Lola Shoneyin
By Lola Shoneyin
If you are looking for a country of extremes, look no further than Nigeria. Following recent data, it has emerged as the country with the highest GDP in Africa, beating South Africa. But equally, the World Bank lists Nigeria as one of the poorest countries in terms of its revenue per capita. Even to the least fervent observer, the disparity in the distribution of wealth is palpable. Unemployment figures are appallingly high among the under thirty-fives who form 70 percent of the population.
According to a recent Unesco report, Nigeria has the highest number of children out of school in the world. Many of these are from northern Nigeria, where the Muslim majority has learnt to accept poverty as their fate or, even more sinisterly, as Allah’s will.
At the school where I taught, the fees were paid in American dollars for a British-style education, often for the offspring of wealthy politicians and business moguls. Some of the students behaved as if school was just a rite of passage, not something they really needed. They had money and that was all that mattered. Sometimes this cue was taken from their parents who withdrew them from school for luxury holidays and events such as the World Cup. Parents from northern Nigeria sometimes displayed a blasé attitude towards educational standards. And their children knew it.
I badgered the students constantly about wasting this opportunity that other children would give their right arms for. There was a small hamlet not far from the school. Sometimes, I would ask my students to come to the window and observe the shirtless children playing in the sand outside the patchwork tarpaulin tents. They would be subdued by my admonitions, then quickly forget.
The issue of education in northern Nigeria ate at me. I was privy to statistics from some northern states, learning, for example, that in Zamfara state, only 5 percent of the girls between five and 16 could read and write. This is the state governed for eight years by Ahmed Yerima, a member of the All Nigeria People’s Party, after which he became a senator. As a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Yerima replaced his fourth wife (herself a teenager) with a 13-year-old Egyptian child. The ceremony was held at the central mosque in Abuja attended by several of his senate colleagues.
It is interesting to note that Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to reintroduce sharia law, allegedly with financial incentive from generous Middle Eastern clerics. Women’s groups in Nigeria were furious about this marriage but the matter was hurriedly extinguished, and Yerima declared that he was bound by Islamic law, rather than the laws of the nation. When it was clear that then attorney-general, Bello Adoke, was not going to prosecute, civil society had no choice but to walk away. It was a merciless blow to the campaign against child marriage. All this serves as background to the tragic abduction of over 200 girls. They were in the process of gaining an education, in a region that is under threat by Boko Haram, which I now know – as, sadly, does everyone else – loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden”.
Nigerians, and the rest of the world can only imagine what their fate will be. The signs are not in their favour. Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the terrorist group has declared that he will sell the girls “by Allah”. Many Muslim clerics have come out to decry these words, but northern Nigerian leaders have been criticised for not having the courage to condemn the activities of Boko Haram in strong terms. It is widely believed that they are themselves afraid for their lives, especially when well-known Muslim clerics who believe in education have been assassinated.
A majority of Nigerians are driven by faith. When they are ill, they claim they are strong and when things are dire, they respond to questions: “It is well.” This tendency to deny reality has become cultural, pathological in some cases. Perhaps this is what is responsible for the lacklustre attitude with which the government responded to the kidnapping. The First Lady’s melodramatic performance on national TV did little to bring comfort.
Speculations abound. Many consider Boko Haram to be a problem created in northern Nigeria by northern Nigerians, and as a result believe that the responsibility of the excruciating consequences should be borne by northern Nigerians. The president is from the oil-producing south. Then there is the barrage of bad news. Just a few weeks ago, 57 male students were slaughtered in their dormitories in the night. The constant onslaught of violence and murder from the north may bring about numbness in some quarters but a president simply does not have that privilege.
After working in schools for most of my adult life, the gory images of charred teenagers I glimpsed on social media were so harrowing that I couldn’t sleep for two nights. I was traumatised by the scenes from the recent Nyanya bomb blast, where the emergency services piled bodies on top of each other on the back of a pick-up truck. But there was also an eerie sense of deja vu.
For many years, my husband worked at the World Health Organisation, which had its offices in the UN building in Abuja. Bombs went off in the building in August 2011, killing several people. As soon as I heard the news, I drove to the general hospital to see how I could help. It was heart-wrenching to see the family members of UN workers huddled together in silence, uncertain if the news would bring grief or relief. After this tragedy, my kids refused to go to the cinema or the ice cream parlour. When your children become aware of the climate of fear, you start to ask if you are being a responsible parent. We are now in Lagos.
