The North has failed to learn some useful lessons from its supposedly political and economic rival, the South. The West had embraced western education during the colonial days...
From time immemorial, northern children from Muslim backgrounds were separated from home and ‘deposited’ with a religious scholar for mentoring in Islsmic way of life. Their fathers would pay for their feeding and accommodation. However they kept the girls indoors.
Overtime, schooling has become a sub-set of general and wider education. While schooling which has a duration and institutionalised curriculum, may be restricted to the four walls of the citadel of learning, education is a life long affair; from womb to tomb, and from birth to death. For decades, the North has been confronted by its self-inflicted cultural practice, while hiding under religious inclination.
In the fifties, the Premier of the West, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, institutionalised free education programme, despite the financial constraints. They grew up on the streets and became travellers without predetermined destinations, moving from one state to the other in the North. During elections, these under-aged were recruited as bonafide voters and thugs.
They are usually armed with knives and transistor radios. But, generally, they were peaceful, until recently where there were worries over the invasion of herdsmen. They are monitored by parents, uncles, cousins and other relations under the extended family system. Even, if they would not go to school, they accompany their parents to the farms, shops and markets.
Therefore, the gap in education would breed acrimony, misunderstanding and rancor on the floor of the House. In fact, in the House of Representatives of 50s, Northern members who were university graduates were few. In contrast, 95 per cent of legislators from the South were university graduates. Awo believed that the children that were not properly brought up will become criminals who will terrorise society. Now, they are more than that. Fears are rife that they have become vectors of pestilence.
In the Second Republic, the West built on the achievements of the Action Group government by implementing freedom education programme at all levels.
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