A Northern child with dreams as high as the sky knows so well that he can only realize his dreams with qualitative education. And with a myriad of colossal brouhaha standing in his way of acquiring such, and as if it is not enough, he now hears large sounds of war drums beating around him. Now that hopelessness is renting a large space in his mind, the Northern child, threatened by even his shadow toils and rasps from the walls of Illela to the waters of Lake Chad, up to the hills of Plateau asking; who will salvage the Northern child?
The ship has set sail apparently long ago and we are now looking for a black sheep. It is not completely out of place to say that Northern Nigeria is at its lowest ebb. A region that has over the years sunk deeply into the abyss of despondency and forlornness, with multitudinous challenges bedeviling a once home of peace and steadiness. A region that was once a model for unity and diversity with a cocktail of tribes; the perfect Eldorado. It is now glaringly clear that the peskiest question before us all is how do we educate a Northern Child?
It is apropos to kerf in our minds that Northern Nigeria sits pretty well as one of the poverty capitals of the world. Their farmlands have been deserted, thereby bringing the economy of the region to its knees, with industrial graveyards littered within the region; from the massive glass plant of Wurno to Arewa Textiles and United Nigeria Textile Limited in Kaduna to Kano Bottling Company, Ajaokuta Steel Plant, Benue Cement company among others, they are all dead, and with them millions of direct and indirect jobs. Extreme poverty has chromatographically separated us along religious and ethnic lines.
The stream that waters the roots of these knots in the region is the gargantuan number of out-of-school children in Northern Nigeria. The country has about 20 million out-of-school children with a large percentage of them from Northern Nigeria. Sadly, these numbers are expected to grow, thereby making the region a fertile breeding ground for children of peeve and anger, thereby giving rise to the insecurities bedeviling us, and then there is the elephant in the room; the Almajiri system, that we feign oblivion about its gross societal negative impact. The only way out of our conundrum is to provide qualitative and affordable education to the northern child, but then what are the challenges of educating a northern child?
Inadequate funding of our education sector has been the primary challenge of education in the region, and the country at large, and according to UNESCO 2021, the government pledges to allocate 26% of its annual budget to education, but the sector is receiving less than 10% of the budget in recent years. This has resulted in poor infrastructure, especially in our tertiary institutions. These institutions are now a shadow of what they once were, with basic amenities like electricity and water supply lacking. Also, there is the problem of lack of basic facilities and overcrowding in these institutions of learning.
Inadequate funding also gave rise to shortages and low teacher quality. Most schools especially in rural areas are having these predicament. It is equally pertinent to note that the Nigerian government needs to, as a matter of national urgency review and update the country’s education curriculum to ensure that it is relevant to the needs of the country and the job market. This will ensure that Nigerian graduates acquire the skills and knowledge required to compete in the job market and contribute to the country’s economic development.
Top on the list of challenges of educating a Northern child today is extreme poverty plaguing the region, made even worse by the insecurities bedeviling the region. The economy of the region depends much on agriculture, but today, insurgency and banditry have made us desert our farmlands only to bask in fear, apprehension and hunger, then mass abductions of school children in the region further deteriorated the crises
A region with abundant human capital and resources; from large uranium deposits, copper, tantalite and gold in the North West, to the abundant tin, lead, zinc and massive iron ore deposits in the North Central, and gypsum, kaolin and hydrocarbon in the North East among others. A region blessed with vast, lush fertile lands for agriculture, it makes one wonder, and how did we get to this infelicitous spot? Bad leadership! It has allowed greed, unity phobia and materialism creep into our psyche so much that we mortgaged our resourcefulness and hardwork on the platter of free oil subversions from a far distant land, and then fight dirty to retain power at the centre to preserve this crippling mindset.
Candidly, with no prima facie sense of irony, Northern leaders are always quick to tell the world of our present predicament with all sense of concern, but they say nothing of the fact that a good number of them are not only responsible, but instrumental in erecting the present distasteful picture of Northern Nigeria. They are only interested in having a firm grip on power, for their obviously selfish reasons while their region crumbles. Since independence, Nigeria has been ruled by a Northern ruler for an approximate total of 44 years out of almost 63 years; out of the 16 Heads Of State and Presidents Nigeria has had, 10 have been Northerners yet the region has the highest number out-of-school children, and in every nook and cranny of Northern Nigeria, millions of people grovel in brobdingnagian multidimensional poverty.
Answers to these challenges can only be found if we collectively play our respective responsibilities towards salvaging the next generation because right now it is not enough. The government must adequately fund the education sector and ensure transparency and accountability. The people must protect our educational institutions and infrastructures, they should also understand that they have more roles to play than the government in ensuring qualitative education for all. Our basic schools must be that place where our biggest resource; children are well educated and trained. Our tertiary institutions must reclaim their rightful place as the veritable organ of social filtration, a marketplace of ideas producing the best minds. Qualitative education must be affordable to the common man. Endemic poverty pillaging Northern Nigeria must be urgently addressed. The people must be secured and have access to their farmlands. The peace that used to be a paterfamilias of the region must be restored. We must educate the northern child, because if we fail to, it has a way of coming back at us all, like we are witnessing at the moment. Posterity awaits.
Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
*Sani Abdulrazak, author of “The Adventure of Ayya” can be reached via email at [email protected]