President Tinubu also marginalized me …

By Funke EgbeMode

The inhabitants of the village appeared it.

“O Ajanaku,” they said, “Your hands are empty but your mouth is full of children. Train them well and one day your wealth will be.”

But Ajanaku has only rice. “Children train themselves,” he said. “The dog does not teach his puppies to bark; they learn alone. Furthermore, God who created them will feed.”

So the children grew up without a guide. Wanted for the village, fighting, stealing and wasting their days. When the elderly tried to warn Ajanaku, he replied: “As long as they eat and sleep, what more do they need?”

Time has passed. The children became men and women, but without skill, no respect and no sense of the direction. Some turned to the theft, some became beggars and others moved away, in order to never return.

One evening, when Ajanaku was old and sick, he sat down in front of his hut and called his children. Only a few replied and those few had nothing to offer. He looked around and saw that his complex, a time full of laughter and noise, was now a place of pain. Ajanaku bitterly complained that life and society were unjust for him.

An elderly who passed shook his head and said:

“Ajanaku, the child you can’t train will fail when your bones are weak. He will also chase you at home and sell the house. Poverty is heavy, but the children who are not trained make it heavier.”

Ajanaku cried bitterly, as he had sowed the void unwary and collected. “Homo tí a kò kọ́, ní yóò gbé ilé tí a kọ́ tà”. The child you can’t train will sell the house you built.

Years ago, in Nigeria there were 10 million children outside school. Today the figure has doubled, over 80 % of that figure is in the north. The results of years of evil evil are here. Those children that we were unable to build are now auctioning the peace we once had. Can I not help but ask these questions at this point: is hunger a national, state or regional policy? Is there anything that North leaders gain from the lack of development in that region? Is it fear or meanness that feeds the Almajiri system? While the term “Almajiri” is often associated with the plea, it is important to note that the original intent of the system was to provide a solid Islamic education. Many Nigerians who do not understand the depth of the Almajiri system think “is a cultural thing”. It is not. If it were, why is there an northern elite group that sends their children, males and females, in schools of the Ivy League all over the world? These privileged few do not allow their daughters to become brides for children. Their daughters acquire the first and second degree, have flourishing activities and work in Blu-Chip companies before getting married. So leaders know what is right and therefore I conclude that it is a fear of dying mysteriously or an attitude of “once my belly is full, who cares who is hungry”. Are all the state houses of the assembly in the region also afraid of making laws to sweep away the impoverishment and oppressive that gives the region a bad name? That’s how it will always be? Will the political leaders of the North always run away from their states of origin to hide in Abuja and Lagos? Unfortunately for all of us, this threat is like the Payoff line of one of the telecommunications companies, follows us “wherever you go”. Young, dirty and defenseless, the poor boys affect the warm sidewalks with bare feet in the north. Growing up, without work and desperate, they find their ways towards other parts of the country to guide Okaka, become agricultural and then mendicant workers. In cities they grow and marry, sometimes they become husbands of many wives and procreate prolificly. The seeds of their work knock on the car windows in traffic, asking for food, in English Pidgin. Wives implore, children ask. Husbands dig well. And they all come from blessed regions beyond the measure with rich soil and precious metals. But the neglected that did not enter the cities were recruited in the forest to terrorize everyone. They are also procreating, lifting the next generation of monsters.

The terrorists, the beggars, the workers, were not once children with plump cheeks, trusted with innocent eyes and smiles that melted the heart? Didn’t they be born like other children after nine months? So why do they heck northern children always get the short part of the stick? Why do southern children go to the kindergarten and elementary school schools and the north children end up with bowls asking for all day and spend the nights in open or incomplete buildings? Is it that the political leaders of the South are smarter than those of the North? Is the southern elite more human and generous than their northern counterparties? I think it’s the real problem. Nigeria’s political leaders are not the same. Some are more focused on the right attention than others. How difficult is the six years to school? At that age they still listen to. They think that school uniforms are fantastic. They like outdoor football and escape from their mothers’ commissions. But the northern parents and northern governments worked for decades to rob the children of their present and their future. Now those children, like Asake, can no longer feel anything because years of abandonment, stress and anguish have cut from the ears. The terrorists and bandits listened to their grumpy stomach and introduced them to a new song and dance.

Wherever it is now on fire, villages together with hectares and hectares of agricultural land and food. Parents who failed the basic parents 101 are homeless. The Mallam who wanted to continue doing as their fathers did before them now live in fear. The rich elites abandoned their country houses and fled to the FCT. I can see their zabanriga floating in the air, their in love caps on the sidewalks, exposing their calve heads. The image is grueling, at all funny.

This tragic preventable turning point of events is what all of us, including the leaders of the North on the run, should worry and determined to resolve. Practically all 19 states in the region are in a fear or the other, but somehow, a certain leader not long ago said that the North was or was marginalized by President Bola Tinubu. Please, what kind of conclusion is it? All the scenarios I painted, who were organized by Tinubu or by a single past president? Was Tinubu who discouraged his parents to enroll their children at school? Did the Almajiri system started in 2023? The angry and hungry young people who were attracted in heresy in the forest and said they wear iron coatings around their “cubes” so that they can serve seven virgins in the next world, whose products are?

I deliberately left the name of the old man who made the declaration because it was and represents a group. There are hundreds like those who ignore leprosy to concentrate on pimples. They refused to say exactly what is hurting them. They, those elderly people, are those who have been marginalized. I’m not in the office they believed they should have been assigned to them. They are not spending free and easy money they are used to. They feel excluded in the sharing scheme of things. The young hungry, unemployed and unemployable population who have built and ignored over the years are not marginalized. The terror that chased the companies of the Region is not a matter of urgent national importance. The way in which the North stops placing in the same sentence with Almajiri, children outside school, VVF and Rider Okada do not disturb them. All these evils that are constantly cultivated for almost a century do not give them sleepless nights. They are not forming the coalition to elect governors strictly to end the years of the locust. They are observing a woman who will not marry them. They are saving towards a wedding, they are not sure they will ever take place.

When will the Almajiri regime end? When the moneybags, men who have made money from national and local politics since 1999 will begin to appreciate God by raising others, building others? And I’m not talking about wheeled wheelbarrow initiatives, mass wedding palliatives or sending people in Mecca and Jerusalem. I mean a true help that matters, what will make Allah smile.

It is not Tinubu who marginalized the North. It is the president who is doing something for demons in the forests of the North. Let the political leaders make the rest, put the Almajijira in schools and give them a future. They have no alternative.

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