Tag: dress code

There was a time in Nigeria, not very long ago, where one’s religion hardly mattered in the scheme of things.  It was neither a bar nor a boon to social, political or career advancement.  It was not the prism through which the content and intent of public policy was endlessly refracted and diffracted, nor was it the template for judging the motivations of policy-makers.

During the First Republic, the Northern premier Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, who traced his lineage directly from Umanu Dan Fodiyo, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate and in a way, the spearhead of an epic, sub-continental coup, the reverberations of which are still felt across the Sahel today, had around him Russell Dikko, Michael Audu Buba, Jolly Tanko Yusuf, Sunday Awoniyi, the Zakaris and the Donlis and many Christians who played key roles in his administration.

Yakubu Gowon and Ishaya Audu and Yakubu Danjuma and the Miller brothers and sisters felt perfectly at home and in the walled city and in their places of worship.

In the West, Chief Awolowo built a first-rate civil service in which neither religion, nor political affiliation for that matter, played any part.  Even if you did not belong to the ruling Action Group, As Sam, later Professor Aluko, did not, you got a scholarship if you qualified for one.  You were being educated to serve the Region and its people, not the ruling party.

And although he was by faith a Christian, he established a (Muslim) Pilgrims Welfare Board,  the first of its kind in Nigeria, to cater to the interests of Muslims performing the hajj.  There were no complaints of “marginalization” from the Muslim community which made up roughly one-half the population.

In the East, there were no contending faiths, only healthy competition among various Christian denominations to provide education through institutions subsidized by theRegional Government led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe.

In theSecond Republic, Lagosians did not care that Governor Lateef Jakande and his deputy, the late Rafiu Jafojo, were Muslims.  The people were content to judge them by their performance, which was in many respects outstanding.

In the President Shehu Shagari’s time, it was said that one of his close personal aides, Michael Prest, felt so alienated from the tight Muslim circle surrounding his principalthat he converted to Islam and changed his first name to Mikhail – or was it Mukaila?  But such instances were rare.

At his first coming in 1984, no one cared that Muhammadu Buhari and his deputy, Tunde Idiagbon, belonged to the same Muslimfaith; their dourness – I named them the Dour Duo, and the label stuck — was what made them remarkable, not their faith.

The Muslim-Muslim ticket of Bashorun Moshood Abiola and Babagana Kingibe, we now know indissolubly, won the 1993 presidential election. In the national convulsion that followed the annulment, the Christian community stood up much more robustly than the Muslim community for the validation of the poll.

It was not until some five weeks into the debacle that the Sultan of Sokoto and titular head of      the he Muslim community in Nigeria finally roused himself to urge military president Ibrahim Babangida todo the right thing and uphold the election.

Some two weeks later, Dasuki disavowed the statement, claiming that it had beenissued by his secretary without authorization, and further that Abiola had urged the international community to levy war on Nigeria, which no true Muslim would do.

Abiola had done no such thing.

Most recently in Lagos, who, in Lagos, who, apart from some desperate attention-seekers beholden to the hugely discredited Bode George, cared about what faith Governor Bola Tinubu and his successor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, practised?

That was then.

Today, religion has acquired higher salience in every aspect of national life  and I am not just talking about the industrial scale it has assumed, the vast stretches of highway that serve as camps of dedication and revival, the shop fronts that formerly catered to the fancies of well-heeled clients in tony neighbourhoods now converted to healing and miracle centres,  and once- bustling factories and warehouses that now serve as thriving mega-churches, or high clergy serving as bag men for corrupt public officials.

Announce apublic appointment today, and the first thing some people will want to know is where the person comes from, followed closely whether he is a Christian or a Muslim, not how well qualified for the job he or she is. Announce the arrest of a perpetrator, and there is immediate speculation about his or her ethnicity or religious affiliation, as if they are correlated.

I exaggerate here, but not by much.

Wherever you turn, there is religion, or religiosity; you find itbeing manipulated to serve all kinds of ends, mostly ignoble and profane No wonder there is such great dysfunction in society,  and so little conformity with the value system as we knew it.

So much religion, so little righteousness.

And in the face of this crisis, what is the solution most frequently prescribed?

More religion.  Intensify and widen religious instruction the schools.  Hand back to their rightful owners the schools that various governments seized from voluntary agencies and turned into the godless institutions that breed the anomie and chaos that are all around us.

The foregoing, pardon its long-windedness, is my point of entry into the crisis roiling the State of Osun over the dress code in public schools —those schools established and funded by the state and administered by agents of the state, as distinct from parochial institutions established by religious bodies to advance their creed or to achieve a particular set of objectives recognized               by the state.

The state is proprietorof the public school and at the same time stands in loco parentis to the students.  It is responsible for setting standards of conduct and behavior, and for maintaining discipline. The school uniform is a crucial instrument in attaining these goals.  It identifies the person wearing it as a bona fide member of that particular community, subject to its rules and regulations and fully deserving of is protection. Its ordinariness – no frills and no frippery – secures no personal advantage for anyone but guarantees broad equality of treatment for all.

It is also an instrument of control.  The school is not obliged to admit into its premises anyone not wearing the prescribed uniform.  If it once had religious symbolism, the school uniform in public schools now has only a functional value.

When students turn report to school in all manner of clothing like masquerades, contrary to what the authorities stipulate, they undermine discipline and control and create distraction that undermines teaching and learning.

The school uniform serves basically the same purposes in parochial schools, though the religious symbolism is stronger.  It is a constant reminder of their faith, of their being set apart from adherents of other faiths; in short, of their specialness in the eyes of the deity they worship.

That is their prerogative, and the modern state not only respects but guarantees it.  However, you cannot voluntarily enroll in such schools and then turn round to complain that the dress code violates your rights or offends your sensibilities.

No legal issues arise here; so long as the dress code and other rules are not inconsistent with the fundamental human rights consecrated in the Constitution, and with what ordinary decency enjoins, they should not be open not to challenge.

The same reasoning should apply, mutatis mutandis, to the dress code in public institutions. No one is compelled to attend a public school.  Those who choose to do so should wear the prescribed uniform or go seek an education elsewhere.

To each system, then, its dress code.

A final thought.

Let all creeds and faiths and sects agree, in the spirit of ecumenism, to replace Islamic Religious Knowledge and Christian Religious Knowledge as currently taught in our schools with Comparative Religion.