SURREPTITIOUS! This appears to be the mode of operation of Nigeria’s successive rulers since 1999. But it has been specially so since the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party happened to rulership in our country about 10 years ago. Virtually nothing is thrown open for engagement, debate, conversation and contestation by critical stakeholders. The dominant practice is for a few persons, many or all, with jaundiced and sectarian views, to huddle in what could pass as a coven, to make weighty decisions and foist the same on the rest of us as a fait accompli. Some of those issues do not enjoy needed national consensus nor widespread buy-in. Often, some of those decisions and impositions arouse suspicions and stir bad blood across the population segments. For some persons who are determined to foist their sectarian agenda on the rest, nothing is sacred. And the potential cost to the fabric of the country is immaterial to them. That perhaps explains why in the 1999 constitution of Nigeria as altered so far, there are disproportionate mentions and provisions in the document in favour of Islam than Christianity. This is happening in a so-called secular or multi-religious country. Of course, some Muslims especially from parts of the north of our country do not accept the secularity of Nigeria. Not in the past. Not today.
Those in this group regard Nigeria as their heritage and inheritance. Are they misguided? Not really, if we recall the long-standing vow and obvious commitment of the offsprings of Uthman Dan Fodio to transport the Qur’an from the scorching environment of the sahel region and dip the same in the Atlantic ocean of the cool rainforest. That commitment has not waned. In spite of denial, it was the hidden reason behind the 2023 Muslim – Muslim presidential ticket. Also the zeal to dip the Qur’an into the Atlantic ocean, which is really about violent conversion of so-called unbelievers through Jihad, is at the core of the low intensity and lingering civil war in Nigeria manifesting in the terrorism of Isamist groups such as Boko Haram, Ansaru, ISWAP, among others. It’s also this desire that drives the bloody sackings of indigenous communities in Plateau and Benue states, and other places and the occupation of their ancestral lands by the armed invaders. The recurring attacks on military formations in parts of the north by the Islamists are parts of the larger plans to instill fears in the hearts of the people, especially non-Muslims, and weaken their resistance to making Nigeria a Muslim country.
There’s a profound saying that if you want to cripple a country, attack its education. And those who are hell bent on the dominance of Muslims and their religion, Islam, have turned their attention to the education sector. Education is already an Achilles heel of our country. Depending on who you reference, there are between 15-20 million children who are out of school, arguably the highest figure in the world. In addition, no segment of Nigeria’s education is settled and fit for purpose. Indeed, last week there was a national uproar over a rigged mass failure in a qualifying examination for entry into universities by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). In the wake of the disaster, the board perfunctorily claimed that the mass failure was due to candidates’ lack of seriousness. But as it turned out and after an audit by people in the know who worked with JAMB officials, it was found that the board was responsible for that disaster. A teenager who was shocked by the result awarded to her reportedly took her life in the aftermath of the incident. Apart from the recent JAMB saga, the truth is that our country’s educational system is in tatters. It’s virtually devoid of useful content. Teachers at all levels of public schools are not well prepared, they are ill-equipped and unmotivated. Failed and failing infrastructure are the hallmarks of our schools. The picture is gloomy and depressing. And the implications for the future of the country are dire and foreboding.
It is in the midst of all these that a surreptitious attempt is ongoing to introduce a clearly sectarian qualifying certificate to rival the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) school certificate (WASC) and the National Examination Council (NECO) certificate for entry into tertiary institutions. The certificate is being promoted and issued by the National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS). Our attention was drawn to the unfolding situation when we sighted the draft (the petition has since been formalized and published) of a letter titled An Emergency Petition To National Education Regulators: The NBAIS Certificate Policy-A Direct Threat To Nigeria’s Educational Integrity, by persons who identified themselves as members of the National Prayer Altar. The National Prayer Altar comprises over 100 Christian groups.
It has been said repeatedly by those who should know that one of the easiest ways to cripple a country is to infect its educational system with a debilitating virus. There’s little doubt that the imposition of this sectarian NBAIS certificate as an alternative and acceptable entry requirement into our tertiary schools, to rival the widely recognized and accepted WASC and NECO could prove a death nail on the flailing education sector of our country. It could be disputed but it is fairly widely recognized that the quality of the products of our education started suffering from reversals when entry requirements into higher institutions of learning were manipulated through the establishment of schools of remedial studies in parts of the country especially the north. Candidates who failed the school certificate examination were shepherded into schools of basic studies with affiliations to universities. Schools of basic studies with suspect facilities and teaching staff became pipelines into tertiary institutions. Quality was sacrificed so that many of the students in the north would catch up with those in the south. And it has been a slippery slope ever since to the detriment of the country.
