintaining and immunizing the human hormone system.

    Characteristics honey

    Honey is one of the products of the bee. It is the most popular of the bee products. It is a special fluid with various hues odours and flavours. For instance there are bitter, white and granulated honeys which most people do not know of. Honey is the foremost known natural product that serves as both food and medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once reportedly told his patients while prescribing honey for them thus: “let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food”. There is no known nutritional value in terms of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that is not proportionately present in honey.

    Composition of honey

    A raw, pure honey contains about 80 different substances that are most important for human nutrition. Besides glucose and fructose, honey contains all of the B-complex minerals like vitamins A, C, D, E and K as well as trace elements such as magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, calcium, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper and manganese. The enzyme content of honey is one of the highest of all existing foods. Honey also contains and antimicrobial and antibacterial factors.

    The composition and nutritional value of honey differ in relation to the floral sources from which honeybees do pick their raw materials. For example, a recent research supports the claim that dark coloured honey has larger amount of antioxidants than brown. The inorganic contents of honey, minerals and other trace elements, play a significant role in human metabolism and nutrition. Owing to its chlorine content, honey is appreciated as an excellent tonic and helps people to overcome suffering from constipation and other enteric problems.

    Doses of honey

    Whereas no synthetic medicine can and should be taken by any ill person without doctor’s prescription, honey requires no such prescription for anybody who is not allergic to it because it has no side effect. The suggestion in certain quarters that honey can cause piles is based on ignorance. As a multipurpose natural food and medicine, honey can be taken alone or along with other foods albeit in moderation.

    And as an antiviral and antibiotic substance, honey is the best medicine for the eye and the ear diseases as well as tooth ache, insomnia, staphylococcus, constipation, whitlow, burns and wounds. After many centuries of disputing these facts ignorantly, conventional doctors finally came to realize that no medicine is as effective in sealing up surgical wounds and healing sores as honey. Today, honey is used for these purposes in most public hospitals in various parts of the world including Nigeria.

    Products of the Bees

    As mentioned above, the products of the bees are seven. These are: honey, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, bee venom and bee bread. Each of these products has a potent value in the life of man. For instance, royal jelly is the secret of the longevity of the Queen of England and even that of her mother called the Queen mother just as pollen was the secret behind the strength of a onetime American President, Ronald Reagan at old age.

    Honey

    To produce honey alone, the bees make contact with about 250,000 plants picking and metabolizing their flower nectars. It is possible for them to contact more plants depending on the richness of the vegetation in which they dwell. (Nectar is the main raw material which the bees use to produce honey).

    Propolis

    Propolis is produced by the bees from the resin of certain specific trees identifiable only by the bees themselves. Through research, propolis has come to be known as the strongest anti-biotic ever discovered by man. This product is used not only to protect the living but also to preserve the remains of the dead as well. At least it is on record that the famous historic Egyptian mammies were embalmed with propolis several millennia ago. This same propolis is the product used by the bees, themselves, to sterilize their bodies against bacteria and secure their hives against viruses brought in by predators. Whenever they sting such predator to death, it is propolis they use to embalm it to prevent its decaying body from polluting the hive.

    Pollen

    Pollen is the secret of strength in old age.  It heals almost all the old age diseases like prostate, arthritis, pneumonia and bronchitis. It rejuvenates the nerves and reinvigorates the hormonal glands especially in the aged.

    Royal jelly

    Royal jelly is the bee product that prolongs life and solves the problem of infertility in men and women. It is the exclusive food of the queen bee which enables her to lay an average of 2000 eggs per day.

    Bee venom

    Bee venom is a natural antibiotic vaccine which strengthens human immunity against all diseases. It works like magic in the human system especially when applied through the natural acupunctural points in the body.

    Beeswax

    Bees wax, as distinct from other products, is used to produce non-chemical cosmetics and to coat pharmaceutical and capsules like multivites to protect the potency of the substances used to produce the.

    Bee bread

    Bee bread is the lava of the young bees. It is used by the apitherapists to prevent or heal children’s diseases.

