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Time To Redefine Our Mindset By Solomon Iliya
A brief journey into history will show how the sorry state of the “North” came to be. When the missionaries landed on the shores of Nigeria, they were followed by the colonialists. The missionaries opened hospitals and schools as a means of reaching out to the “pagan” tribes”. The colonialists decided to ban the missionaries from entering the bulk of the “Northern” cities because of the sensitivity of the rulers to the introduction of another religion to the population of the “North” especially the Muslim dominated areas. These missionaries could only interact with the so called primitive pagan tribes that were not as at then exposed to Islam. However, the colonial authorities acted out of their own selfish interests. In Yoruba land where Islam had made in roads, the same missionaries did not suffer such restrictions. Of course, the Yoruba Muslims took up the gauntlet and established their own missionary schools where their children were exposed to Islamic education alongside Western education. Thus organizations such as Nawar-Ud-Deen, Ansar Ud-Deen and Ahmaddiya opened schools to meet their peculiar religious and education requirements. What did we have in the North? Nothing! The same people who did not want their subjects to be exposed to another religion sent their children the same Christian missionary schools they did not want their subjects to send their children to. We know of a prominent former minister from the caliphate who had his education in the court of Saint George! Likewise the heir to another prominent ruling house in the North attended Baptist High School in Jos. Yet the Northern masses were misinformed by the same ruling class that Western education was akin to proselytizing them to Christianity.
The consequence today is what we are seeing. A highly illiterate Northern population who ordinarily would have lifted standard of living in the North to at least a comparable level with the South. These people had rather have these youths roam the streets as “almajiris” who do not even get the benefit of the Islamic education was used as an excuse to deprive them of attending school where they would also have gotten the same Islamic education. Thus they serve as ready fodder for the kind of reaction we are seeing after the recent Presidential elections which have served to improve Nigeria’s image abroad.
With all respect to Islam and the teeming Muslim faithful in Nigeria, I ask this question, how come the southern Muslims do not have the “almajiri” system if it is an injunction in Islam? We travel across the country but it is only in the North that we see this syndrome of these innocent young children who are far removed from the positive influence of their families at this tender and impressionable stage of their lives begging in almost every public place when they should be in school. They are then exposed to vices that are better imagined the thought of.
Apparently, knowledge is power and our Northern elites prefer to keep our population without enlightenment so they can use them for their own selfish ends while their own children relax in the comfort of the same Western countries that they try to convince us to despise. It was Lincoln that said “You can fool some of the people all of the time, you may fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” It is time to redefine our mind set! |