Upholding The Legacy Of Late Mallam Ahmadu Coomassie

By

Shehu Sada

yawaleshehu@yahoo.com

 

 

An Essay In Memory Of Late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman

 

We are a people obsessed with the present the here and now, consequently the past hardly serves as a yardstick in the conception, planning and execution of public policies. It was during the course of a research that I stumbled upon the achievements of Late Mallam Ahmadu Coomassie, inadvertently. He was the pioneer adult education officer in Katsina province whose achievements became the Hallmark for Northern Nigeria and the rest of the country as a whole. It was as a result of a change in colonial policy during the second world war that adult literacy education began in the British coloniest. By 1945 Mr. C K Brooke – Hunt the Katsina provincial education officer sent Mallam Ahmadu Coomassie to Kaduna College to learn how to organise adult education classes. By 1946 four classes were opened in Katsina township with the Late Emir of Katsina Usman Nagogo personally supervising them. By 1949 when Major Carpenter visited from Lagos he suggested the formation of a headquarters which was sited at Kankiya. The village head scribes were the instructors in their villages, after being taught, and the process was repeated in all the twenty two districts in the area of Katsina. The effort at Katsina became the standard for other provinces, and by 1953 – 1954 all the provinces had joined the effort. By 1961 about 5 million adults in Northern Nigeria had benefited, out of the figure about 2 million could read and write, while the rest could only read. At its inception Mallam Ahmadu Coomassie had singly registered and taught over five thousand adults in his classes between 1953 to 1954 alone.

         

This can best be appreciated if one carefully examine the keen foresight and vision of such leaders. Education constitutes the bedrock of human existence, and under it lies all social and technological advancements. Education is the systematization of human knowledge, which is an outcome of gathered information that forms the essence of human spirit and advancement. The development of education is the development of humanity itself, underlying this fact is literacy, which is simply the ability to read and write, in other words the reduction of verbal message or information to written symbols, which are vocalized and universalized. Education to the society is therefore not one of the key components to social advancement and progress, it is the only key, it is this appreciation that led to such efforts, by visionaries like Late Mallam Ahmadu Coomassie, Usman Nagogo and a host of other contemporaries within that era. Fully realising that Northern Nigeria cannot measure to the standards demanded by the Nigerian federation without a sound educational base, it is only sound education that can guarantee social equality and progress.

         

A recent study carried out under the auspices of Bayero University Kano (2005), assessing the impact of mass literacy in Katsina State covering the period 1999 to 2003, showed that out of a projected population of about six million, there were only one hundred and thirty thousand, four hundred and seventy-seven (130,477) beneficiaries. In fact about forty thousand out of the total was from 1998, and the phenomenal increase of 1998 was due to the United Nations development programme intervention. Therefore, the actual figure of beneficiaries from the State adult education agency within the four-year period is below one hundred thousand. A sample of one thousand, five hundred and sixty-five (1,565) respondents/beneficiaries were interviewed, constituting 1.2% of the total. On a range of questions regarding curricula, 76.4% chose basic literacy or reading and writing, 95.3% said that basic literacy had increased both their national consciousness and political awareness, and 96.1% said the programme has spurred their interest in western education, and shall send their children to school.

         

We can best appreciate the situation when a comparative assessment is made between Katsina State and Anambra State. This is based on a paper written for UNESCO (7 – 8 March 2002) by Rashid Aderinoye, “Literacy Assessment Practices in Nigeria.” Anambra has six hundred and ten thousand, eight hundred and fifty-three (610,853) adults (male and female) within the age of fifteen to twenty four years, and has a literacy rate within that age bracket of 93.1%. Katsina State has six hundred and fifty-four thousand, two hundred and ninety-six (654,296) adults, (male and female) within the age of fifteen to twenty four years, it has a literacy rate of 48.4%. This is in spite of the double decker primary schools being built by the State Primary Education Board. You can even link this figure to the national poverty rate. The National bureau of Statistics report of 2004 carried out in the Weekly Trust of October 15 – 21, gave the Northwestern part of Nigeria 71.2%, and the Southeastern part 26.7%. In simple terms out of every group of ten people in Katsina seven to eight of them are desperately poor, whereas in Anambra State out of the same figure you have only three people, why?

         

Katsina State has an arable land, conducive for agriculture, open and spacious. The State and Local Governments have received funds in excess of one hundred billion Naira from the federation account; there is four to five large bodies of stagnant water conducive for irrigation and an abundant manpower, above all it is peaceful Anambra lacks all this advantages of space, political peace, and large bodies of stagnant water for irrigation purposes, and yet…

         

In a lecture “Katsina State in the Nigerian federation: The basic realities.” Late Dr. Usman put across this point “In the case of Katsina State, the power, wealth, fame and glory exercised by a handful of military officers, politician and civil servants from the State is used to cover up these harsh realities. In fact it is as if the millions of men, women and children living in Katsina State, whose lives make up these realities do not exist or that their wretched existence has been substituted for the opulent lives of their “famous sons.” There is a creeping criminal conspiracy by the elite in Katsina to keep quiet as long as their interests are catered for. We must as a people insist on the right leadership, at least by even demanding what is the agenda for our aspiring politicians in 2007. Our salvation lies in having a sound education policy and emphasis on dry season agriculture. Katsina State can only solve its problems of mass youth unemployment, food self-sufficiency, industralisation, and even electric power generation by exploiting fully the idle bodies of waster we have in the State. By bringing about three hundred square kilometers under irrigation, forming co-operative societies, the creation of agro-allied industries, constitute the only salvation to our predicament. The job of government is to create wealth amongst its citizens and not to save money.