Scrap Almajiri for north to excel in Nigeria

Because of work, studies and my vocation as a journalist, I have visited about six states out of the 19 states in the North of Nigeria – Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. In all my travels, I have never seen such beauty and such vastness of a land so endowed with human and material potential, except perhaps in Calabar. At a time, I considered making the North home: there was food in abundance, it was peaceful and I saw something of the picturesque in Bama Borno state: I met and interacted with the environment at seasonal circumstances – when hot it was very hot and very cold when cold. But when the rains came, I was to marvel at the lushness of a land so green, so blessed, so rich and so wholesome.

 
But by far the greatest potential of the North of Nigeria is her people – a strong and resilient people – a people so different from the stereotype that we attach to most Northerners down here in the South and the East and the West of Nigeria. I am convinced that one of the greatest selling points for Northerners is that they easily accept and trust you if they decode that you mean them no harm.  You may not find a great many of them as ‘educated’ or as ‘creative’ like the way other Nigerians are but God help you survive the debate if you are to meet a truly educated Northerner on the other side of an intellectual, political or creative disputation or endeavour.
 
Part of the reason, (and in my estimation), responsible for the fact that we do not find many Northerners excelling in the academia, in sports, music or in the arts is that there are many cultural and religious values that hold them back. I was to be shocked to my bones about 30 years ago when I ran into a group of very comely young lads foraging and eating from whatever scrap the streets offered them.

I discovered that the traditional and cultural template subsists mostly in Northern Nigeria, and  promotes a lie that leaving these lads out there in the sun, cold, the winds and rain and with the mosquitoes and flies of that sometimes intemperate region toughens them up, and prepares them for leadership.  That lie was what I was to find to be the recurring decimal in Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Kano, Kaduna and Gombe, and indeed in the other Northern states.

I was to discover another disturbing trend, and this has been linked to why we do not find a great many Northerners (in spite of their numbers) in sports, music, the academia and in the new oil of Nigeria – the creatives. It is this: you will hardly find the children of the elite and the nobility – the governors, captains of industry, leaders in the executive legislative and judicial arms of the governance in Nigeria roaming the streets in rags day-in-day out without a bath, and living off the left overs of a bountiful land. The nobility and the elite nearly all have their children at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Cambridge and Massachusetts, while the children of the farmer, the cab driver,  the school teacher and the traders are the ones on the street following a dogma that robs Nigeria of the potentials of these very beautiful children.

Part of the irony of this unfortunate scenario is that it is even the children of the elite educated abroad and in elite schools in Nigeria that seem to perpetrate this caste. Whenever I have interacted with some of them to see how we can work together somehow to draw attention to this malaise, I am quickly snubbed and reminded of the rife cases of prostitution, orphanages where children are harvested for sale and all such ills in my part of Nigeria – as though this is a culpability competition.

They are quick to tell me that there have been too many stories of poverty and disease in the North and now is the time stories to tell ‘positive’ stories of the North. But a story becomes positive from results of affirmative action on a ‘negative’ scenario. A ‘positive’ story is not one that tells about the beauty of a landscape, and especially if that beautiful landscape is populated by destitute children.
 
The figures indicate that in spite of having a very large and very young population, a very fertile land, and some of the most industrious of Nigerians, some of the North of Nigeria has one of the lowest human capital development indexes in Africa. This young population is largely untapped, unharnessed, underdeveloped and undeveloped, and this robs Nigeria of critical human raw materials for national development.

 
I can imagine these youngsters on the streets in Kano, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Potiskum, Gombe at that very young age combining their Arabic education with learning how to code, learning to build websites, excelling in sports academies, making waves as fashion designers, honing their skills as digital marketers, programming, aluminum fabrication, and in the many new endeavour in today’s new economy.

Let the North pull those boys off the streets and I can bet on it that in the next 20 years, the North would have strategically captured power and positioned itself as the biggest player in the economic and political life of Nigeria. That was what the Chinese did in the early 80s – they sponsored the education of their people – children of farmers, traders, artisans and poor teachers – to the United States in the areas of electrical engineering, science and tech. Today, China rivals the U.S. and is already a world power.
 
I do believe though that certain elements in the North sponsor the Almajiri caste to perpetrate their own positions of advantage over and above the regular Northerner. I give you the example of this very outspoken individual who has taken up the gauntlet in favour of rights of the North. He is very well-educated in jurisprudence, governance and has been to many cultures just like the one that Northern Nigeria practices but where the Almajiri caste is not tolerated. He loves books and is a true intellectual in body, soul and spirit. I asked him if he would add his voice to mine to draw attention to the Almajiri problem. He did not say yes or no.
 
I reiterate that if the North would review the Almajiri caste system, they would capture and rule Nigeria for two thousand years. The North is also a metaphor for Nigeria in that if the Nigerian government or the state governors would invest in our people, instead of their own children only, Nigeria would rule the world in the arts, science and technology in a thousand years.
Etemiku is Editor in Chief of Wadonor…Cultural Voice of Nigeria.