    The use of each of these products to heal human ailments depends on the extent of knowledge of apitherapy possessed by the user. (Apitherapy is the use of bee products to prevent or heal human or animal ailments). A specialist in this field is called apitherapist.

    The uniqueness of using these products for healing or prevention of diseases is in the fact that they do not entail any negative side effect because of their natural potency. And that is a major sharp difference between them and the synthetic drugs manufactured chemically by the conventional pharmacists.

    Summary

    If most people were knowledgeable about the efficacy of the bee products in preventing and healing diseases, hospitals would have been less congested and substantial percentage of their incomes would have been saved to enhance the quality of their lives. The world of bees is a wonderful world. It takes only those who know it to appreciate it and benefit from its healing miracle.

    Through divine instinct, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known this almost one and a half millennia ago and he had recommended it to mankind for their survival. The case of the bee and honey is like that of the hen and the egg. No one can tell with precision which of them first came into existence. The fact that honey is still a subject of scientific research today is a further confirmation that the prophecy of the unlettered Arabian man called Muhammad (SAW) is truly divine.

    Conclusion

    Without the bee there can be no honey. And without honey, the bees cannot exist since honey is the food upon which they depend for survival.

    The story of the insect called bee is inexhaustible despite centuries of research on it. It is therefore impossible to tell it all in a one page column of this type. That Prophet Muhammad (SAW) knew this much even as an unlettered person at a time when the world was assailed by blatant ignorance and primitivism is a further confirmation of Michael Hart’s classification of him as the greatest human being that ever lived.

    Information

    Four Muslim brothers across three Universities successfully delivered their inaugural lectures recently. They are Professor Lai Olurode of the Socology Department, University of Lagos; Professors Ishaq Lakin Akintola and Lateef Adetona of Religious Studies Department, Lagos State University, Lagos, Nigeria and Professor Fehintola of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The Message Column joins many well wishers in congratulating them all and in wishing them further higher pedestals in their respective academic careers. Amin.

     

     

  • The insect that heals

    The insect that heals

    Preamble

    It cannot be strange to anybody who is well familiar with the Qur’anic contents that there are 114 chapters in that sacred book. Out of these, six chapters are dedicated to the animal kingdom, three of which are specifically dedicated to insects. They are chapters 16, 27 and 29 which are dedicated to ‘The BEE’, ‘The ANT’ and ‘The SPIDER’ respectively.

    Each of these cited chapters is particularly symbolic of the purpose to which it is dedicated. But it takes only those who can reason and engage in further research to comprehend them. However, our immediate concern here is the miraculous insect called ‘BEE’ about which Qur’an 16, verse 68 quoted above is explicit.

     

    The Insect called Bee

    Most people see the bee as an ordinary insect that interacts with human life positively or negatively. They believe that honey is the only beneficial product of the bee. They also believe that if they can live comfortably without honey they can as well cope with life without bees. Such beliefs are unfortunately based on ignorance.

    Honey as one of about seven products of the bee is like a message. No one can gain access to a message except through the messenger. And the messenger, in this case, is the bee that produces it. To appreciate the value of honey and other bee products, it is necessary to know something about the insect called the bee and the effect of its lifestyle on human life.

     

    The Lifestyle of Bees

    Bees are social insects living a communal life under an organized and disciplined government. Bees have male and female genders. Their males are called drones. Their females are known as workers. They all live together in an abode called hive. Such hive may be wild or man-made. Though people had been harvesting honey for thousands of years, it was not until 1851 that the idea of a definite man-made hive came into existence. In that year, an America apiarist, Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth, discovered the principle of ‘bee space’ and designed a man-made hive that was named after its designer (Langstroth). According to that man’s discovery, bees leave spaces of about 0.6 cm (about 0.23 inches) between wax combs inside which they store honey. Thus, Langstroth’s discovery made it possible to remove individual frames from a beehive and to harvest honey and wax without destroying the hive. Through such effort, it also became possible to control diseases in the hive and to maintain a larger number of colonies. (A colony is a hive effectively occupied by bees while an apiary is a place where several hives are kept.

