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Daily_Independent (Lagos)
****** Nigeria: Why Western Education is Sin! ******
Michael John
17 July 2011
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The University of Maiduguri has closed down over the Boko Haram threat. That
does not sound right. One would have expected the University to ask its
department of psychology or social psychology to embark on an academic research
of the remote and near causes of the Boko Haram insurgency or terrorism. They
should have asked students to do academic projects on Boko Haram and issue
questionaire to them to find out what prompted them to go around killing
policemen and now soldiers. A fundamental question would have been "I sometimes
kill policemen because they wear black uniform and have black hearts? True or
False."
Perhaps, also lending itself to research is the fact that after Boko Haram
bombed the Police Headquarters, the police hastily arraigned five policemen in
the court and charged them with allegedly killing the Boko Haram leader. One
would expect the academia to be concerned with the timing, and tie it into its
research. Another question, "Is a bomb explosion a catalyst in the process of
criminal prosecution?" There, the researchers would have been able to correlate
the thinking of Boko Haram with the Police.
Also of probable interest would have been the fact that you could trick a man
into pronouncing "Boko Haram" as "Book Harm." That is actually the lot of Boko
Haram because they want to harm "book learning" as we know it. Already the
group which name means "Western Education is sin" has scored a major goal in
getting a university to shut down, instead of the university going ahead with
research.
It is entirely possible that I feel the way I do because I am still smarting
from being used as a specimen in a University Teaching Hospital recently. The
old man in horn-rimmed glasses, who must be a contemporary of the late Chief
Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory looked at yours truly and told me to undress
and lie down at the couch. Then he stepped outside and I thought he was going
to bring in some experts or do something relevant to my case. Before you could
say, "Boko," white clad medical students trooped into the little enclosure of a
consulting room and looked at me exactly the way I looked at the cockroach we
used for the practicals in the biology examination in my West African School
Certificate Examination. Then the oldie came over and started talking to them
about my ailment and pointing at me as if I were an artwork that was badly done
by some artist in a hurry.
I toyed with the idea of grabbing his beard and throwing him out of the window.
But I guessed his neck would not have survived such discourteous treatment. I
lumbered to my feet in anger and reached for my clothes. "What are you doing?"
he asked. "I am wearing my clothes, can't you see?" I replied. "I have not
finished with you?" he said. "Me. I am finished with you," I retorted. "I
thought you came here for treatment," he insisted. "Sure I came for treatment,
but not to be used as a medical specimen. I am not a rabbit," I turned around
looking for my glasses.
He coughed and said, "Well you would have to sign that you are leaving against
medical advice." I turned to him with a patronizing smile: "I came on my own,
you did not send for me. I am leaving on my own. And you want me to sign that I
am leaving against medical advice. If you were to come to my newspaper with a
news story and were to decide after a brief talk with me not to give us news
again and I were to ask you to sign that you were leaving against editorial
advice, would you sign?" I did not wait for his answer.
Now here comes a situation which lends itself to studies and the eggheads who
harass patients in teaching hospitals do not want to hang around and provide us
with an academic investigation of this matter. Agreed the medical students need
to use real life cases to learn, but then such cases should be exempted from
payment. I still remember that the hapless cockroaches we used for our biology
examination were not charged any fee to be used in the practicals. And what is
fair to cockroaches, should be fair to human beings. Those who pay, like I was
prepared to pay, should be exempted from the indignity of being used as a
specimen.
I know all these may add up to what Boko Haram has against Western Education (I
am daydreaming perhaps). Fancy the pregnant wife of a Boko Haram man going for
treatment in the hospital and being examined by a male doctor and then having
medical students come and look at her. The hospital might be bombed.
Western education is actually "sin" because they believe in drugs more than
faith. It does not teach children how to shepherd or milk cows, nor does it
teach them how to fish. They teach a whole lot of things about nothing, and
these children do not even know how to set traps for birds or how to catch
grasscutters with trap.
Again, Western education churns out professors like the grand old man I ran
into. They do not profess anything sensible and they know a lot about books and
nothing at all about life. They cannot even survive in the jungle for a night
(like Boko Haram) and yet they go around and claim to be very important men in
the society. They are soft and got married without being tested for manhood
with some decent flogging. Soft men with tender hearts and jelly hands.
But the worst offence of Western education is that it has no place for
almajaris. Now how can you have an education like that that does not teach the
noble art of begging to kids. Agreed university students go on rag day and do
some begging, but begging once in a year is not enough to shape a character.
The almajaris style is better, and by a book.
The matter is as straight cut as Chief Gamaliel Onosode's clean cut mustache.
Boko Haram is so right that we should negotiate with them. We should start with
turning the University of Maiduguri into Boko Haram University. Since Western
education is sin, let us try the Boko Haram education. We already have a
potential Pro-Chancellor for it in the person of Vice President Namadi Sambo.

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