Northern Nigeria before the advent of the British colonialists was a geographical area made up of various communities but with two dominant states, the Sokoto and the Borno Caliphates. The Sokoto Caliphate was the largest, most prosperous and most complexly organized state in pre-colonial tropical Africa while the Borno Caliphate was one of the oldest Muslim polities in black Africa built on Islamic tradition. Both states had their educational and welfare systems, the other non-Muslim traditional African communities of the area also had their various indigenous systems. Fredrick Lugard the British conqueror of the area found in place these systems. In the Muslim areas there were over 200,000 Qur’anic schools, which were the elementary schools[1]. There was a developed literary technology called Ajami, (Hausa in Arabic scripts) which, was in existence for almost five hundred years. Both the Shari’ah legal and welfare systems were well established. Fredrick Lugard as an imperialist set out to destroy all these systems and replace them with the English systems based on pagan and Christian traditions.

The strategies for destroying the systems varied. The pre-colonial social welfare was in good working order as noted by European travelers and spies and it was swiftly destroyed by the colonial power despite the protests of the Emirs[2]. Diehard Christian missionaries such as Dr. Miller who advocated the use of force for conversion of Muslims[3] urged Lugard to destroy the Ajami system and replace it with the European script[4]. The colonial government established a secular western educational system to replace the Islamic educational system the consequences of this to the Muslims has been discussed by many competent authorities. But perhaps the most important negative impact of secular education apart from the obliteration of the Islamic literary technology was “adoption of European ways, however trivial, that added up to the dissolution of Islam” in the state and the society[5]. Since then education in the north has been disconnected from the cultural root of the society. The most difficult system to quench was the Shari’ah system. Lugard expressed his desire in his Political Memorandum to gradually replace this system with a hybrid based on the English system[6]. This was partially achieved before independence because the Sardauna and other Northern leaders were blackmailed that there would be no foreign investments if they did not accept the penal code[7]. They accepted it under pressure and forty years later no foreign investments and no development and the agitation for Shari’ah has gained an unprecedented momentum even in the South West where the Muslims have been yearning for Shari’ah for more than one hundred years[8].

As usual all the systems established by the colonialists lacked legitimacy because among many other reasons they had no social base rooted in the culture of the people. Nigeria like most other African states created by the colonialists is artificial without cultural roots. Neo-Patrimonialism caused by this artificiality[9] nearly destroyed the state when the major ethnic groups receded to their shells it was only saved by the ethnic minorities[10] and the international system[11]. Then came the oil boom after the civil war crisis and there was massive investment in human and physical infrastructure. The federal and state governments established many schools. During the first republic from 1960 and up to the military era in 1975 there were only five universities but from 1976 to 1984 eight federal and five state universities came into existence. It should be noted that during the period of expansion the Nigerian state benefited from the oil windfall at whose peak the government earned $24.93 billion per annum in 1980. But when the downfall came the government earned its lowest revenue of $5 billion per annum in 1986[12] no miracle could save such a state that depended on one source for its revenue. Corruption became more pronounced and it has since remained in the state largely because of the structure of the state. Corrupt people always hide under the cover of their ethnic and religious backgrounds by dishing out patronage to their sectional clients so even the so-called anti-corruption commission is ineffective. The commission is yet to investigate the allegation of bribery labeled against the Presidency and even a Bishop made a very frightening call  on it to investigate those who made the allegation instead of the Presidency[13].

With the failure of the state to provide decent education in the South the people there mobilized their communities to establish schools at all levels and also compliment the efforts of their governments in the public schools. Therefore many communities in the south established good primary and secondary schools and now private universities owned by the Churches and private investors have started springing up. In the Muslim areas of the north the case has been different despite the apparent state failure to provide this essential service. Several competent authorities have explained the reasons for this community apathy and I have also made some attempts in earlier works but all the same a brief survey will also be made again.

Many parts of northern Nigeria have experienced statehood for up to one thousand years[14] therefore the people always looked up to the state to provide them with the essential services thus they were ill equipped when the educational system began to collapse. I would restrict myself to Kano where I am more familiar with the community efforts. One of the earliest community efforts of providing western educational services was spearheaded by late Mallam Aminu Kano of blessed memory and Alhaji Aminu Dantata and it succeeded in establishing four community secondary schools in the state. Later three of the schools were taken over by the state government. And at the moment the only functional high rate community secondary is the owned by the Kano Foundation also under the leadership of Alhaji Aminu Dantata. This can in no way be compared to the various commendable efforts of the CBOs (Community Based Organizations) in the south. The good people of Katsina have also reached an advanced stage of establishing the first community-based university in northern Nigeria that will begin with both physical and Islamic science courses in the next academic session.

In most Muslim parts of northern Nigeria most of the communities have been more concerned with the Islamiyya schools than with the conventional schools this led some philanthropic organizations like the Inuwar Jama’ar Kano to begin mobilizing people to participate in the resuscitation of the conventional schools like in other parts of Nigeria . This effort has yielded fruits and the Inuwar Jama’ar Kano is now recognized by national and international organizations such as UNICEF as a major civil group that could bring about positive changes in educational management in this backward part of the world. The organization has intervened in the areas where the state has failed. It has improved the capacity of teachers through workshops and provision of teaching aids. Despite its meager resources it has spent over N80 million in the rehabilitation of dilapidated infrastructures of public and community schools. Its intervention at BUK faculty of medicine was very crucial to the development of the faculty, which took almost twenty years before it could be accredited. And above all it has been consistent in its advocacy for attitudinal change towards community involvement in resuscitating education.

