Can this explains the low education rate of Northern Nigeria?
I am usually inspired by comparative history and philosophical thoughts. A recent interview on Slate.com got me thinking about our dear country Nigeria and its many hydra headed problems. When I finished reading the piece, many questions came to mind: Can this idea help explain the low education rates in the Northern Nigeria and the disastrous way bandits and herdsmen saga has played out in the region and Nigeria as a whole? Is there anything we could learn from our history on how to encourage education, particularly girl child education without further triggering the reaction of retreat to violence and terrorism that ISWAP and Boko Haram has unleashed on the state?
This piece explores these critical question at this particular time in the history of our nation as we celebrate the nation independence. Moreso, now that the North has become the focus of intense critique, violence and banditry backyard.
The phrase inferiority complex was coined by the psychoanalyst Alfred Adler in the early 20th century. He said that we all feel a sense of inferiority sometimes, but for that to develop into a “complex,” there have to be a couple of elements: a consciousness that you are deemed inferior, which comes at some kind of moment when you realize, “People think I am less than.” Then there are some environmental conditions that make that person who has that moment of realization more likely to develop a “complex”: lack of education, poverty, authoritarian religion. In the wider core North, as a region, all three of those environmental conditions are prevalent. That moment of public consciousness, in this case, often looks like public criticism—times when there’s been intense scrutiny of the region.
If we examine pre and post colonial history of the region, we see these conditions writ large. Adler in his theory explains that individuals that develop an inferiority complex usually respond with one of three different compensations. First, they might deem someone else inferior. Second, they change the rules by which they are deemed inferior. Third, they retreat or escape from the society or institution or community that’s deemed them inferior.
Let me respectfully argued that the whole experience of Northern hegemony penchant for power and the attendant cycle of criticism, then backlash and entrenchment, or changing the rules. This pattern might help us understand the resistance to change, defensiveness, and reflex to turn toward sectarianism, be it Sunni or Shia denomination has dominated Northern culture in the last 120 years.
In a recent interview in celebration of his birthday, Elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, Second Republic politician and ACF member made a stunning revelation on Nigeria's first attempt to get independence. Yakassai said the northern region opposed the motion for Nigeria to be a sovereign state in 1953 because north could not compete with the South. Here’s him in his own words,
“This was because as at 1953, the entire Northern Region, which had 75 per cent of Nigeria’s landmass and about 55 per cent of the country’s population, had only one graduate, Dr. R.A.B Dikko. At the same time, the South had thousands of graduates from different fields of expertise including law, engineering, medicine, administration, social sciences, etc. with about 90 per cent of the public services manpower in the North were made up of expatriates or Nigerians from the southern part of the country. Action Group leaders rejected the compromise proposed by the northern legislator in order to enable the north prepare itself for independence. This is because if Nigeria was granted independence by 1956, the North would be under the control of the civil servants from the South, a situation that will put the North under perpetual domination of the South, particularly people from the Western Region, which had the preponderance of the public servants at the time.”
Take a moment to follow that logic, Northern region would rather be under the yoke of colonialism with its attendant racist policies than fight for independence with the rest of the country. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. If this is not an inferiority complex, I don’t know what else it is. If we follow the elder statesman logic, we could still be waiting for independence today as the North is still far behind in the education of its citizens.
It is this line of thought that breeds a situation where an insurrection led by largely poor northern youths protesting the killing of their spiritual leader, Mohammed Yusuf, by security forces gave birth to the Boko Haram insurgency which has lasted for several years till date.
The militants have grown from ragtag fighters to a group of well-armed terrorists with international connections. They have increased their list of demands to include an end to Western education, the establishment of an Islamic republic. Designated as one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, the Boko Haram terrorist group has killed thousands and forced several others to flee their homes.
Lower incomes, lower education levels are at higher rates in the North. Poverty is all over Nigeria, north, south, east and west but it is particularly more pronounced in the North. Those things are true everywhere , but in the North, there is also the historical lack of access to health care, because a lot of the North is rural and poor. There’s a lack of access to doctors, a lack of health insurance, a lack of a concept of preventive health care. All of those numbers lag in the North. The diseases that had long been eliminated all over the World are still menacing people in the North. And yet the region draws more income from the national coffers than any other region. Look at the population of childhood diseases in the North compare to the south. It’s all down to school enrollment and vaccination record in primary school. What is more, elderly people are dying of communicable diseases at higher rates in the North than the South. It might also be because southerners have access to regular doctors than north and yet some states in the North will rather hire foreign medical professions than Nigerian who are non-indigenes.
