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Northern Borno: Challenges of out-of-school children *The radical approach of Prof Zulum *The Kashim Shettima angle

By Yakubu Ahmed-BK

Northern Borno and northern Yobe have the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. With a total of 10 local government areas in Borno’s north and about seven mostly affected in northern Yobe, these two areas are basically the epicenter of the Boko Haram activities which has made the two zones the most challenged educationally, economically and socially.

With the risk of allowing the areas to become the poorest, the most insecure and most backward if the sad turn of events especially in terms of burgeoning level of illiteracy in particular is not comprehensively checked, the Borno state Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum has come up with a robust short term and long term solution that will begin to close the wide gap in enlistment of school-aged children.

One of the many actions that has not received adequate media attention is his directive to all Commissioners from Northern Borno, including his current Chief of Staff/immediate past Commissioner of Higher education Professor Isa Hussaini Marte, to relocate to their areas of origin to launch a house-to-house campaign that will change the poor school enrolment culture and save the state not just from losing the areas to insurgency, but a debilitating illiteracy level which has the tendency to complicate matters more and open young men’s minds to radicalization and cooption into the unwholesome world of anti-social behavior.

The first leg of the campaign led by Professor Isa Hussaini has already been successfully undertaken to all the affected local governments. The team spent four days in the area to prosecute the campaign.

Apart from talking directly to the people about the need to enroll all school-age children into primary schools and maintaining the culture, the committees were involved in taking physical data/information of the children and performing on-the spot registration/enrolment of the children into schools. These campaigns have been taken to both homes and IDP camps where population of out-of-school children is noticeable and scary. The traditional institution too, by its nature of being closest to the people, has been involved at all levels of the campaign and they are monitoring compliance.

Efforts have also began by the Borno state government to provide basic needs and create friendly learning environment in order to facilitate quick change of attitude by parents and lackadaisical attitude of children to western education.

ROLE OF KASHIM SHETTIMA
This unfortunate state of affairs in Northern Borno began long ago and it has continued to spiral up to 2011 when Kashim Shettima first came into office as Governor. Of course, it deteriorated because the insurgency of the time has increased manifold. For all Kashim Shettima’s eight years in office, there was no single period of let. Yet, he confronted the problem head on and initiated a number of actions aimed at dealing with the problems education in particular faced at that time.

His decision to launch an ambitious program of construction of mega primary schools across the state was aimed at taking in the hundreds of thousands of out-of-school children roaming the streets either begging or waiting to be poached by criminal gangs. This included rebuilding burnt down/destroyed school infrastructure and constructing new mega schools to arrest the negative consequences lack of school infrastructure will wrought on the thousands of children that were forced out of school by the insurgency.

In an attempt to attract parents and children alike, the Kashim Shettima administration promised one free meal/transportation per day for those not boarding and free accommodation, feeding, books, and uniform for those boarding. The policy of building fully air-conditioned and equipped world class mega schools across the state was in recognition of the fact that if immediate actions were not taken to address the out-of-school quagmire, Borno may run the risk of surrendering a large population of its children to radicalization, crimes and destitution in a number of years or decades to come.

He targeted the children of the poor and vulnerable people who were helpless and hopeless and included even the children of the Fulani Bororo who have made Borno home and whose children were adding to the increasing number of impressionable young minds that could become handy and easy to radicalize to pose serious security challenges for the state and the country.

When President Muhammadu Buhari paid a state visit to Borno in April 2019 to commission the many projects built by Kashim Shettima, the sheer number, quality of work and the priority given to education in particular so impressed him that he was overheard saying ‘’Allah yayi maka albarka’’ (may God bless you) directly to Kashim Shettima.

The good thing about the entire challenges of the out-of-school children of Northern Borno is that Professor Babagana Zulum, an active player in the implementation of the Kashim Shettima roadmap has taken the campaign a notch higher with the way he has continued with the building of more mega schools and has further gone the whole hog of reaching out to the people affected and launching a campaign to reverse the out-of-school trend.

With the successs so far recorded by the Professor Isa Marte led campaign to Northern Borno and the change of attitude achieved so far, it is expected that the situation will begin to change and changes will begin to be seen.

Nigeria cannot afford to lose Northern Borno, more so when it is home to a large chunk of the arable Lake Chad agricultural endowments. It is a food basket for the nation where hundreds of trucks filled to the brim with smoked fish, cattle, onions, red pepper, beans, maize, rice and wheat among many others are daily transported to other parts of the country. It is a multibillion Naira economic power house which provides jobs to millions of people from all parts of the country.

An insecure and uneducated northern Borno will be a huge drawback to Nigeria’s effort to be self sufficient in food production and to its objectives to become economically viable and dependant.

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