A Governor and His Illiterate People

By

Mohammed Ngala

kashimcampaign@yahoo.com

 

 

Governor Ali Modu-Sheriff of Borno State had a disturbing revelation for the world the other day: 95 per cent of the citizens of Borno State cannot read nor write. If this wild and irresponsible claim had been made by an outsider, one would have expected the governor to use all facilities available to him to protest on behalf of his people. The governor would have been expected to challenge this ignorant claim, request for empirical evidence, interrogate the data and query its methodology.

 

 But this group slander on Borno people was committed by the governor himself. It is amazing that a governor would heap gratuitous insults on his own people, the people who supposedly voted him into office, and the people he should cater for, defend and protect. But anyone familiar with Governor Modu-Sheriff’s brand of politics would not be surprised. For him and his ilk, the people do not matter. In his understanding, his people are not citizens, but mere subjects. And because they are conceived as mere subjects, they are to be insulted and despised, not only within the confines of the state, but also before the whole world. This is simply mind-boggling.

 

The governor made this disparaging comment about his own people while receiving a team of broadcasters in Maiduguri recently. He said he was unperturbed by the few negative stories written against him in the newspapers because 95 percent of the people of Borno State are illiterates. Perhaps it would be fair for the governor to take on the newspapers that might have rubbed him on the sore side. Perhaps it would also be fair for the governor to present his own side of the story and show, with concrete evidence, that the newspaper reports were not factual. All these would have been decent and decorous. But to proceed from declaring newspapers as worthless and move briskly to denouncing your own people as ignorant and uneducated is simply egregious. It is totally unbecoming of a governor.

 

A point needs to be made quickly. This intervention is not informed by the reasoning that certain things that should not be said in front of outsiders. No, not that. It is simply that the governor’s claim is far from being factual. If the governor is to be believed, that means only 200, 000 people can read and write out of the four million people in Borno State. This simply cannot be true. The number of students presently enrolled in the various institutions of learning in the state will be close to that figure. So does it mean that nobody has been educated in Borno State since colonial times? Incredible!

 

 For the purposes of argument, let’s assume that the governor’s claim that 95 percent of Borno people are illiterate is factual. But is this what you want to gleefully announce to the whole world? Is this what you want to play politics with? It is also important to ask: if only 5 per cent of Borno people are literate, what has the governor done in the last four years to correct such a serious anomaly? The straightforward answer is this: nothing. In the last four years, no significant investment has been made to improve the quality of human capital in the state. The governor paid the paltry bursary allowance to Borno indigenes only once since he came to office in 2003. He has not constructed a single block of classroom since 2003. And for months, Ramat Polytechnic has been shut down because the governor will not yield to the modest demands of the striking lecturers.

 

What can be deduced from all this is that you have a governor who will rather that his people are not educated. He would either lie about the literacy rate in the state or be in denial about the educational achievements of Borno people or implement a deliberate policy of deepening the emerging educational crisis in the state. As far back as the Kanem-Bornu Empire, the Borno people were renowned for learning and scholarship. This reputation was transferred to the colonial and post-colonial era, with indigenes of Borno occupying the highest echelon in the civil service, military and other professions, not only in Northern Nigeria but in the whole country.

 

At a point however, things started falling apart, with dwindling investment in both the hardware and software of education. Classrooms are over-crowded, blown roofs are not repaired, students study under trees, teachers are stretched too thin and books are not available. With this sorry situation, the progress made by Borno State in the field of education is in dire danger of being rolled back. One would have expected a governor to see this danger and set to work to avert it.

 

The governor has done none of this. But to expect the governor to do otherwise will be to expect too much of a governor who has limited education himself. And because of this deficiency, he would want to mould his people in his own image. Besides, his brand of politics would thrive only in the desert of illiteracy. He would prefer a people he could lead by the nose, and ride like beasts of burden. He would despise and want to obliterate educated people because they can ask questions, they can make informed choices at the polls, and they will insist that they are not subjects. Governor Modu-Sheriff obviously would not feel at home with this kind of people.

 

This is the only way one can make a sense of the governor’s legendary disdain for education. The governor’s disdain is, however, not limited to the field of education. He has disdain for the people. This is evident in his appalling record as a governor. Despite the enormous resources that have poured into the coffers of the state in the past four years, the state has nothing to show for it. Rather than implement programmes that will benefit the people, he takes pleasure in throwing money at them, then speeding off, as if his people are leperous beggars. This shows utmost disrespect for the people. The Borno people have never had it so bad.

 

But will the Borno people allow this disrespect to stand and stomach the governor’s endless insults? No. And they will state this very forcefully in the approaching day of reckoning.

 

*Ngala lives in Maiduguri, Borno State