All this bla-bla, what has this got to do with Ahmadu Bello University’s Dress Code? Plenty, for that was what set my mind in retrospect, in a reverie and the flashbacks of Uncle K came down unbolting the flood gates of memory, the success memory of Uncle K as he restored the greatest University South of Sahara back to the track of eminence. His success story? Just one. He never attacked personality (people) but the acts, not character assassinating but character rehabilitation, cleansing and not dusting, not allowing weeds to grow unchecked but constantly weeding to keep academic sanity and not to spare some toes and molest others. His watch words were equality, equity and justice before the law.

Sorry, what has this got to do with A.B.U’s Dress Code? A lot. The appalling act by the students – abducting, threatening a Dean of a faculty in the University was as a result of the A.B.U Dress Code. On Tuesday, July 21st, 2005, the peace and tranquility Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was almost punctured with a single strike. A sad incidence, an unpalatable tale to both the storyteller and the listener, occurred. On that fateful day, some irate students – “Muslim Radical”, broke into a faculty office, burst open the Dean’s Office, attacked, assaulted and held the Dean hostage for some time. What a gory tale! In a university!! The students, it was later gathered, acted in such a horrific manner because the Dean was alleged to have passed some obscene remarks to a female student dressed fully in Islamic attire. This, the students felt was a direct attack to the Islamic Faith and that sacrilege was too much to bear and as such the Dean must be taught a lesson or two! As I said, it was an unpalatable tale. But the question is who was wrong and who was right? Does it matter? “It is not who is right but what is right that matters. Is it right that we should always squabble among ourselves, because we are too proud to efface our puny selves for the common good?” Nnamdi Azikiwe. What is of paramount importance to me and all serious minded students is the peace and tranquility that was threatened by that immature act of the students and the lack of tact and decorum exhibited by the Dean, if at all he, at his administrative capacity, a father, a moral guide and a Role-Model-Icon to the youth really did pass any comment on the dressing of the female student. It doesn’t matter whether it was on an Islamic, Catholic-Nun-Dress, or even on the half nude-dress-babes. After all it is a campus, ‘where everything goes’! Our concern is that the academic serene, the peace and tranquility the university is presently enjoying must not be punctured for us.

More so, this is the second time the matter of the Dress Code threatened the peace and tranquility of the university in one semester. The last was the incidence in the Faculty of Law, which paved way for demonstration in A.B.U. after a lapse that God knows how long. The issue in the Faculty of Law was put to rest when the threatened Lecturers teamed up, solidly backed up their colleague and collectively stood for their professional calling. The Faculty they said must uphold its standard Professional Dress Code for its students. I also salute their sense of consideration, when the enforcing law was said to be stricter for the 100 level and for subsequent admitted students, even though it is practiced across the streams. The in thing was that, the matter was put to rest because a Dress Code was put in place. Unlike the current issue at hand, it is worthy of note that, the university authority, of which the Dean is part and parcel, have failed to provide a Dress Code in the university. “Everything goes”, has been accepted as a dress culture in the university. Any attempt to debate on this is labeled as “wanting to Islamatise” A.B.U, Zaria.

As a Muslim, am sure had the students reported that matter to the right quarters, the Muslim Brothers in the University would have naturally taken this up with the Dean following the Islamic injunction of abiding by law and order until otherwise, within the frame work of the statutes of the University or even following the dictates of the Nigerian Constitution. Such a statement by an elder, an academic and administrative officer of a Dean’s standing – my God. Does this need a label, whether in a democracy, an academic environment or a secular State? How can a father descend so low to make jest of a daughter decently- RELIGIOUSLY DRESSED? It was no doubt outrageous, it was absurd. “As the teachers of our young men and those who will set the standard of instruction here, you have a grave and heavy responsibility to bear. In your able and experienced hands rest the future standards of this university. You are responsible for teaching your students to be qualified in their fields but are also, and just as important, responsible for their alert minds, their good manners, and their high standard of behaviour.” Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. The good side of the story was that the Dean was said to have brazen it out, possibly having regained his sound fatherly and administrative manners which many have Vouchsafed of his personality, senses which he must have lost in the said “five minutes madness” which occurs to every man in twenty-four hours. His fatherly administrative sagacity must have been what saved the University from erupting once again. Thank God he was able to nip the matter in the bud and in the nick of time. The actual purpose of this piece was not the unsavoury remarks of the Dean, the childish manner in which the youth tried to assert their right, nor just recalling the good days of Uncle K. No. The purpose is to underscore the intent behind, underlying the remark, the action the students took and the actions or inactions of the University Authority’s stands. I was in the office of one of the most respected Dons in Political Science Department, when the issue was brought in and most of the people in the office were tilted towards one camp – labeling the students act as Islamic fundamentalist: that I disagreed in Toto. In order to pacify those of us that were Muslims, assertions were made to debunk any kind of dressing that will portray one as a Christian or Muslim, and that got me thinking. It sent me into vibrant frenzied cogitation. What is actually wrong in the young girl’s dressing? Islamic dress? This simply means that, she must have wore a hijab covering her feminine features, the extreme of such an Islamic dress is to add on a neck-cap, covering the face that gives a complete “Islamic dress”. On the other hand the “Christian dress” is the same with a minor difference of the length of body cover (hijab). This according to the majority is not approved! So what is the Dress Code that is approved? The Western dress code, for the male to tuck-in and belt-up trousers and knot in a tie, is that is what approved? Or the Hommy dresses of eye sore torn jeans, T-shirts of all sizes and all sorts of write-ups and make believe shoes? For the ladies – all sorts of bizarre dresses, with insalubrious names – spaghetti, body hug, darling you don’t know what you are missing, darling unzip me yourself, see through heaven, jean straight, show me your umbilical cord, arm-less, topless, show me your back, hell here I come and so on. Dresses without bra and panties, dresses that accentuate sexuality and dress that invite sexual harassment. These are dresses that are even in the Western culture strictly reserved as beach and stage wear, for sun bath and mostly for music and film showmanship. These are the dresses that the majority enjoy seeing, exhibiting our daughters and future wives to a two-third per cent nude. Is this the dress code that the University is upholding? No, the University does not have a Dress Code.

