Reversing Learning Crises In the North-East

 By Carl Umegboro

The synergy of the federal and state governments, humanitarian societies, international agencies and non-government organisations through the Global Partnership for Education Accelerated Funding projects in the North-East is worthwhile. The thoughtful interventions followed critical situations vis-à-vis education of children in public schools resulting firstly from destroyed schools by bandits in the region coupled with other uncommon challenges militating against good education outcomes in the North-East namely; Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. Data shows that about 1.9 million boys, girls and youths affected by conflict are without access to basic quality education in the region. This is inclusive of 56 per cent of all displaced children who are out of school.

In an overview of education in Nigeria, Chief Education, UNICEF Nigeria, Dr. Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan underlined that Nigeria and especially the North-East are experiencing a severe learning crisis though access to education is improving, but remains inequitable, especially in the North-East. UNICEF submitted that poverty rate has dramatically increased in low-and lower middle-income countries from post-COVID accelerated results to 48 per cent while post-COVID simulation stands at 65 per cent, and agitatedly summed that three out of every four children in Nigeria cannot read with meaning or solve simple mathematics problems. This seriously calls for concern.

Who Is Importing Arms Into Nigeria?

By Anthony Cardinal Okogie

It was reported, a few days ago, in almost all the national dailies, that the Nigerian Customs Service seized 49 boxes containing 661 pump action rifles unlawfully imported into Nigeria. The rifles were said to have been concealed in a container of steel products and other merchandise. Three suspects were said to have been arrested. According to retired Colonel Hameed Ali, the Comptroller-General of Customs, the arms were cleared at the port with the assistance of two customs officers who have since been apprehended and are now being investigated.

This is the latest in the series of unlawful importation of arms into Nigeria, and it raises a number of issues. First, who are those behind unlawful importation of arms into Nigeria and what are their intentions?

At a press conference, in which Colonel Ali triumphantly reported the arrest of three suspects, he also informed the Nigerian public that a team of customs officers on intelligence patrol had, on Sunday, January 22, 2017, along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway in Lagos, intercepted a truck whose registration number he gave as BDG 265 XG, purportedly conveying the arms in a container whose number he gave as PONU/825914/3. Such news would have been sweet in the ears but for the fact that nothing was said of the owner of the truck and nothing was said of the owner of the container. That raises further questions: In whose name was that truck registered and in whose name was the container registered? Are they registered in the same name? Have their owners been investigated? When shall they and their foot soldiers appear in court?

Not to raise these and related questions, and not to address them, will leave us where we have always been, that is, a place where a criminal act is committed but there is neither trial nor conviction nor sanction, a country where criminals are phantoms, a strange land where there are crimes but no criminals. That is why the triumphant account of the Comptroller of Customs comes close to another episode in playing to the gallery.

But there is another issue to be raised, and that is, whatever happened to intelligence in this country? Newspapers reported that the Comptroller of Customs informed Nigerians that impounding the truck containing the unlawfully imported arms and the apprehension of three men suspected to be involved in the crime of unlawful importation was the achievement of a “roving team of the NCS’ federal operations unit, while on intelligence patrol.” But on closer scrutiny, this advertisement of prowess is in fact an advertisement of colossal but recurring failure of intelligence. A dictum has it that prevention is better than cure. Intelligence is crime prevention. Nigeria’s security agencies—the Customs in this case, the Police, the Army, to mentioned but these—have repeatedly demonstrated their ineptitude when it comes to preventing acts that are inimical to security. The Police arrive at the scene of a crime after the crime and after the departure of the perpetrators.