NIGERIA: Of a Political Mandate and the True Essence of Leadership: The Papa Awo 1952 Free Education Policy Experiment and Barr Alex Ehi Aidaghese's Integrative Model, adapted from his Harvard University Class Presentation, Fall 2002 , March 18, 2019

It is not where the President comes from, but the values he shares and the visions he impacted.

As a Nigerian, the next time you agitate for the turn of your state, tribe, region, or someone of a similar faith or belief system to produce or be the next President of Nigeria, remember the pictures attached below.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his Action Groups political party eliminated what you are seeing in the picture below throughout the old Western Region and Mid-West between 1952 and 1956.

President Mohammadu Buhari and APC won a popular progressive mandate in 2015, but he turned it into a cabal-made mandate. And made Asiwaju, the architect, the brain-power of the mandate mere spectator in the evolving clannish enterprise.

Today, things have fallen apart and the center is no longer holding on strong. I warned them (the power behind the scene) more than a year ago that greed and an uncontrolled appetite for power at the center will make them forfeit it all. And that's the stage we're in right now.

Every Friday evening, most American members of Congress would travel home to their respective constituencies. We cannot say the same of most members of the Nigerian National Assembly. They no longer have a home or constituency to go to. Abuja has become a fortified enclave. That's not power to the people. And it certainly is not democracy.

This picture is from Bilbis Primary School, Faskari LGA, Katsina State, courtesy of NAIJA MUST WORK AGAIN.

MOVING FORWARD

The Obafemi Awolowo Formula - A Pragmatic Approach - IS Highly Recommended. As a Prelude, the Training of Teachers overrides every other consideration. It Comes First. That was what Papa Awo and His Great Men - Visionary Men, with Bold Ideas - did in the Western Region and my Mid-West Region, beginning in 1952.

Please, find below some excerpts from a paper written by S. Ademola Ajayi, titled "THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE PRIMARY EDUCATION SCHEME IN WESTERN NIGERIA, 1952-1966: AN ANALYSIS."

"The Action Group Party led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo won the first election to the Western House of Assembly in 1952. In his first budget speech, Chief Awolowo (who functioned then as the Regional Minister for Local Government and as well the unofficial Leader of Government Business) made it clear to the members of the House that his government would give top priority to education, among other things, as far as that budget would allow. He spelt this out as a basic principle by which his party was to be guided. “As he stressed in later years, “as far as possible, expenditure on services which tend to the welfare and health and education of the people should be increased at the expense of any expenditure that does not answer to the same test” (Awolowo 1960:263). In July of the same year (1952), the Minister of Education for the Western Region, Chief S. O. Awokoya, presented a comprehensive set of proposals calling for a free, universal, and compulsory education otherwise known as the Universal Primary Education (U.P.E.) for the Western Region by January 1955 (Awokoya’a Proposal 1952). To make such a programme possible without lowering standards drastically, the minister included in his proposal a massive teacher-training programme, the expansion of teacher-training facilities and secondary schools, the introduction of secondary technical education, and Secondary Modern schools (Western House of Assembly Debates: 30 July 1952). This was the prelude to the birth of what Babs Fafunwa (1974:168) has described as “the boldest and perhaps the most unprecedented educational scheme in Africa South of the Sahara” as an ample demonstration of the Western Regional government’s whole-hearted commitment to the vital interest of her subjects."

"The Launching and Implementation of the Scheme With the introduction of Awokoya’s proposal, the Western Nigerian government began to make a series of preparations from July 1952 to December 1954 to meet the January 1955 deadline. Among other measures, there was a massive teacher-training programme put in place to complement the existing one. Similarly, facilities for secondary schools were expanded while the pre-1955 period also witnessed the introduction of secondary technical education and secondary modern schools. As planned by the government, the Free Education scheme was formally introduced on 17 January 1955. “The launching of this scheme”, says Fajana, “was a milestone in the educational history of Nigeria.” A remarkable feature of the educational reform of this era was the rapid numerical growth of schools at all levels–primary, secondary (modern and grammar) as well as tertiary. Teacher training institutions were equally expanded, all with the aim of translating the proposal of the government into reality. The greatest expansion of this period was at the primary school level. Thus, the number of primary schools rose from 3,550 in 1952 to 6,274 by the end of 1954. By 1955, the figure had risen to 6,407. By the end of 1958, the number of primary schools had risen as high as 6,670."