     

    Types of Bee Hives

    Man-made hives are of three types for now. These are Langstroth, Kenyan top bar and Tanzanian top bar. Kenyan and Tanzanian top bars are similar in shape and outlook. The one was designed in Kenya in about 1958 while the other was designed in 1962 on the template of that of Kenya.

    Each of the Kenyan and Tanzanian hives can contain an average of 20 liters of honey. Langstroth on the other hand can contain as much as about 40 liters or more. Langstroth has a bigger accommodation capacity because of its double or triple Decker design with which it came.

     

    How to hive the Bees

    To get the bees to colonize the hive, what apiarists do is to bate such hives with some pure, genuine honey added to a piece of beeswax and put at the entrance of the hive. On smelling the odour of the honey, the bees will come in their hundreds or even thousands to colonize the hive. Thus, such hives become bee colonies.

     

    Government of the Bees

    Bees are governed by a female monarch called ‘the Queen’. To choose the Queen that will govern the hive, a group of queenmakers among the bees in the hive meet to select some fertilized eggs shortly before those eggs are hatched and incubate them royally. When they are hatched and become princesses, they are then fed with a special food called Royal Jelly to accelerate their growth and facilitate their longevity. After about 16 weeks, one of them is chosen and made the Queen while the rest are either taken out into new hives as Queens or left altogether to slug it out with one another in a royal battle for survival. In such a melee, whichever of them overpowers the others will emerge as the next Queen of that particular colony. The other fertilized eggs that are not selected for the same purpose are left to grow naturally until they become worker bees.

     

     Functions of the Drones

    Drones are the male bees produced from unfertilized eggs. They neither sting nor work. Their main job in the hive is to mate with the queen which they do only once in a lifetime. As soon as they finish mating, the drones fall down and die as they have completed their destined duty. The queen also mates only once in a lifetime but she does not die as a result. Drones are very few in any hive since the unfertilized eggs that produce them are scantily laid by the Queen.

    Drones constitute less than one per cent of any hive population. Their population is invariably determined by the Queen bee that lays very few big and unfertilized eggs from which the drones are produced. On the other hand, the worker bees are produced from smaller but fertilized eggs.

     

    Culture of the Bees

    By the natural culture of the bees, the Queen neither mates inside her own hive nor mated by the drones from the same hive. This is similar to the principle of endogamy (marriage within the same family) which is culturally prohibited in most African clans. Only one Queen can be found in a hive at any given time. And she has no deputy.

    When it is time for the Queen bee to mate, she produces a glandular secretion with which she sends out with a powerful pheromone into the air to alert the drones in other hives around that she is ready for mating. A meeting is then arranged by the worker bees, between her and some interested drones, to mate with the Queen. And the mating is done in the air.

     

    Breeding new Bees

    To breed new bees, the Queen bee must lay unfertilized eggs in the larger chambers of the bee comb while she lays fertilized ones in the small chambers of the comb. The eggs in the larger chambers are meant for the production of the drones while those in the smaller chambers are meant for the production of the worker bees. This is because the drones are naturally bigger in size than the workers. Both chambers are expertly designed in the honeycomb by the worker bees for the purpose of breeding.

     

    The Mystery of Bee Comb

    One of the mysteries of the beehives is the building of the honeycomb by the bees. Researchers in the field of apitherapy know that the bees use wax to build honeycomb but they are still puzzled by the natural skill with which those tiny insects do it. An attempt by those researchers to manufacture similar honeycomb manually as a means of assisting the bees in reducing their workload has proved abortive as the bees have shunned such artificial comb. Honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honeybees in their nest to contain their larvae and store honey and pollen.

     

    Classification of Worker Bees

    Worker bees are classified into groups for the purpose of carrying out specific duties assigned to them. Some go out every morning to scout for flower nectars with which to produce honey. Some are assigned to the duty of picking tree resin with which to produce propolis. Some others are charged with fetching water to be used in the hive. Some serve as guards. Some serve as informants. But except for those assigned to internal duties, all of them travel out in groups into the wild vegetations or plantations every morning as a matter of duty. Those of them that travel to carry out such duties are called foragers.