The Guardian
By Lola Shoneyin
If you are looking for a country of extremes, look no further than Nigeria. Following recent data, it has emerged as the country with the highest GDP in Africa, beating South Africa. But equally, the World Bank lists Nigeria as one of the poorest countries in terms of its revenue per capita. Even to the least fervent observer, the disparity in the distribution of wealth is palpable. Unemployment figures are appallingly high among the under thirty-fives who form 70 percent of the population.
According to a recent Unesco report, Nigeria has the highest number of children out of school in the world. Many of these are from northern Nigeria, where the Muslim majority has learnt to accept poverty as their fate or, even more sinisterly, as Allah’s will.
At the school where I taught, the fees were paid in American dollars for a British-style education, often for the offspring of wealthy politicians and business moguls. Some of the students behaved as if school was just a rite of passage, not something they really needed. They had money and that was all that mattered. Sometimes this cue was taken from their parents who withdrew them from school for luxury holidays and events such as the World Cup. Parents from northern Nigeria sometimes displayed a blasé attitude towards educational standards. And their children knew it.
I badgered the students constantly about wasting this opportunity that other children would give their right arms for. There was a small hamlet not far from the school. Sometimes, I would ask my students to come to the window and observe the shirtless children playing in the sand outside the patchwork tarpaulin tents. They would be subdued by my admonitions, then quickly forget.
The issue of education in northern Nigeria ate at me. I was privy to statistics from some northern states, learning, for example, that in Zamfara state, only 5 percent of the girls between five and 16 could read and write. This is the state governed for eight years by Ahmed Yerima, a member of the All Nigeria People’s Party, after which he became a senator. As a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Yerima replaced his fourth wife (herself a teenager) with a 13-year-old Egyptian child. The ceremony was held at the central mosque in Abuja attended by several of his senate colleagues.
It is interesting to note that Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to reintroduce sharia law, allegedly with financial incentive from generous Middle Eastern clerics. Women’s groups in Nigeria were furious about this marriage but the matter was hurriedly extinguished, and Yerima declared that he was bound by Islamic law, rather than the laws of the nation. When it was clear that then attorney-general, Bello Adoke, was not going to prosecute, civil society had no choice but to walk away. It was a merciless blow to the campaign against child marriage. All this serves as background to the tragic abduction of over 200 girls. They were in the process of gaining an education, in a region that is under threat by Boko Haram, which I now know – as, sadly, does everyone else – loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden”.
Nigerians, and the rest of the world can only imagine what their fate will be. The signs are not in their favour. Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the terrorist group has declared that he will sell the girls “by Allah”. Many Muslim clerics have come out to decry these words, but northern Nigerian leaders have been criticised for not having the courage to condemn the activities of Boko Haram in strong terms. It is widely believed that they are themselves afraid for their lives, especially when well-known Muslim clerics who believe in education have been assassinated.
A majority of Nigerians are driven by faith. When they are ill, they claim they are strong and when things are dire, they respond to questions: “It is well.” This tendency to deny reality has become cultural, pathological in some cases. Perhaps this is what is responsible for the lacklustre attitude with which the government responded to the kidnapping. The First Lady’s melodramatic performance on national TV did little to bring comfort.
Speculations abound. Many consider Boko Haram to be a problem created in northern Nigeria by northern Nigerians, and as a result believe that the responsibility of the excruciating consequences should be borne by northern Nigerians. The president is from the oil-producing south. Then there is the barrage of bad news. Just a few weeks ago, 57 male students were slaughtered in their dormitories in the night. The constant onslaught of violence and murder from the north may bring about numbness in some quarters but a president simply does not have that privilege.
After working in schools for most of my adult life, the gory images of charred teenagers I glimpsed on social media were so harrowing that I couldn’t sleep for two nights. I was traumatised by the scenes from the recent Nyanya bomb blast, where the emergency services piled bodies on top of each other on the back of a pick-up truck. But there was also an eerie sense of deja vu.
For many years, my husband worked at the World Health Organisation, which had its offices in the UN building in Abuja. Bombs went off in the building in August 2011, killing several people. As soon as I heard the news, I drove to the general hospital to see how I could help. It was heart-wrenching to see the family members of UN workers huddled together in silence, uncertain if the news would bring grief or relief. After this tragedy, my kids refused to go to the cinema or the ice cream parlour. When your children become aware of the climate of fear, you start to ask if you are being a responsible parent. We are now in Lagos.
The Guardian
