Colonial masters refused to educate North – Emir Sanusi

Contrary to the prevailing stereotype that the northern region does not want western education, the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi 11, yesterday said the British were the ones who did not want to educate the North.

Speaking at the 60th anniversary, Founder’s Day Lecture and Magazine launch of the Kaduna Capital School, the Emir said that the northern region was defined and stereotyped as conservative and against western education. He quoted a statement by the secretary of states for the colonies as saying, “The purpose of the British administration in Northern Nigeria is to assist native administration to promote the true happiness and wellbeing of their people and not education and material development”.

He said, “The Sokoto caliphate was more literate than its learned precolonial neighbours and a social welfare system supported scholars and students across the caliphate. If many people can remember, Sultan Bello and Shehu Danfodio set up the first university in this part of the world where a lot of the bureaucrats who ran the emirate were trained in fields including Law, Hadith, Quran, Linguistics and Administration. Unfortunately, by the end of the colonial rule, the society became so backward that it could no longer compete with other parts of middle independent Nigeria. Because the situation is no better today, north-western and north-eastern Nigeria are considered the most education disadvantaged zones in the country and among the most disadvantaged areas in the world.

“The British established indirect rule and used local rulers to administer the colony. It was successful in northern Nigeria; hence, there is this false notion that emirs supported every colonial policy. In Kano, the Emir Abbas who submitted to the British following the civil war, tried to maintain the Islamic character of the Emirate despite colonial onslaught. He refused to compromise his Islamic position and because of that, many people thought Emir Abbas was opposed to western education. This was an emir who removed his son Abdulkadir who was the Ciroman Kano and sent him to a western school.

“Even on girls’ education, all the daughters of Emir Abdullahi Bayero were enrolled in Gidan Makama School in 1930. The princesses in Ilorin went to school before the princesses in other parts of the North. The families also never objected to the Catholic Schools. I went to a Catholic school.

“Emir Abdullahi Bayero pioneered many of the projects transiting Kano into the modern era; he established the first independent power plant and first water works in Northern Nigeria but people forget that one of his greatest contributions was in the area of education as he was the first leader who had the vision of integrating Islamic and western education. In 1928, he established the first school in the North that began the integration of Islamic and Western education under the leadership of Alhaji Suleiman who became the Wali of Kano,” he said.

Emir Sanusi maintained that any government that does not give priority to education and healthcare is simply implementing the anti-North policies of the British Colonial masters.

“The only thing that can unlock all the problems of the North is education. In fact, God will reward you more for educating the people than building mosques for them. The northern governors must begin to think of the 19 northern states as one economy, build institutions that will bring students together from across the Northern region”, he said.

Earlier in his presentation, Professor Ango Abdullahi stated that there exist a wide gap between the north and the South in the area of education, which he said was totally unacceptable. According to him, 15 million children in the northern region are out of school while 62 per cent of graduates across the country are unemployed.