     

    Division of Labour

    Among the other multitudes remaining in or around the hive, some are responsible for guarding the hive against any foreign attack or aggression. They are the security officers. Some are assigned to carrying out the conversion of nectars into honey. Some others engage permanently in fanning the interior of the hive with their tiny wings to reduce the heat and neutralize the humidity therein. Those are the ventilators. Some specialize in converting resin into propolis. Those are the pharmacists or apothecaries. Some are assigned to the Queen’s kitchen as special cooks and prepare royal jelly for the Queen which is the latter’s exclusive food. Those are the Queen’s royal chefs.

    Some bees are kept at the entrance of the hive for monitoring the environment and for passing any gathered information to the busy workers. Those are the informants. Some are put in charge of nursing the young bees into adults. They are the foster mothers. Some are assigned to the building and maintenance of the honeycomb. Those are the colony architects and builders. Some are assigned to sterilization of the interior of the hive and the ceiling with propolis. They are also charged with the duty of embalming any predators that stray into the hive and stung to death. Such predators are stung to death to prevent any outbreak of epidemic in the hive that the decay of those predators can cause. Those are the sanitary inspectors. All of these duties are carried out by the female bees called worker bees.

     

    Duties of Foragers

    Worker bees, by their nature, do travel very far in search of water or raw materials needed to carry out their assigned duties in the hive. And they follow the principle of ‘esprit de corps’ in carrying out such duties.

    This great division of labour is a daily routine which enables perfection to be attained in the hive. And all these activities are centrally coordinated by the Queen bee from her palatial chamber. The Queen bee herself is about five times bigger in size than the worker bee. She lays an average of about 2,000 eggs per day. And she lives about 40 times longer than those other bees because of the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which she takes every day. The average lifespan of an ordinary bee is six weeks. That of the Queen bee is two and a half years but she can live for as long as six years depending on the conduciveness of her royal environment.

     

    The Queen’s Succession Procedure

    When the Queen bee becomes old or weak and can no longer lay enough eggs (of between 1,500 and 2,000 per day) with which to sustain the population of the hive, the Queen-makers in the hive meet and jointly decide to depose her by stinging her to death. Then, she is replaced with a new, vibrant Queen.

     

     The Bees’ Friendly and Hostile  Stings

    Stinging is part of the duties of the worker bees. And each of them can sting only once in a lifetime. No bee can sting twice. Bees have both friendly and hostile stings. The one is for healing diseases in human beings. The other is like a missile reserved for an attack on enemies. The natural sac in which their venom is kept at the tail end of their abdomen is called ‘ovipositor’.

     

      Food of the Bees

    It must be noted that the bees work and produce honey and other products for themselves and not for human consumption. Honey is the food of the bees. They work hard during the dry season to produce honey which is the food they will eat during the raining season. Bees do not work during the rainy season because they cannot cope with the wind and storm which often accompany rains. Thus, during the rainy season, they concentrate on taking care of the Queen and on nursing the younger bees. It takes an average bee about 21 days to grow into an adult from the egg status while it takes the Queen about 16 days to develop from the egg status to the royal status of a Queen.

     

    Species of Bees

    There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world. But the most prominent ones in relation to human life are seven. These are Bumble Bees; Carpenter Bees; Honey Bees; Killer Bees; Ground Bees and Yellow Jackets Bees. Some worker bees are stingless. But generally, the world of bees is a wonderful one. It takes those who know it to appreciate its value. Without bees, there will be neither crops nor farmers. It takes the bees alone to pollinate over 80% of the plants that produce foods for human consumption. No amount of narration here can expose all about the communal life of the bees. Their story is inexhaustible. The seven products of the bees, including honey, and their usefulness to human lives will be discussed in this column soonest, God willing. Meanwhile, only Islam could have provided this wonderful knowledge about the bees over 1400 years ago.

  • The insect that heals

    The insect that heals

    Preamble

    It cannot be strange to anybody who is well familiar with the Qur’anic contents that there are 114 chapters in that sacred book. Out of these, six chapters are dedicated to the animal kingdom, three of which are specifically dedicated to insects. They are chapters 16, 27 and 29 which are dedicated to ‘The BEE’, ‘The ANT’ and ‘The SPIDER’ respectively.