“…I have seen many thousands of human beings I have seen the Hausa woman and the bush Fulani woman in their classical robes. I have seen the Yoruba woman bathing in the Ogun, clad only in the natural clothing of her own dusky skin. I have seen the scantily – attired Gwari and Ibo woman, and the woman of the Bauchi highlands with her bunch of broad green leaves “behind and before”, and nothing else, save a bundle of wood or load of sorts on her head, or a hoe in her hand.……. Humanity which is of nature is, as nature herself, moral. There is no immodesty in nakedness which “knows not that it is naked.” The Kukuruku girl, whose only garment is a single string of beds round neck and waist, is more modest than your bond street dame clad in the prevailing fashion, suggesting nakedness." ( The Italics are mine). We have accepted this silence over the Dress Code from the university authority as a consent for ‘anything goes’. But is the university authority in fear of not ‘wanting to Islamatise’ the university, decided to accept ‘everything goes’ as a dress culture for the university? For the records, those of pro-western Dress Code, should be reminded that Islam have been part of the people of this environment for a thousand years before the advent of the western culture. And even the colonial masters “adopted the system of indirect rule in governing the North. This system guaranteed the Northerner the liberty to practice his religion and to retain his culture and tradition.” Usman, 2003. But the western culture was successfully “forcibly introduced in the south and the people had assimilated these deeply even before the conquest of the north began,” Usman, 2003. However, the colonial masters read the hand writing on the wall that any attempt to enforce their culture on a people with a civilization of a thousand years might be disastrous and abortive and the Hausas were left with their religion which prescribed their Dress Code. How possible then would it be, forty five years after the colonial masters have left, would anybody think that it would be a peace of cake to enforce a different Dress Code for these people? Attempting to succeed where the colonial masters failed? It will be a Herculean task because “most of us act, think and dream in terms of the norms and standards we have absorbed from the culture in which we are reared. That which our culture values; we value; that which our culture abhors, we abhor…..”, Webbler, 1977. Hofstede, (1980) puts it differently, “…the collective mental programming that these people have in common, the programming that is different from that of other groups; culture in this sense of collective mental programming is often difficult to change; because it has become crystallized to the institutions these people have built together”. In short, what is the university authority trying to do, to imitate the culture of the western universities? Are they not in the know that seasoned universities like Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard all have Dress Codes? And is it not natural that universities should grow as an outreach of the societies in which they are sited? Was this not what Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto (November 23, 1963), had in mind when he reminded us that, “we are, as well, the university of Northern Nigeria, and our character must reflect the needs, the traditions, the social and intellectual heritage of the land in which we live. ….. in seeking help from outside it is not our intention to copy a standard pattern of university from the United Kingdom, from the Commonwealth, or from the United States of America. We must develop our own pattern to suit our present background and our future needs. Our University must grow out of our own soil. We shall be truly Nigerian institution and not the mirror image of some alien body”? Or is there an attempt to break up our heritage, undermine our culture, weaken social ties and subvert our dignity and modesty by digging the grave of our morality? Well, it is easy, nothing is easier, and it may be accomplished with the best of intentions, by those who are thinking of respecting the multi-ethno-religious setting and freedom of expression of an academic environment to inflict more harm than good to our young intellectuals, future leaders, statesmen and intelligentsia. Well let us be aware that the worthies’ motives are often the most abysmal ignorance of doing harm.

Christian or Islamic Dress Code is not my exclusive preserve, all I am saying, is that there should be decency and modesty in dressing. And no group should be singled out for castigation, in an environment where ‘everything goes’. The three Dress Cods, Christian, Islamic and western fashion, for the female in A.B.U. should be properly assessed and placed within the framework of sanity. In fact, this was where Uncle K failed me! For all the years he spent cleansing and sanitising the university, leaving indelible footprints in the sand of time, he left without addressing these outrageous alien dressings in A.B.U. But then Uncle K is but human. One can forgive one oversight. More so, building is a continuous process, somebody somewhere should be courageous to face stark realities and act graciously without the fear of losing reputation, for certainly, posterity is always there to judge man! When shall we come across such a man again, who despite all odds, shall preserve our ladies, our future wives, the future mothers of our Statesmen and leaders of tomorrow, to preserve, strengthen and safeguard their decencies and refinements in A.B.U., not only of northern Nigerian standard but indeed that of Nigerian and of African? These beautiful dames in Ahmadu Bello University should be groomed to preserve, protect and project the universally accepted African Womanhood! Let these brainy, angelic babes of Ahmadu Bello University be turned into paragons of modesty and decency where the glory of God dwells. Groom these beauties, the pride of Ahmadu Bello University into jewels, princesses and queens adorning the landscape of the world.