On Wednesday the 16th of January at
exactly 9 o clock in the evening I tuned to the NTA to watch the network news.
Watching the NTA news is a practice I developed over the past 30 years. Instead
of the news, however, I was confronted with a programme called ‘The Candidates’
anchored by one Kadaria Ahmed, a fellow undergraduate in the late 1980s in
Bayero University Kano. The interviewees were the Presidential candidate of the
APC who doubles as the incumbent President and his running mate, Vice President
Yemi Osinbajo.
Like most Nigerians, I respect and love
Muhammadu Buhari not only for his character but more for his integrity, his
frankness and the no-nonsense approach with which he handled Nigeria as a
military leader. The poor Nigerians who continuously voted for Buhari since he
joined politics many years ago actually expected that kind of approach when he
got to the presidency. Most of them have since been disappointed. The reasons he
has always given are understandable. The platforms are different. As a military
leader he could dictate a statement and ask his legal aides to turn it into a
law and it was done. That is not possible in democracy. In addition, age is not
on his side. We can recall how he promised not to contest any election after
2011 but came back to do it in 2015 obviously due to the many politicians
prodding him to do so. Most of the
elected officers under APC today couldn’t have made it if not for Buhari’s
popularity. That if Buhari is subtracted from APC it would be reduced to AD or
at best another PDP is also not in doubt. But this is not my topic of
discussion today, so please don’t be annoyed.
I began to watch the interview from the point I
met it to the end. The Kano-trained journalist was bold and the duo of PMB and
his deputy courageously responded to her questions. As I usually do, I later
shared my observations with the 5000 friends I have on Facebook. My first
observation was to ask my followers to understand why Osinbajo was more
eloquent than his boss. Osinbajo is a lecturer who had to spend a number of
years talking to students and at seminars and conferences before qualifying to
become a Professor. Later the Vice President himself added his experience as a
practicing Lawyer to the reasons why he was more articulate than Mr. President.
Another point of attraction in that interview
was the President’s response on the Ganduje saga. Politicians opposed to Buhari
want him to punish Ganduje or at best disown him for allegedly being caught on
camera receiving bribe. Ganduje is a serving Governor who enjoys constitutional
immunity from prosecution. The allegation was already being investigated by the
Kano state house of assembly the only body vested with the power of removing
Ganduje from office. The case is also before the court. These are the reasons
PMB gave for not being in position to punish Ganduje and they are genuine. The
insincerity of PMB’s opposition becomes more glaring if we note that they do not
ask the President to distance himself from some governors in the North West who
allowed security situation in their states to deteriorate through their amnesty
programme for thieves.
In sum, the response of PMB and his vice were
satisfactory for the part of that interview I watched that night. I celebrated
that with my friends in the social media even before I went to bed. Many of
them call me Pro-Buhari when I mention the positives of the President and his
party and anti-Buhari when I mention the negatives. The truth is that I belong
to neither group. I am not a politician and I am yet to get sufficient reasons
to make me become one.
I was wrong to have celebrated that interview so
early. I only realized that this weekend when I logged onto YouTube and watched
the interview from the beginning. A particular question was asked by a young
man on the problem of almajirai and the response of the President is enough to spoil
his chances at the polls if the Nigerian voters were adequately enlightened. It
is also enough to be used against PMB by his opponents if we had a serious
issues-based democracy.
“Your Excellency, I believe this is a major
challenge for us in the Northern part of this country. Now, I am sure many don’t
believe that it something we should continue to do. So what’s your opinion on
that? I strongly think that it is important if you can do something about it. This
is because you are one of those who can make difficult decisions and it can be
accepted in Nigeria.” Said Usman Sulaiman Jahun, a lawyer from Jigawa state.
Hear the response of the President. “I think we
have to look at the three tiers of Government responsibilities, the Federal,
the state and the local government and the allocation of resources, revenue
allocation formula, and so on, relative to the resources available to the country...
so the question of almajiri makes up the basic education and are all local
government problem. So even if the centre has extra money it wouldn’t take it
and build classrooms, equip them, employ qualified teachers from the Federal
revenue while it is the duty of the local government... “
First, the issue of child begging is a National
crisis involving millions of underaged children across the majority of the 36
states of Nigeria. I do not know of any country in the world with a crisis of
such magnitude. It is thus an issue that must be addressed at the centre by the
Federal government. That the President would reduce it to the question of
building classrooms by Local governments and get applauded by an audience
comprising of ministers and other top echelons of his party smacks of our level
of irresponsibility as a nation.
Most of the boys roaming the streets begging
for food are sent to the cities by their parents in the name of attending Qur’anic
schools. To stop the menace of child begging, therefore, this critical factor
has to be looked into and comprehensively addressed by the central Government. At
present there is no comprehensive Government policy on Quranic schools. Formulating
such a policy would integrate Qur’anic schools into the mainstream educational
system and it does not imply in any way that the central government would use
Federal government allocation to build such schools. Afterall, like the anchor
of that programme pointed to the president we currently have a Federal agency
overseeing basic education even though the central government does not build
primary schools.
But why is the President avoiding this
responsibility? Is it because the children involved are mainly Muslim children
and he does not want to be accused of Islamizing Nigeria? Let me remind the
president that currently Federal allocation is used to run the National Hajj
Commission and the National Christian Pilgrimage Commission even though there
are Nigerians who do not belong to either of the two main religions. Federal
allocation is also used to pay salaries of religious teachers in Federal
Government colleges and run religious studies departments in our tertiary
institutions. In all these cases no one has accused the Government of
religionizing the country. Why then would a popular government like that of
President Buhari be shy to come up with a policy that will remove millions of
Nigerian children from street begging for fear of being accused of Islamizing
the country? Is the president expecting each local government to come up with
its policy on Qur’anic schools? I do not expect that kind of thinking from a
person of the calibre of PMB.
Further, the President may wish to note that
his predecessor built schools for the almajirai in which both Qur’anic and
western education are taught together and no one accused the devout Christian
of Islamizing Nigeria. And the Jonathan initiative was in order unless the Buhari
Government is saying that Qur’anic education is not a form of education.
Or is PMB hesitant to address the problem of
child begging (aka almajirci) because it is only in the Northern states and
southerners will be against it? Here I would like the president to note that
many policies of the central government in Nigeria only favour a few sections
of the country because of their peculiarities. A handy example is the National
commission for Nomadic education which oversees the education of nomads even
though they constitute a very tiny segment of the Nigerian population. Other example
Federal agencies include Border Communities Development Commission, Niger Delta
Development Commission, etc. What then prevents Buhari’s Government from initiating
a policy on Qur’anic schools to be implemented by an agency or at least a
department in the Federal Ministry of Education? That this eludes his Minister
of Education who has written several articles on Qur’anic education in his days
as a Newspaper columnist is one of the wonders of this government.
On a final note, I would like to remind Mr.
President that Nigerians voted for a bold and courageous person who rose
through the ranks to the highest level of his calling as a soldier. We never
voted for a timid person who is afraid of confronting National issues regardless
of whose ox is gored.
