By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON, Kaduna.
Nigeria’s foremost Islamic religious leader, Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi ll, has said that the north is backward in education because the British Colonialists did not want northern Muslims to be educated for obvious reasons.
Sanusi however noted that the backwardness neither had anything to do with the popular notion that northern Muslims did not want to embrace western education nor due to hatred for Islamic religion by the British.
Speaking at the 60th anniversary of Capital School and Founder’s Day Lecture and Magazine launch in Kaduna weekend, Sanusi said the fear of the British was to avoid the replica of what happened in India and Egypt where those trained, turned round and lead anti Colonial movements.
“The British were not trying to bring down the Northern Muslims because of their hatred for Islam. They were trying to let them down because they had a very bitter experience with the Muslims in India and Egypt who led the anti Colonial movement,” he said, adding that it was purely a political interest and not religious interest.
He said that a people with the history, civilization and tradition are the most potent force when given education, urging the north to invest heavily in education of their children.
While he emphasised on the need to do more in education of the northerner especially the girl child, Sanusi advised northern leaders to also invest in healthcare, diversify into agriculture and build roads, instead of building mosques.
Quoting Quran, he said, in northern Nigeria, “the jihad of Usman Dan Fodio set up a society that was far ahead of all neigbouring societies.
He also enjoined the Northern leaders to introduce social policies that would checkmate procreation and or marrying too many wives and bearing of many children without enough resources to train, resulting to demographic explosion.
Sanusi noted that a situation now arose that if you build classes for two million children today for one million Naira, next year, it will increase to N1. 5million to build schools because of population growth, arising from people who kept on marrying and producing children without the capacity to train them.
According to him, the first secondary school in the north was built in Kano, stressing that some northern Emirs had to forfeit there salaries to pay for female teachers for girls secondary school, founded in the North during the era.
He therefore strongly dismissed and rejected the popular believe that northern Nigerian Muslims refused to accept western education.
