Continued from last week…
By Prof. Abubakar Aliyu Liman
As far back as the 16th century, the idea of education for enlightenment and human refinement is not new to the diverse inhabitants populating the territories of Zamfara. Two existing legacies of knowledge production and dissemination were recorded in history. These were the Yandoto and Sokoto Jihad traditions of scholarship. Centuries before the establishment of Sokoto Caliphate, Yandoto was a famous center of learning that used to attract scholars and learners of Islamic sciences from other Sahel communities of West Africa and the Middle East. Yandoto was said to have hosted an ancient university of Islamic learning similar to the one at Timbuktu in Mali. It was even equated with Timbuktu in terms of its prominence as the center of higher learning, but unfortunately it had “received little attention from scholars and researchers”. Perhaps, the lack of scholarly attention on the history of the ancient center of learning at Yandoto is due largely to the disappearance of manuscripts produced by Yandoto scholars during their encounter with the Jihadists. According to S.A. Albasu, Yandoto has even produced outstanding female scholars in the years before the emergence of Sokoto Caliphate.
The other more visible legacy was the scholarly output generated by the 19th century Sokoto Jihad. Hundreds if not thousands of manuscripts were left behind by Shehu bin Fodio, his brother Abdullahi bin Fodio, Shehu’s son, Muhammadu Bello, and daughter, Nana Asma’u, and of course their teeming scholar-followers across the expanse of Sokoto Caliphate. During their time, there was no aspect of social and spiritual life of the people that the Sokoto Jihad leaders did not comment upon in their writings. The whole purpose was to provide guidance to the community of Muslim faithful. Precisely, we are here dealing with a typical instance of what an educated and enlightened leadership can do to transform society for the better.
However, the difference between the Yandoto and Sokoto intellectuals is in the question of social commitment. While the Sokoto scholars were revolutionary in terms of their commitment to the transformation of society, the Yandoto scholars were politically detached from society. Their main concern was dissemination of knowledge to individuals that came to learn at the Yandoto center of learning.
But when the British colonialists conquered the territories of Sokoto Caliphate at around 1903, as Achebe would put it, it was not as if they met a community that had learnt about education and its value to society for the first time.
Already, there was a system of education in place that was set to transform society from the perspective of Islamic ideology and values. The establishment of western system of education by colonial officials only added a new dimension to an already existing Islamic one.
Organizationally, the western system is strictly formal while the other is less formal or even informal despite attempts to integrate the two systems from the point in which colonial control retreated to the background. Over the years, however, as the Islamic system of education narrowed down to attend to moral and spiritual issues, colonial education is right from its onset socially oriented. The dichotomy between the two systems can be misleading considering the fact that all systems of education are target specific, such as meeting the needs of society. One thing that is certain, societies that develop interest in broader pursuit of knowledge stand a better chance of opening up gates for unimaginable human progress. To this day and age, the two systems have complementarily co-existed with one another throughout Muslim northern Nigeria.
Northern Muslim leaders have all along upheld the significance of exposing Muslim children to the two systems of education just to ensure that future generations have not been totally alienated from their Islamic roots.
Zamfara state was created at a time when the entire states of the North had witnessed steady decline in education. It reached an alarming rate in which some stakeholders had to publicly express concern. Ahmadu Bello University Zaria authorities decided to take up the gauntlet. Arewa House was directed to organize a conference in which the best minds, competences and practitioners in the education industry from the North were assembled to address the problems identified with education in northern Nigeria.
Zamfara state was created at a time when the entire states of the North had witnessed steady decline in education. It reached an alarming rate in which some stakeholders had to publicly express concern. Ahmadu Bello University Zaria authorities decided to take up the gauntlet. Arewa House was directed to organize a conference in which the best minds, competences and practitioners in the education industry from the North were assembled to address the problems identified with education in northern Nigeria.
This in fact culminated into Northern States Education Summit that was held at Arewa House on Saturday 29th January 2000, a year after the 1999 transition to democracy in Nigeria. In relative terms, five broad problems have been identified as most crucial factors militating against the development of education in northern Nigeria. These are (1) low level of enrolment at all levels of education; (2) infrastructure decay; (3) inadequate funding; (4) manpower shortages in schools; and (5) lack of transparency in the management of education institutions. However, after extensive deliberations a realistic action plan was designed for the consideration of the entire northern states.
