Posted on Feb 18, 2020
EMIR of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II has challenged leaders in the North to change the education narrative so as to save the region and the country.
Katsina State Governor Aminu Masari, whose state is battling bandits, said education is the panacea to criminality and killings.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan added his voice to the call for mass education in the North, saying 14 million out-of-school-children in the region is a clear danger.
The Emir and the Senate President spoke in Kaduna while Masari spoke when he received a presidential condolence delegation in Katsina on Monday.
The Kaduna event was a ceremony to mark the 60th birthday of Governor Nasir EL-Rufai.
The emir said the North will destroy itself, if it does not address the challenges of poverty, millions of out of school children, malnutrition, drug problem and the Boko Haram insurgency.
The Emir explained that no leader of the North could afford to be happy in the face of the multifarious challenges confronting the region.
He lamented that 87 per cent of poverty in Nigeria is in the north with millions of children out of school. He said nine states in the North contribute almost 50 per cent of the entire malnutrition burden in Nigeria. “There is drug problem, Almajiri problem and Boko Haram problem in the North.”
He urged leaders of the region to move away from doing things the old way, which had produced the same negative results but should invest in education, nutrition and primary healthcare.
The emir also cautioned against continuous reliance in quota system and federal character to get jobs at the expense of other parts of the country which are busy educating their own children and turning out graduates.
He said: “When we talk about birthday, we talk about happiness. Just last week, someone asked me, are you happy? And I said I am not. And the person was surprised. The truth is, nobody who is a leader in the Northern Nigeria today can afford to be happy. You cannot be happy with about 87 per cent of poverty in Nigeria being in the North. You can’t be happy with millions of Northern children out of school. You can’t be happy with nine states in the North contributing almost 50 per cent of the entire malnutrition burden in the country. You can’t be happy with the drug problem, you can’t be happy with the Boko Haram problem. You can’t be happy with political thuggery. You can’t be happy with all the issues; the Almajiri problem that we have.
“So, we wish Nasir a happy birthday, but we do not want him to be happy as a leader. Because you are happy when you think you have reached a state of delivering and taking your people to where you want them to be.
“Now, because of the condition of Northern Nigeria, it is almost correct now to say that, if you are seen as normal, if you are a governor in the North or a leader in the North, and you are seen as normal in the sense that you continue to do what your predecessors have been doing, doing the same thing, which has been normalised, then, there is something wrong with you, you are part of the problem.
“The real change in the North will come from those who are considered mad people, because you look around and say if this is the way, we have been doing things, and this is where we have ended up, maybe we need to do things differently. If we have populated the government with middle-aged men, maybe we need to try younger people, maybe we need to try women. If we have spent our money and time on physical structures, maybe we need to invest more in education of our children. Maybe we need to invest more in nutrition. Maybe we need to invest more in primary healthcare.
“And the truth is, if you look at what Nasir is doing in Kaduna, with 40 per cent of his budget in education that is the only thing that is going to save the North. I know that, when we say these things, they don’t go down well.