Ending Terror; Governor of northeast Nigeria proposes paying parents to keep kids in school

Ending Terror; Governor of northeast Nigeria proposes paying parents to keep kids in school 

By Abdulkareem Haruna Umar

Governor of a northeast Nigerian state is proposing giving cash rewards for all parents who hate western education if they would enrol and continue to keep heir wards in school. 

Mr Kashim Shettima, who rules Borno, the state where the Boko Haram terrorism emanates, believes poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment are the root cause of the low-level insurgency that had claimed at least 2000 lives in the last four years. 

Kashim said he fancied the political philosophy of former Brazilian president Lula de Silva 's  'Bolsa Familia' model of promoting education in the highly educationally disadvantaged state. 

'In northern part of my state, we are going to adopt the "Bolsa familia" model of former president Lula da Silva of Brazil; we are going to pay parents money to send their wards to school', said Shettima. 

'The situation is so terrible in northern Borno that we really have to link up with the parents there by going back to the grassroots to help change perception and situation there. 

'And I am calling on all of us who happen to come from northern Borno that we should go back and address frontally the problems of under development of intellectual malnourishment, of poverty, of all problems confronting us'. 

'Apart from that, we will make the public school as attractive as possible for the children of Borno state. We have bought some chips-making equipments from Turkey and they are on their way coming. We want to be producing chips using corn so that we can be giving some launch package to the kids in primary schools', he said. 

Borno state suffers high level of educational deficit. In the state's northern region nearly 90 percent of the population are uneducated by the western education standard, except those pursuing the Islamic Quranic knowledge. 

The governor had once lamented that in the past three years, none of the schools in the region could produce a student that could pass the end of college exams to qualify for an admission into the university.  A reason he said  accounted for the Boko Haram terror group having a recruitment bonanza from the flocks of out of school children. 

But it is doubted if the Lula de Silva's  Bolsa Familia model would pay off for the governor in a state whose people's  loath for western education was more of ideological than poverty or illiteracy. 

Since his coming on board as governor some three years ago, education sector had continue to top the annual budget of Mr Shettima's government. But much investments and innovations made in public schools worth millions of Naira are still not really appreciated. 

In the 2012 budget year, the government awarded contract worth over N1 billion (about $6 million) for the upgrade, renovation and even rebuilding of  more school across the state. Feeding  of students were made free, books, uniforms, tuition fees and even allowances were given to students free of charge. Yet in a school in Baga town only 200 students attend the expansive school meant to accommodate at least a thousand. 

There are more empty classes with modern facilities across the northern Borno, than anywhere else in the northeast region. 

But Shettima  said he is an unrepentant optimist for an end of the Boko Haram terrorism. 

'Apart from these, we are ever-willing to pursue the path of dialogue, of reconciliation, and of rehabilitation with the Boko Haram. For those that have gone so far in this path of madness, it is very difficult, honestly, to get them back. We have a lot of gullible young minds who don't know their lefts from their rights, and who are just vulnerable to the antics of demagogues like Shekau and the rest. 

'If these people are rehabilitatable, we are willing to rehabilitate them and bring back to the society, because they are our children and we would not cut away our hands simply  because it had rotten. No matter their shortcomings, they remain our own; and we should bear responsibility for their failings. 

'That is why I kept saying that  if the public school system was functioning well, if the vocational training centers are functioning, if we have the mechanism of engaging them, believe me Boko Haram wouldn't have surfaced. It was our collective failure of leadership that brought Boko Haram. 

'And unless we do something drastic and urgent as a people, I am sorry the recent uprising will just be an appetizer; a precursor of worse things to come in Nigeria, especially in northern Nigeria. That is why we have to do everything necessary, including paying parents to enroll 

children in to school'