The alarm raised by the National Prayer Altar (NPA) should be seen for what it is – a patriotic call to save this country from a clear and present danger. For the avoidance of doubt, NBAIS has been in existence in the country since the 1960s, but it had operated largely as a non-governmental agency. It was not until about 2011 that it was controversially adopted as a government institution. Its doors were slightly opened to allow non-Muslims on its staff register and then for candidates of other religious persuasions to sit for its examination. Obviously, these were cosmetic changes to hoodwink the unsuspecting public. Discerning members of the public and the NPA were not deceived, hence the ongoing public outcry on the dangers of equating NBAIS with WAEC and NECO. The argument of NPA in their petition to the regulators of Nigeria’s already shambolic education on NBAIS’s certificate was logical and surgical. So, we will be generous in extracting excerpts from their letter of warning to those who want to destroy this country. NPA rightly said that the “most effective way to destroy a nation (ours is a country, anyway) is not through sophisticated weaponry but by lowering the quality of its education. When education collapses, every pillar of national life – governance, economy, justice, health, and ethics – begins to be eroded. A compromised education sector does not just fail the students (as in the case of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, last week), it fails the nation”.
The NPA and other Nigerians do not have any rights to deny the sectarian examination body the quest to train and certify its own so long as its certification was not thrown into the mix to pollute the system. Again we reference the NPA alert to buttress the danger. It said: “Whereas we do not begrudge NBAIS for its efforts in producing and certificating candidates for its related religious and cultural services, whereas we do not question the integrity of that Board and its specialist but culturally and religiously exclusive (and we dare say, partisan) education, we worry that the policy is not just ill-conceived but pokes daringly at the religious and cultural diversity of the Nigerian state. It is a dagger in the heart of national unity and a potential catastrophic blow to any hope of restoring credibility to our broken education system. Our position (and that of the countless other individuals and institutions that support our concern) is non-negotiable: the policy (of NBAIS certificate as the equivalent of WASC and NECO) must be terminated immediately”. The Arabic certificate is neither an international or regional certificate which is awarded by recognized regional educational bodies benchmarked by global agencies including the UNESCO, ECOWAS, and AfCFTA. NBAIS enjoys no such accreditation
In addition, as NPA said, the Arabic certificate lacked a standardized STEM ( Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)? rigour. It has no balanced and tested humanities and civic education, nor an inclusive cross-cultural, and secular academic structure. To allow NBAIS to play at the level of WAEC and NECO will be to institutionalize religious and cultural discrimination against other Nigerians of different religious and cultural persuasions. It will be provocative and potentially explosive. The NBAIS certificate policy is discriminatory to the extent that it provides additional entry options into higher institutions for certain candidates whilst others struggle with two. As NPA poignantly posited: “Someone from one part of Nigeria has to have WAEC and/or NECO to be admitted to study medicine, law, engineering, accountancy, Christian Religious Knowledge, or mathematics, whereas someone else in a different part of the same country only has to speak their native language and recite their traditional creed to win the same spaces that everyone else rigorously competes for“.
Over the years, and since this dispensation, our rulers have hidden under the guise of reforms to introduce religion to our education. NBAIS certificate is yet another manifestation of this dangerous trend. The other time the country was wracked by what should be the acceptable dress code for students at the primary and secondary school levels. In Osun state, for example, some Christian students had to don choir robes to counter the hijab and flowing gowns allowed for Muslim students. While we fight over inanities in defence of our largely shallow faith, nobody worries about the contents of our education, the structure of the curricular, instructional materials, infrastructure in our schools, the quality of the teaching staff and their motivation, access to education in terms of affordability, and other critical mandates. There are no interrogations about how the federal government or the subnationals are striving to meet the minimum prescribed annual budgetary allocations to education, or even whether the miserly allocations are put to good use or stolen by the many sharks in our educational system and their collaborators.
There are many challenges confronting our educational system. This quest to make the obviously sectarian and dubious NBAIS certificate an equivalent of WAEC and NECO certificates for entry into tertiary institutions, or for job placements in government institutions will do this country no good. Perish the idea for the sake of “ndu mmiri, ndu azu”, or for the good of all.