In as much as corrupt leaders are largely responsible for state failure in northern states to provide goods for the society there must be civil involvement at the community level to save the situation. Corruption is not only a northern phenomenon many of the southern governors are equally corrupt, one state governor in the south built an eight-lane one-kilometer road at the cost of N1.6 billion. The people there have not waited until they wipe out corruption before they improve their education they mobilized at the community and individual levels to save themselves from the circle of poverty. A food seller could expend all her savings to take her child to school but in the north such a sacrifice is very rare. The Muslim scholars must be involved in the advocacy for attitudinal change because with their religious influence they could mobilize the people to put pressure on corrupt politicians.

The lack of pressure from civil groups for good governance is not restricted to the educational sector. From a preliminary empirical investigation I have found that some agrarian local government councils in Kano State in the last three years spent less than N3million on agriculture this was less than the personal emolument of an individual councilor. When a local government head of agriculture department was asked about this evil attitude of the politicians he quickly responded that such an action was possible because there is no pressure from the farmers association. This is tragic in an agrarian state that has over 8,000 farmers cooperative societies[15]. To eradicate poverty in northern states these groups must be mobilized to put pressure on government to be accountable. If poverty is reduced the people could sacrifice more for education to supplement state failure and with a more educated public there would be more agitation for accountability, corruption would be reduced and more resources would be committed to education and the circle of poverty could be terminated.

It is only through campaign for attitudinal change at the grass roots that the north could get itself out of the culture of poverty. People must be mobilized by the civil society made of farmers unions, religious organizations, labor and student unions to detest corrupt politicians and reject them at the polls but this is certainly not an easy task. It is always easier to say politicians are corrupt rather than to mobilize the people to be responsible and seek accountability. If the people are made to be involved in the schools through active participation at say the PTAs they could put pressure on governments for improved services but the civil groups are yet to utilize the potency of the PTAs. Because of lack of sufficient watch from the grass roots even those who were advocates of justice have been compromised as soon as they joined governments even some Islamists became corrupt when they joined the federal and state governments.

Nowhere is the culture of intellectual poverty more inexcusable than in the northern universities. The state has failed to provide the essential services at the universities. The southern dons realized this and started fending for themselves by developing their intellectual capabilities with the meager resources at their disposal. Most of the northern dons were in better position than the southerners because at least they had better government patronage but they misused it by failing to develop themselves and their subordinates intellectually. They joined the clique of nouveau riche and competed for material flamboyance while their academic environments were rotting away.

Since they have failed to develop themselves intellectually most northern academics both the conservative and radical wings have also failed to establish any viable scholarly tradition in the northern universities or even in their private think tanks that have been unable to produce any outstanding scholarly journals over a long period despite the fact that some of them have received generous grants from international organizations. Based even on the standards they set for themselves four northern universities, Ahmadu Bello, Bayero, Maiduguri and Usmanu Danfodio have 336 professors compared to Ibadan’s 291, Nsukka’s 226, Lagos’s 225 and OAU’s 215[16]. So no wonder Karl Maier observed that a 30 minutes search for recent books on Nigerian history in ABU bookshop “will turn up one or two volumes”[17]. The academics there are more inclined to scathing criticism of other people’s works rather than producing their own books. Yet the dons from these institutions complain about state of education in the north and they blame the politicians but what have they done to develop their academic environments compared to their southern counterparts, a common enough thing to do.

It is certainly true that the Obasanjo administration is as evil if not more immoral than previous governments since it has spent less percentage on education as I explained in my article in support of ASUU actions but the attitude of northern academics to scholarship is indeed catastrophic. There is hardly any zeal to develop their potentials compared to the southern counterparts. I wrote a short piece in the Weekly Trust and www.gamji.com to encourage scholars to apply for Bellagio residency at Villa Sebelloni. This is a place any scholar of worth would aspire to be invited and in many other parts of the world scholars are craving for this fellowship without any sponsorship unlike African scholars who are offered free sponsorship. All the enquiries I received after the publication of that piece in these two popular media were from southern academics. And I even went out of my way to take the brochure of the owners of the Villa, the Rockefeller Foundation to neighboring institutions but yet there was no enthusiasm. This is the kind of mindset we have in northern ivory towers where people are offered a golden opportunity to develop themselves intellectually but without any enthusiasm, if we don’t arrest this intellectual apathy our future would certainly be bleak. I met a professor from one of the best universities in the world who earned his PhD the year I was born and he confirmed to me how overwhelmed he was about the environment and the fact that none of his friends many of whom were former fellows ever informed him of place. He was astonished to find their names signed in the Villa’s conservatory where he worked. But here is free information but no one seems to care from this juncture I will beg the permission of esteemed readers to allow me conclude that the collapse of education in the north is caused by individual, community and state failures. And the resuscitation is certainly a tripartite responsibility the earlier we start from the lowest to the highest level the better for us. I would close this short piece by paying tribute to three committed individuals, because of their involvement in this struggle in various ways and they are still working hard; Engineer Isa Musa Gumel who wrote a pioneering technical book in Hausa language, Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu for his untiring efforts to revive Ajami and develop the Hausa language and Mallam Idris Mohammed Amin of the BBC for his very useful program on education which is in the true spirit of mass communication for social change.