The aspect of the Education Summit Report that interests me most is the variability of performance ratings of states were statistically captured in tables and graphs. Performance index indicates graphically a horrifying tale in the core North. In terms of enrolment the picture is not anything to write home about. Enrolment distribution in technical colleges between 1996 and 1998 is abysmal. Zamfara, Jigawa, Nassarawa and Yobe states occupied the lowest levels on the graphs; while at the same time states were bracketed in the distribution of technical education teachers. As for the distribution of teachers in colleges of education by state, Zamfara state is almost the lowest.
Zamfara state is the least in the number of candidates that applied to colleges of education and polytechnics across Nigeria in 1997/1998 academic session. UME application statistics showed that of all candidates by state, Zamfara has perpetually occupied the bottom of the graphs between 1996 and 1998. Zamfara state together with Yobe state came last in UME admissions into faculties of arts and sciences by states in 1998. In the same year, the state also came last in UME admission statistics of all candidates by faculty and state of origin and gender. All the UME statistics were culled from annual Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board Report.
Of course, from my monitoring of UME performance index between 1998 to date the deplorable examination performances continued to remain unchanged. The same appalling statistics could be seen when one looks at the performance index of national examination bodies such as West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO). According to data from Daily Post and Punch, Zamfara state recorded poor performance in both 2014 and 2015 WAEC. The state also recorded less than 10% pass that is 7.47% of the total number of students enrolled for the examination. The state was only slightly ahead of Gombe and Yobe. While the 2015 report ranked Zamfara 35th position out of 36 states of the federation. In 2016, the state was second to the last ahead of Yobe state.
To be fair to the young state, there were commendable initiatives made by successive regimes to arrest the awful performance of the education sector. The first attempt was under the leadership of Ahmed Sani Yarima who set up a committee. The committee was made up of mainly members from the academia under the chairmanship of Professor U.M. Chafe, with Professors L.S. Bilbis, I. Galadima, A.G. Yahaya as members. That committe assembled massive data on the state of education in the state. The more than 600 page report produced by the committee has made far-reaching recommendations on the best measures for revamping the education sector in the state. After assurances of full implementation by the governor, the report was however left to collect dust in the archives of Ministry of Education. The next time another effort was embarked upon to review the state of education in Zamfara was between 2012 and 2013 under the leadership of Abdul-Aziz Yari. Another committee of experts comprising of scholars of Zamfara state origin teaching in Nigerian universities was set up. In writing their recommendations, they disaggregated the report into primary, secondary and tertiary education.
Information emanating from stakeholders in the state’s education sector ranged from the failure of the state government to see the need to invest a significant proportion of its budget to education to not seeing the value of education in the development of the state at all. I consider this as part of the general apathy of state and society (government and people) towards education, without which of course people will not continue to remain aloof to poor treatment of education. As a matter of fact, only less than 15% of the state budget is devoted to education. This is far short of the 26% of budgetary allocation recommended by United Nations. Other problems are more structural in nature. They include dilapidated infrastructure, lack of instructional materials, scheme of reward and motivation, professionalization of teaching, training and retraining programs, adherence to curriculum, and effective monitoring and evaluation. Quality assurance mechanisms need to be enforced. By way of illustration, there is this overwhelming impression that in Zamfara state teachers do not strictly adhere to the specifications of the curriculum in the processes of teaching. Many teachers go to classroom to teach whatever they like without anybody evaluating their performance. But some of these teachers were paid less than N10, 000 per month. Some schools have serious scarcity of teachers in core subject areas. In a number of schools in the rural areas only one teacher could be seen teaching all subjects, all arms or all classes at the same time.
Under these circumstances, how do we expect good performance from school going kids in Zamfara state? The state government needs to wake up to its responsibility. State of emergency has to be declared on education. There should be desire and will on the part of government to pay closer attention to education, and to embark on genuine radical reforms of the education industry. People that have no interest in education should have no business spearheading its institutions. Private sector needs to be mobilized to invest in education to complement government efforts. Sir Ahmadu Bello Sardauna had during his own time concluded that for the North to make any meaningful headway, “the challenges of the future will require the highest academic standard of any country in the world”.
Mr Liman, a professor of Comparative Literature and Popular Culture at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, presented this paper at a roundtable organized by ZAMFARA CIRCLE on June 27, 2017, in Gusau, Zamfara State
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