I can say without fear of contradiction, that Borno State, which at a time could claim being the citadel of islamic scholarship in Nigeria, has been averse to western education for several years.
This, without doubt, was the ambience that cleared the path for the cultivation of the idea that over the years, nurtured a phenomenon that gained acceptance for its resistance to western education.
My history teacher in secondary school, Mr. (as he then was) Mali Gubio, who I understand is now a very senior lecturer at the University of Maiduguri, once told us about a book he intended to write, about why his people (I believe he is Kanuri) resisted western education for a while.
Part of the reasons he explained, using the example of a young man I presumed to be one of the characters in the book, had to do with the mannerisms of the early educated, which he said conflicted with the norms of the typical Borno man or woman.
He said when the father of the young graduate visited him and noticed how he was doing things differently, he almost regretted sending his child to school.
The story resonated with me because I had experienced first hand, the jeering of other youngsters to people who are exposed to western education.
Ordinarily, ‘karatu’ is the Hausa word for reading or study but at a time in Maiduguri and some other places in Northern Nigeria, it specifically meant Islamic education.
This is encapsulated in the popular song,’Yan makarantan Bokoko, Ba karatu ba Sallah, Sai yawan zagin Malam.’ This roughly translates to, ”Pupils of western schools, you neither read (the Qur’an) nor pray. All you do is to constantly insult the teacher.”
My experience at the Borno State library in the late 70s and early 80s brought this aversion to western education to bolder relief.
I started using the Borno State Library in Maiduguri at quite an early age and I can claim without fear of contradiction that I’m one of its early young users.
And how did I stumble on this facility? As usual, it was my elder brother, Ogaba, who made the discovery.
I was home one day when he returned from school with big and colourful story books that included Jack and the Bean Stalk; Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves etc.
It was the first time I was seeing such colourful and well illustrated story books. Unlike our ‘reader’ school text books that contained only minute and suppressed pictures accompanying not so interesting stories, these once were quite big and glossy, with stories that ran into multiple pages.
By then, I could read and the illustration on each page made reading quite interesting.
I asked my brother where he got the books and he told me about a place near our school called a ‘lai-bra-ri’, which he explained, gave out such books to children for few days on the promise that they would be returned.
He did not take me to the place but I was able to locate it the next day based on his description as it wasn’t far from our primary school.
And so, without a guarantor or recommendation from anyone, I got to be a member of the library.
As I entered through what looked like the front entrance, I saw many books standing endlessly on several shelves. I picked some, but they were not of any interest to me.
They were mainly encyclopedae and dictionaries, big enough to catch my attention but too serious to tickle my childhood fancy.
I reached for the one that looked familiar: The Readers Digest, as my father used to bring some copies home. My excitement began to wane as I wasn’t there for such books and would have left the place disappointed untill one man came to my rescue. He saw me squinting to read the titles above my head and saved me the agony. “Hey!” he called out, “the children’s section is over there,” he said pointing at the opposite direction of where I came from.
I ran to where he pointed at and I saw a lady sitting at a desk who directed me to another door. It was there that I saw thousands of the kinds of book I was looking for: exactly the types my brother brought home.
I went from shelf to shelf admiring the books in what must have taken all of my break time.
But I was able to select the ones I wanted at the end. I went to the lady behind the desk and told her I would love to take the books home.
She told me I could only borrow three at a time, so I had to drop two from my collection.
There and then, she asked for my name and registered me as a member without my having the faintest idea of what she was doing.I noticed that she stamped the books indicating the date they should be returned.
I went home feeling triumphant with books and that was how I became a regular user of the library till I completed secondary school and left Maiduguri.
The facility actually helped me in my secondary school days as while others went home during weekends, I most of the time went the library to read till I was hungry and I’d leave.
But the curious thing about the Borno State library was that, for the almost nine years that I used the facility, I’d never even once met any other child reading!
I would have said it was possible that other children came at other times when I was not around but it didn’t seem likely as the reading desks at the children section were always neat and without books.
The rule, as in other libraries, was once you take a book from the shelf, you do not return but leave it on the desk for the librarian who knows the proper place and space to fit it in, to do so. Hence it is easy to tell if others were there before you.
To confirm my suspicion that other children were not using the library, not long after my constant patronage, the children section was collapsed.
They stopped bringing new books, and shifted some of the old stock to the adult section. The librarians even removed most of the desks leaving only a few, where large copies of the Qur’an were kept. Some times, the attendant had to create a space for me in the now little room to sit and read. And you can be sure that for the whole time I’ll be there, no single soul would join me.
Years later, I began to lament the underutilisation of the facility despite the high population of school children even within Maiduguri metropolis alone.
Surely, there was no awareness of either the existence or importance of the facility as most children of that era did not even know about the existence of the library.
When I ponder over the wastage of the facility, I shudder at the difference a little orientation would have made to boost the use of the facility and improve on the reading culture of the populace.
Schools of that era, and there were many of them, should have been taking their pupils for excursion to teach them about the use and relevance of libraries.
While you’re bound to see children from primary schools such as Kirikasama, the one I attended; Bulabulin, Yerwa Practice, Yerwa Central, Abbaganaram, Wulari etc at the Filin Sukuwa later named Ramat Square playing football and other games, you cannot find a single child at the state library.
I can’t understand why it never occured to the library to complain to the state government about the underutilisation of the facility so that something should be done about it.
I’m sure that if they had, the ministry of education would have been able to come up with an idea that would encourage visits to the facility.
Over the years the library culture has died not just in Borno State but all over the country. But a lot can be done to improve the reading culture especially among the youths.
I’m aware that Media Trust Ltd, publishers of the Daily Trust and other titles at a time took up this challenge and began a publication for teenagers which it gave to schools at subsidized rate.
The visuals of Vice President Kashim Shettima at a bookstore recently comes as a good promotion for the reading culture.
If in my secondary school days, such public figures had made the effort to show publicly that books are not haram, I’m sure the attitude of the average child in Northern Nigeria towards western education would have been different.
Methinks the VP should sustain the visuals about his love for books so he can encourage the younger ones into imbibing more, the reading culture.
Mr Agbese, a writer and public affairs commentator, contributed this piece from Abuja.