It is not that some Northern leaders don’t see this as a problem, but they are content to exploit this “us vs them” situation to get the vote of the talakawas. Take for instance, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, who probably because he’s term limited, said recently that the greatest evil from open grazing is the inability of herders’ children to get education.
“I have been saying it; is unfortunate that the issue of open grazing have brought a lot of controversy. Trekking from the northern part of this country to the middle belt or central part of this country or to the south, to me, is not acceptable. The children will not be able to have education, which to me it is criminal. The greatest crime in migrating from North to South for grazing is lack of education for the children. As far as I am concerned, that is the greatest crime; you denying somebody education. No Islamic education, no western education, nothing whatsoever; that is why we are in these problems now.”
The only thing the North seems to share with the South is a strong belief in prayer—God will protect, you’re going to die from something, the rewards of heaven are not to be feared. Insha Allah- as God willeth. But it wasn’t so in the South before the rise of pentecostal evangelicalism in the South. But of course there’s just plain tribalism and othering of other races and ethnicities, because for a while when primordial ethnic proclivity started during Obasanjo years, with OPC, APC, MASSOB, it was considered to be the work of politicians. And now IPOB and Yoruba nation activist and militants are threatening to blow up the nation if their separatists desire is not actualized.
The truth of the matter is these are mostly a reaction to Northern hegemonic tendencies.
While there has been significantly higher death rate from the hands of bandits in the north (in Kaduna, for instance, the paramount ruler of Atyap Chiefdom, Dominic Yahaya, claimed recently that over 50 villagers lost their lives during sustained attacks on villages within his domain over a four-week period), and fatalities in the northeast, (hotbed of Boko Haram/ISWAP), the violence and gruesome murder is fast spreading to the east and the west. A heart-rending video of the last moments of Dr. Chike Akunyili, the husband of the late Dora Akunyili, former Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration, also made it into public space. He was shot and killed on the streets of his home state, Anambra on September 28, 2021. His murder was one of several over the last couple of months. Bandits equally invaded Ilesa in Igbomina in southwest, maiming and killing farmers and their household.
One can easily conclude that life is short and brutish in Nigeria of today, be it, north, south, west or East but the daring bandits raids in the North with all the presence of the military operations by the federal government is mind boggling. The initial notion was, that this will soon past away, but more and more states in the north are completely run over by bandits. A federal legislator from the northwest cried out recently that his constituency has been completely obliterated by banditry. So the comparison with the South is non sequitor.
We can readily apply the same recommendations made by Angie Maxwell, a professor of political science and director of the Diane Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas on US southern history/psychology and opposition to vaccination to the Northern menace Nigeria is going through.
Professor Maxwell, in an interview with Rebecca Onion of Slate (which I adapted for this piece) recommends 2 things provided we are well aware of the role public criticism and ridicule plays, and the defensive compensations that come with it.
The first thing is: internal messengers, who could lean into the con and give an explanation as to why it makes sense to get Western education now. Saying something that gives people a way out, to save face: The old colonial education wasn’t really that bad, even though they told us it was, and back then I wouldn’t have done it either. But this new era, it’s good for young people. Something to make it OK for young people to show up and say, OK, now I think it’s the right thing to do. We will need Northern upper middle class to stand up and be counted on this score.
The other thing is mandates. I don’t usually like government mandates. I think they should be rare. But I feel like an educational mandate in this case is a way for people to save themselves. A lot of these people are marks of a con, and a mandate, as much as they may hate you for it, could very well save their life, and save the lives of others. We should discard the pretense that northern youths that could not obtain western education will probably get Islamic education. It’s is a false equivalence. The biggest investment in Western education outside the Western Hemisphere is currently being made by Islamic countries like UAE and Saudi Arabia. There’s a reason why Saudi Aramco solar energy research investment is not done in Qatar or Riyadh. China with all its competitive edge still spends more to send its students to western universities.
In Northern Nigeria, there are some things the government has had to force to make it happen. Mandate compulsory western education if you truly desire to catch up. Islamic education should be complimentary and not a replacement. There’s bound to backlash to such bold policy, a resentment, but it is a necessary evil to break free from this inferiority complex. As a self professed libertarian, I know mandates should be rare but this one is inevitable, especially on something like this, where it affects massive number of poor children.
There will be a political backlash; there will be a price to pay. But it’s worth it.
This write up is inspired by an interview on slate.com
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