    Each of these cited chapters is particularly symbolic of the purpose to which it is dedicated. But it takes only those who can reason and engage in further research to comprehend them. However, our immediate concern here is the miraculous insect called ‘BEE’ about which Qur’an 16, verse 68 quoted above is explicit.

    The Insect called Bee

    Most people see the bee as an ordinary insect that interacts with human life positively or negatively. They believe that honey is the only beneficial product of the bee. They also believe that if they can live comfortably without honey they can as well cope with life without bees. Such beliefs are unfortunately based on ignorance.

    Honey as one of about seven products of the bee is like a message. No one can gain access to a message except through the messenger. And the messenger, in this case, is the bee that produces it. To appreciate the value of honey and other bee products, it is necessary to know something about the insect called the bee and the effect of its lifestyle on human life.

    The Lifestyle of Bees

    Bees are social insects living a communal life under an organized and disciplined government. Bees have male and female genders. Their males are called drones. Their females are known as workers. They all live together in an abode called hive. Such hive may be wild or man-made. Though people had been harvesting honey for thousands of years, it was not until 1851 that the idea of a definite man-made hive came into existence. In that year, an America apiarist, Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth, discovered the principle of ‘bee space’ and designed a man-made hive that was named after its designer (Langstroth). According to that man’s discovery, bees leave spaces of about 0.6 cm (about 0.23 inches) between wax combs inside which they store honey. Thus, Langstroth’s discovery made it possible to remove individual frames from a beehive and to harvest honey and wax without destroying the hive. Through such effort, it also became possible to control diseases in the hive and to maintain a larger number of colonies. (A colony is a hive effectively occupied by bees while an apiary is a place where several hives are kept.

    Types of Bee Hives

    Man-made hives are of three types for now. These are Langstroth, Kenyan top bar and Tanzanian top bar. Kenyan and Tanzanian top bars are similar in shape and outlook. The one was designed in Kenya in about 1958 while the other was designed in 1962 on the template of that of Kenya.

    Each of the Kenyan and Tanzanian hives can contain an average of 20 liters of honey. Langstroth on the other hand can contain as much as about 40 liters or more. Langstroth has a bigger accommodation capacity because of its double or triple Decker design with which it came.

    How to hive the Bees

    To get the bees to colonize the hive, what apiarists do is to bate such hives with some pure, genuine honey added to a piece of beeswax and put at the entrance of the hive. On smelling the odour of the honey, the bees will come in their hundreds or even thousands to colonize the hive. Thus, such hives become bee colonies.

    Government of the Bees

    Bees are governed by a female monarch called ‘the Queen’. To choose the Queen that will govern the hive, a group of queenmakers among the bees in the hive meet to select some fertilized eggs shortly before those eggs are hatched and incubate them royally. When they are hatched and become princesses, they are then fed with a special food called Royal Jelly to accelerate their growth and facilitate their longevity. After about 16 weeks, one of them is chosen and made the Queen while the rest are either taken out into new hives as Queens or left altogether to slug it out with one another in a royal battle for survival. In such a melee, whichever of them overpowers the others will emerge as the next Queen of that particular colony. The other fertilized eggs that are not selected for the same purpose are left to grow naturally until they become worker bees.

     Functions of the Drones

    Drones are the male bees produced from unfertilized eggs. They neither sting nor work. Their main job in the hive is to mate with the queen which they do only once in a lifetime. As soon as they finish mating, the drones fall down and die as they have completed their destined duty. The queen also mates only once in a lifetime but she does not die as a result. Drones are very few in any hive since the unfertilized eggs that produce them are scantily laid by the Queen.

    Drones constitute less than one per cent of any hive population. Their population is invariably determined by the Queen bee that lays very few big and unfertilized eggs from which the drones are produced. On the other hand, the worker bees are produced from smaller but fertilized eggs.