In 1952 when Awokoya presented his historic proposal before the Western House of Assembly, the number of children at school in the region then was 381,000. The total number of children of school age by then was estimated at 1,146,000. Going by that estimate, the number of children not at school, therefore, was about 765,000 or 66.75 percent of children of school age. During the first six years of Free Universal Primary Education, there were increases in both boys’ and girls’ enrollment. This was to be expected though not to the extent to which it did occur. In the 1954 school year, 456,600 pupils were attending primary schools in Western Nigeria but when the scheme was launched in 1955 January, 811,432 children turned up, making an increase of 354, 832 over the figure of the enrollment for the previous year. These figures represented a jump from 35 percent to 63 percent of the 5-14-year-old."

Almajiri: Overcoming A National Scourge.

The Integrative Educational Model: Towards Bridging the Educational Gap Between North and South -January 02, 2012

The educational policy selfishly designed to frustrate poor southern families who couldn't afford school fees in the 70s has succeeded in creating generations of uneducated, easily manipulated religious extremists in the North – a cesspool for Boko Haram adherents and a recruitment reservoir for those who want to impose a state religion on the rest of us.

What is required in the process is a coherent national policy at the elementary and secondary school levels, with the full support of the federal government, similar to what Action Groups and the Unity Party of Nigeria did in the Old Western Region and Bendel State. It was the same policy adopted in Kano State by the late Abubakar Rimi in the Second Republic – a grass-root popular educational initiative that won his administration a UNESCO Award.

Boko Haram is chickens coming home to roost. A child growing up should have a home, a government that cares, and the opportunity to make a choice about what to make of every religious doctrine contrary to the arrested development phenomenon within the Muslim faith in the northern part of the country.

There are Muslims within the Yoruba race; most of them are well-educated, while others are reasonably trained. The same is true of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia, and Iran, just to name a few countries. Why must Northern Nigeria be an exception? It's about the opportunity gap and the leadership philosophy, specifically, on the educational agenda of those trusted with government power and responsibilities in the northern region.

No matter the level of our understanding of the political, educational, and religious situation in the north, compulsory and free education for all children of school-going age from Elementary School to Grammar School level is the best way to go - it will go a long way in shaping the future of these abandoned children and how they embrace religious doctrine and distorted teaching.

THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL

Education is a right, and it is the best investment in the life of a child. Religion is a choice and should be treated that way. In the northern region, the majority of the children have grown up to believe that religion, and not education, is a fundamental right; the way, the truth, and the only avenue to emancipation or salvation.

A child capable of imbibing and reciting entire Quranic verses verbatim is capable of solving Quadratic Equations in a Mathematics class if he or she has the opportunity to take the class. No matter how you look at it, it’s all about effort and the leadership that you have and what their views are on education, equal rights, and egalitarianism.

Also, the Quran does not forbid the integration or teaching of the English Language, Arithmetic, Social Studies, and Sciences simultaneously with Islamic studies. Christian Missionaries in the Eastern Region and the Western Region - before and after our independence - perfected the integration approach successfully. It encompasses the Bible on the right hand, then English, Mathematics, History, Civic, Agriculture, and Social Sciences on the left hand. You can't beat that. The same can be replicated in the Northern region concerning religious studies side by side with western or popular education.

