Category: Columnists

What point do the four governors who have declared Ramadan holiday want to prove or achieve?

Ibo la tun wa ja si yi’ literally means where do we find ourselves again? This is a Yoruba expression of shock or surprise at an occurrence or an outcome; that has been popularised on WhatsApp.

This was the question I asked no one in particular when news broke about two weeks ago that four states, Bauchi, Katsina, Kebbi and Kano, have declared holiday in their public schools to ease the pains of the Ramadan fast on their students.

The question of how did we get to the point that some state governments would declare Ramadan holiday is both

poignant and scary. Our country is not yet there. Even countries that are already there are not shutting down their schools simply on account of observing Ramadan.

None of the excuses given by the state governments for shutting down the schools holds water, at least given the experiences in Muslim countries that are supposedly holier than Nigeria. Muslims there are fasting without shutting down schools.

It is easy to merely shrug off the decision of the four governors as their individual or collective cup of tea. That governors are at liberty to run their states however they like. But it is not that simple, especially in our kind of country where we must necessarily cross each others’ path in our quest to eke a living or even socialise.

This is why I, like millions of other Nigerians who have seen the light and importance of Western education are naturally worried. We know we would be affected by some of these choices made or not made now or sometime in the future. Then, we would be told that, as Nigerians, there is freedom for all to move freely and live in any part of the country; a not-too-bad idea if, and only if we are on the same page on many issues. But how can we be on the same page in a country where people who need more than 24 hours a day to catch up with others in education are declaring frivolous holidays in addition to the numerous holidays attached to the school calendar?

The Boko Haram that we have been fighting since 2009 is a product of this kind of mindset, but we did not seem to see it as a potential time-bomb. For several decades, we chose to see it as a mere religious or cultural matter, until it blew in our faces. Today, the entire country is pumping good trillions of Naira that could otherwise have been spent on more productive things into fighting it.

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 There is a Yoruba proverb that says we should be concerned when our neighbour is eating a particular insect because when he cannot sleep as a result, we too wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly. This is what is happening in these states and we seem to be glossing over it. Given the potential of the four governors’ decision to wreak havoc, we should still be talking about it to see if we can make it the first and last time such a thing would ever happen in those states or elsewhere. Boko Haram and banditry have proved to us enough that the repercussions would not be borne by those states alone when ‘jungle matures’, to borrow the expression of one of our embattled governors. We are living in an interdependent world in which where ‘A’s freedom stops, ‘B’s begins.

It is policies like this that make true federalism a sine qua non in our kind of country. Inasmuch as states are largely at liberty to pursue policies and programmes that they think are best for their citizens, they must also totally bear the consequences, positive or negative, of those decisions.

I am sure there won’t be any thought of governors declaring Ramadan holiday if governors were responsible for funding their governments because the first thing that would come into the governors’ minds is, who pays for the man-hours that would be lost to such frivolous holidays? People in the private sector who know they won’t eat if they don’t work can better appreciate the argument here. Those who only wear flowing ‘babariga’ to Abuja every month-end to collect the ready-made handouts may not understand.

This year, we are somewhat lucky in that both Ramadan and Lent (the Christians 40 days annual fasting in many churches worldwide) are being observed simultaneously. Ramadan started in the evening of February 28 while Lent started on March 5.

The four states that declared shutdown of their schools can only imagine how ridiculous and unserious the country would have looked in the international community if virtually all schools in the country are shut down so that Nigerians — Christians and Muslims — can fast stress-free! That would have been another low for a country that needs to grab every minute as if it is its last on the development super highway.

Anyway, may be those who have declared the holiday now would even have wanted us to celebrate the simultaneous observance of the fasting as a blessing in disguise then because it would have saved about 10 days of holiday for the country’s educational system!

What I am saying is that we would be talking of closing down the schools for a minimum of 55 days in the years that the fasting do not overlap; that is at least 22 days for Ramadan and 33 days for Lent, respectively. If you add these to the myriad other holidays for schools alone – first term, second term and the long third term; first and second semester breaks, etc., not to talk of numerous other annual holidays declared by both the federal and state governments, then how many months do students have to be in school in a country with an acclaimed world record of about 18 million out-of-school children, with many in these states that are declaring holiday for fasting?

To me, this holiday is just about the most recent retrogressive step that any northern governor would take concerning education in recent times. And, like such steps in the past, it is only a matter of time for it to backfire. Indeed, it is another way of taking education to the back seat, instead of its rightful place as the bedrock of progress and civilisation.

I stumbled on a report on a repentant Boko Haram terrorist, Fatima Musa, as I was putting this piece together. It is very instructive. Fatima told a community gathering organised by the Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development that “We were deceived in our youth through a misinterpretation of religion, only to later realise that we had gone down the wrong path.

“I regret tearing up my NCE certificate when I foolishly embraced the distorted belief that Western education was Haram (forbidden),” Fatima said.

But something must be wrong somewhere: people say Western education is sinful; yet all the tools of terror that they bring to bear in their nefarious activities are products of the same Western education, from bombs to motorcycles, to the helicopters that drop food and ammunition for them in.the forests?

Be that as it may, fasting is all about denial; it is not a tea party or sallah. Almighty Allah who created people in the north knew about the weather in the place. He knew there would be a preponderance of Muslims there who would want to fast during Ramadan. As a matter of fact, have people in those states not been fasting and going to school simultaneously all these generations? What scientific or empirical evidence do the governors have to show that things are different now and the Ramadan holiday is the solution?

This was a policy they did without a thought for other stakeholders and they are saying their decision considered the greatest good for the greatest majority. Nigeria’s elites have a way of bastardising virtually everything. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who pronounced that theory obviously did not mean it the way the four governors have interpreted it.

We know that our governors are powerful but they should be considerate in exercising their powers. The four governors that initiated this policy cannot be more pious than the owners of Islam, the Saudis. Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia is considered the home of Islam. It is from this city that the religion spread. Yet, in Saudi, hot as it usually is, they have not declared Ramadan holiday in schools. What they have done is to adapt schedules, shortening hours or offering flexibility, to balance education with religious practice. If that country is developed today, one of the reasons is because it has taken education seriously. It is not

about bigotry as some of our elite Muslims are won’t to do.

Why would some governors here try to be more pious than the owners of Islam? Yet, it is not necessarily for Allah. This reminds me of a rather expensive joke cracked by one of our former presidents. Not too long after Sharia was introduced in parts of the north, the former leader saw a northern governor (I can’t remember whether at an airport or an event), and he expressed shock that the governor still had his two hands intact. The former president was referring indirectly to that governor’s legendary propensity for corruption! He was lost as to why Sharia had not taken its toll on the governor’s hands the way it had on a talakawa (Jangedi) that was amputated for stealing a cow!

The northern religious and political elites must wade into this matter before the cankerworm becomes contagious and other states would see it as a model worthy of emulation. They need to impress it on the respective governors:

Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Dikko Radda (Katsina), Nasir Idris (Kebbi) and Abba Yusuf (Kano) that the holiday is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.