    Culture of the Bees

    By the natural culture of the bees, the Queen neither mates inside her own hive nor mated by the drones from the same hive. This is similar to the principle of endogamy (marriage within the same family) which is culturally prohibited in most African clans. Only one Queen can be found in a hive at any given time. And she has no deputy.

    When it is time for the Queen bee to mate, she produces a glandular secretion with which she sends out with a powerful pheromone into the air to alert the drones in other hives around that she is ready for mating. A meeting is then arranged by the worker bees, between her and some interested drones, to mate with the Queen. And the mating is done in the air.

    Breeding new Bees

    To breed new bees, the Queen bee must lay unfertilized eggs in the larger chambers of the bee comb while she lays fertilized ones in the small chambers of the comb. The eggs in the larger chambers are meant for the production of the drones while those in the smaller chambers are meant for the production of the worker bees. This is because the drones are naturally bigger in size than the workers. Both chambers are expertly designed in the honeycomb by the worker bees for the purpose of breeding.

    The Mystery of Bee Comb

    One of the mysteries of the beehives is the building of the honeycomb by the bees. Researchers in the field of apitherapy know that the bees use wax to build honeycomb but they are still puzzled by the natural skill with which those tiny insects do it. An attempt by those researchers to manufacture similar honeycomb manually as a means of assisting the bees in reducing their workload has proved abortive as the bees have shunned such artificial comb. Honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honeybees in their nest to contain their larvae and store honey and pollen.

    Classification of Worker Bees

    Worker bees are classified into groups for the purpose of carrying out specific duties assigned to them. Some go out every morning to scout for flower nectars with which to produce honey. Some are assigned to the duty of picking tree resin with which to produce propolis. Some others are charged with fetching water to be used in the hive. Some serve as guards. Some serve as informants. But except for those assigned to internal duties, all of them travel out in groups into the wild vegetations or plantations every morning as a matter of duty. Those of them that travel to carry out such duties are called foragers.

    Division of Labour

    Among the other multitudes remaining in or around the hive, some are responsible for guarding the hive against any foreign attack or aggression. They are the security officers. Some are assigned to carrying out the conversion of nectars into honey. Some others engage permanently in fanning the interior of the hive with their tiny wings to reduce the heat and neutralize the humidity therein. Those are the ventilators. Some specialize in converting resin into propolis. Those are the pharmacists or apothecaries. Some are assigned to the Queen’s kitchen as special cooks and prepare royal jelly for the Queen which is the latter’s exclusive food. Those are the Queen’s royal chefs.

    Some bees are kept at the entrance of the hive for monitoring the environment and for passing any gathered information to the busy workers. Those are the informants. Some are put in charge of nursing the young bees into adults. They are the foster mothers. Some are assigned to the building and maintenance of the honeycomb. Those are the colony architects and builders. Some are assigned to sterilization of the interior of the hive and the ceiling with propolis. They are also charged with the duty of embalming any predators that stray into the hive and stung to death. Such predators are stung to death to prevent any outbreak of epidemic in the hive that the decay of those predators can cause. Those are the sanitary inspectors. All of these duties are carried out by the female bees called worker bees.

    Duties of Foragers

    Worker bees, by their nature, do travel very far in search of water or raw materials needed to carry out their assigned duties in the hive. And they follow the principle of ‘esprit de corps’ in carrying out such duties.

    This great division of labour is a daily routine which enables perfection to be attained in the hive. And all these activities are centrally coordinated by the Queen bee from her palatial chamber. The Queen bee herself is about five times bigger in size than the worker bee. She lays an average of about 2,000 eggs per day. And she lives about 40 times longer than those other bees because of the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which she takes every day. The average lifespan of an ordinary bee is six weeks. That of the Queen bee is two and a half years but she can live for as long as six years depending on the conduciveness of her royal environment.

    The Queen’s Succession Procedure

    When the Queen bee becomes old or weak and can no longer lay enough eggs (of between 1,500 and 2,000 per day) with which to sustain the population of the hive, the Queen-makers in the hive meet and jointly decide to depose her by stinging her to death. Then, she is replaced with a new, vibrant Queen.