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The truth is you cannot force these children and their parents to send their wards to popular schools, but you can inculcate popular subjects or courses into their curriculum at the Islamic Learning Centers. In that case, the government would have to negotiate the modalities with the Imams and Sheiks who are managing those institutions. This paper is not by any means, arguing for the elimination of Islamic Schools. Rather, the government should work hand in hand with the proprietors of the Islamic Schools; upgrade the physical facilities and inculcate regular subjects or courses into their curriculum by bringing in additional teachers.

It is not too late to give it a try in the North and rescue these children from the stranglehold of feudal teaching that turned innocent souls into a carrier of IEDs and enemies of civilization. It's about the opportunity gap - accessibility.

We must not give up on educating these children because the informed citizenry is the most potent and decisive weapon against false beliefs and extorted indoctrination. No one would buy into the disproved belief in the North that Western education is forbidden, if regular education was part of his or her adolescence.

ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS

There must be a distinction to be made between religious purity and survival instinct through purposeful engagement in the national economy. God and Allah help those who help themselves. That is a fact and not just a saying. Our Islamic scholars, teachers, and leaders should be willing to embrace changes and accept the fact that religious freedom is most ennobling when combined with economic and social emancipation.

For instance, Senator Sani Yerima, representing Zamfara West Senatorial District at the National Assembly, Nigeria, was the one who escalated the application of the Sharia Law in the Nigerian legal system, when he was the Governor of Zamfara State for eight years. While the Senator, with unrestrained shrewdness and bravado, devoted so much time and energy to amplifying religious indoctrination in his domain, regular or western education was left at the mercy of Imams and Sheikhs.

Therefore, the first step in bridging the educational gap between the Northern region and Southern region of Nigeria is to rein in most of the State Governors and influential political leaders from the Northern region like Professor Jubrin Aminu to jettison their age-old feudal philosophy that perpetuates caste system.

The current helplessness of the less privileged in the North is disgraceful and cannot be sustained for too long. Therefore, government intervention academically at the very early stage in the lives of the affected children should be encouraged. It will go a long way in shaping their perception and understanding of religion, its social and moral impacts, and the extent of its limitations in the context of economics – the creation, distribution, and consumption of wealth.

Mr. Alex Ehi Aidaghese,

Sugar Land, Texas, January 02, 2012

A PRELUDE TO THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL.

The Integrative Model, as excerpted in this essay is not a complete document. It is a summary of one of the weekly speeches (papers) I delivered in my "Oral Communication: Business and Organizational" class in 2002 while completing my graduate studies at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theme of the speech was how to overcome the economic ills and social deprivations underlying the application of Affirmative Action admission policy at most American Universities - a policy framework that is consistent with the fundamentals of the Nigerian Federal Character and Quota System.

In my speech, I supported both policies to the chagrin of my predominantly white audience, in spite of the fact that I was once a victim of the Quota admission policy in Nigeria. I argued that we should not eliminate the policies, repugnant as they seemingly are in the opinion of the victims, without first, eliminating, or at least, reducing the social inequalities and circumstances of birth that place some candidates in a position where they suffer entrenched economic, social, and academic competitive disadvantage over some other candidates.

In hindsight, in the US, you could make the argument about the inherent social inequality (slavery and second-class status) to justify the Affirmative Action admission policy, but in Nigeria, that is a complicated narrative to push. I hold this view believing that the educational and socio-economic gaps that led to the creation of the Federal Character and Quota System in Nigeria are self-inflicted - leadership crises. The fact is, in Nigeria, we never had the experience of the educationally advanced south colonizing or enslaving the educationally disadvantaged north the way White men oppressed and dehumanized black folks for centuries of slavery in the US.

Anyway, intent on avoiding washing my country's dirty linen at a public forum, I deliberately ignored that distinguishing aspect between the American Affirmative Action and the Nigerian Quota Systems during my presentation and Q & A. Following the suggestions of the Assistant Professor who took the class, I expanded the Integrative Model to about Five thousand words, with details on the funding process and implementation mechanisms.

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