Amaechi & the proposed name change of Almajiri education programme
By Odimegwu Onwumere
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| Onwumere |
Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State is known for his
outspokenness. He does not hide his voice whenever he is convinced to lend his
opinion on any national discourse. He has said that the classification given to
the Federal Government’s Almajiri Education Programme (AEP) was disparaging.
This, he has advised that another name be well thought-out for the project.
Amaechi said this on Friday 11, May, 2012 at a special
meeting on the AEP held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he canvassed
that since the meaning of Almajiri meant begging, the taxonomy suggests that
those who are going to gain from the programme were begging for education,
instead of it being a basic right of every Nigerian child. Therefore, he outlined
two names for the Federal Government (FG) to consider for the education
programme. They are Migrant Education Programme or Special Education Programme.
It is only a person with good intention that education
should be for all that could take the position of Amaechi who said the
importance for the government and everybody to mull declaring a state of emergency
in education in the North. Owing to the misgivings of the Nigerian presidents
who came from that part of Nigeria for more than 35 years out of 51 years that
Nigeria has existed as an independent country, these leaders from the North
tolerated a situation where children of school age roamed about on the streets
in the North for the lucre of the so called Alhajis. They called those they
were maligning Almajiri, but are here today to blame the entire nation for the
woes they inflicted on Nigerians, but most especially, to their zone. They gave
paltry to the street urchins and mobilize them as their cheerers and rented
crowd on any special occasion.
But it could be that these ‘left to die’ children are
becoming wise, hence the Alhajis are no longer save in their hands through
their hostilities, and everybody is today shouting that Almajiris need to be
rehabilitated. Who caused their peril in the first place? To be frank,
Amaechi’s supplement to the name regarding the Almajiri phenomenon and their
education shows that he has a soft spot for these children that their own
people knew how they were called Almajiri and who their true fathers and
mothers were and why their number was increasing by the day irrespective that
the North held power for the period mentioned above.
It is surprising that the North is beginning to recognize
the need to afford all children equal right to education, but during the period
they were in power, they frustrated education through incessant strikes and
debasement of teachers, because they thought that education was only for the
Southerners. These strikes caused a lot of people in the South-East to resort
to learning trade and other, for the fear of not wasting their precious time
idling while the strikes lasted. What name in Igbo should be used on such
people as Almajiri in the South-West, because their numbers are also on the
increase?
Today, the North is using such language as “the North is
impoverished” to attract self-pity and incite vicious mindset on the youths
from that region and they are in the mode of applying negative aggression on
the rest Nigerians as if the poverty of anybody in Nigeria is a collective
contribution; the Northern buddies in the many foreign embassies in Nigeria
have also joined the North in the sudden equivocal choir of “the North is
impoverished”.
But what many of these rabble-rousers of the North have
not taken their time to think before they firebrand the FG to see “the poverty
in the North” is that does Northerners not have Nomadic Education? When the
presidents from that region were ruling Nigeria placed a ban on the importation
of stockfish which was serving as the economic trade of Ndigbo and the so
called Almajiris were rearing their Alhajis’ cows and goats and they were
smiling to the bank with their incessant sells, no one realized that there was
“poverty in the North” and that they needed the conventional education. This
nation owes Ndigbo an apology.
The Northerners are cattlerearers just the same way the
Southerners are farmers and fishermen, but it takes individual effort to erode
poverty and come out of it. There was no special school for the Southerners to
get qualitative education. Instead the Southerners paid costly school fees to
get this education whereas the Northerners had all it took to get education but
they were in the decline of the offer and the government was going to their
house to beg them to come to school, yet to no avail. What the North will not
tell their foreign brainwashed acolytes is that the South today has been
devastated with all manner of pollution and emissions from oil companies and
industries precisely damaging the Niger Delta region in order to keep the
country moving. The people of Niger Delta have had their fishing seas and farm
lands polluted, yet no one is shouting and singing the chorus that the Niger
Delta is ravaged by poverty and sicknesses as a result of their ravaged
environment.
Nigeria has pampered the North so much. This has made the
region to look down on the rest Nigerians as if they are the true owners of
Nigeria. But no wonder it is “Born to Rule” on the Northerners logo, and
perhaps Born to die on the Southerners logo. Secretly they are praising two of
their own for getting for them 10 Islamic Banks and 400 Islamic/Almajiri
Schools. All these were gotten by their outcry for pity, to the expense of
Nigeria. They have today gotten these apart from the fact that they had since
been enjoying educationally disadvantage region programme. What this means is
that a child in the North seeking for admission into the higher institution is
liable to attain admission without even going through pre-tests to University
whereas those from the South are sometimes deprived of admission even when they
have glaring records that are supposed to give them admission.
Amaechi is right when he said that every child needs the
basic education, but one thing is that no one forces education on anybody. The
North today is enjoying Almajiri education free of charge whereas there are
disadvantaged children in the South who have no one to train them get the
qualitative education and there is no such free institution that will admit
them to fulfill their education dream. Are these sets of children in the South
not also impoverished? Is it because those in the South are not throwing bombs
that make the government thinks that all are well with/in the South? Go to the
motor parks at night, you will see them.
The North is also talking about the creation of Northern
Ministry after the 35years they have ruled Nigeria without any checks and
balance? One wonders why Nigeria is into such unintelligible Almajiri Education
Programme without regard to the outbursts of the North that Western Education
is a sin and they are fighting to subdue it through the act of killing innocent
Nigerians in the North through the act of terrorism. Has the FG not heard that
they have started to bomb the ‘Western schools’ and are killing professors,
lecturers and students? Did the FG not hear that they killed Youth Corpers
during the 2011 presidential election? Yet, they are shouting that “the North
is impoverished”. Hogwash!
Governor Amaechi who is not versatile in Hausa or Arabic
languages, out of the same ‘self-pity’ syndrome the Northerners have gradually
implanted in the unsuspecting Nigerians, defined Almajiri to mean beggar, but
the sincere ones among the Northerners would tell anyone who cared to listen
that Almajiri means a student or a scholar under the tutelage of a learned
teacher. And when the North and the marooned foreign associates cry of “the
North is impoverished” they refuse to tell the world that it is not only the
Moslem children there that are roving the street and are fed by the Alhajis,
the Christian ones are left unattended to
by the Muslim Northern governors.
Should this also be of concern to the Federal government? Again, would
the Christian children, Traditional Children and their Muslim fellows attend
and study in the same Almajiri Education Programme?
It is laughable when the issue of Almajiri defines the
meaning of “equal opportunity” by Northern leaders. They should tell Nigerians
what the presidents who came from that region did with the sovereign wealth of
Nigeria for 35years. The FG should be sure the North needs the school it is
being given, because it may end up spending Trillions of naira on this free
education yet no positive result would be recorded after. On the other hand,
Amaechi might be right in his quest to change the name of Almajiri Education
Programme to something civil, so that the program can go round the whole
Nigeria as special Education Intrusion Programme (EIP) by the FG. Anything
short of this is fraud against the Southerners.
We wish Amaechi the best.
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