     The Bees’ Friendly and Hostile  Stings

    Stinging is part of the duties of the worker bees. And each of them can sting only once in a lifetime. No bee can sting twice. Bees have both friendly and hostile stings. The one is for healing diseases in human beings. The other is like a missile reserved for an attack on enemies. The natural sac in which their venom is kept at the tail end of their abdomen is called ‘ovipositor’.

      Food of the Bees

    It must be noted that the bees work and produce honey and other products for themselves and not for human consumption. Honey is the food of the bees. They work hard during the dry season to produce honey which is the food they will eat during the raining season. Bees do not work during the rainy season because they cannot cope with the wind and storm which often accompany rains. Thus, during the rainy season, they concentrate on taking care of the Queen and on nursing the younger bees. It takes an average bee about 21 days to grow into an adult from the egg status while it takes the Queen about 16 days to develop from the egg status to the royal status of a Queen.

    Species of Bees

    There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world. But the most prominent ones in relation to human life are seven. These are Bumble Bees; Carpenter Bees; Honey Bees; Killer Bees; Ground Bees and Yellow Jackets Bees. Some worker bees are stingless. But generally, the world of bees is a wonderful one. It takes those who know it to appreciate its value. Without bees, there will be neither crops nor farmers. It takes the bees alone to pollinate over 80% of the plants that produce foods for human consumption. No amount of narration here can expose all about the communal life of the bees. Their story is inexhaustible. The seven products of the bees, including honey, and their usefulness to human lives will be discussed in this column soonest, God willing. Meanwhile, only Islam could have provided this wonderful knowledge about the bees over 1400 years ago.

  • Al-mu’minaat calls for legislation on hijab

    Al-Mu’minaat (The Believing Women Organisation) has called on Federal Government to enact law that will guarantee the rights of Muslim women to dress according to her religius belief.

    A statement issued by its Remo Zone, Ogun State Amirah (President), Hajia Zainab AbdulKareem, said Muslim women in the country are faced with series of intimidation and harassment for wearing the hijab.

    Hajia AbdulKareem alleged that many government agencies are culprits in these acts, adding: “the list of culpable government organisations in this regard include Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and the National Identity Management Commission NIMC), which always insist that Muslim women remove their hijab before they are captured”.

    The Amirah decried a recent event at the Psychiatric hospital in Aro, Abeokuta, Ogun State, where an hijabite was prevented from resuming her duty, because she puts on hijab

    “We were shocked about the incident. We therefore call on the state governor to check the excesses of officials that are perpetrating acts of oppression and injustice against Muslim women.

    “We say authoritatively that Islam is against terrorism and violence and those behind Boko Haram and other terrorist groups are misguided and do not represent Islam in any way,” she said.

  • MUSWEN prays for President Buhari

    The Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN), has offered prayers for President Muhammadu Buhari, his government and the nation.

    The prayer was held during its 13th Regular Meeting at Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, by its Central Working Committee (CWC).

    The CWC comprise of Muslim Communities/Councils of the six states of the Southwest, the major Muslim organisations domiciled in the region including Muslim women and youth organisations.

    The group thanked to Allah for responding to the prayers of Nigerians and bringing back the President in improved health.

    A statement by its Executive Secretary Prof Dawud Noibi, MUSWEN expressed profound faith in the fact that the span of life of a person is not determined by the wishes or claims of detractors by but by Allah’s decree, urging President Buhari and Nigerians to put trust in Allah and ignore the whispers of rumour mongers.

    The religious leaders also thanked Allah for giving the country and the armed forces victory over the Boko Haram menace and beseeched Him to complete the victory not only over the misguided insurgents but also over all other forms of threat to the security, unity and progress of the nation.

    They also prayed that the remaining Chibok girls be brought back safely.

    They hailed the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, for holding the forth for President Buhari so diligently over the period of the President’s absence.

    “Members took the advantage of the occasion to express condolences to the family of the former military governor of the old Western Region of Nigeria, Major General Adeyinka Adebayo (rtd) as well as the people of Ekiti State and the Southest on the occasion of his death. They pray that Allah grants his family and the nation the fortitude to bear the loss,” the statement said.