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How Emir Sanusi’s Campaign Against Quota System Will Affect The North
By Chuks Ekpeneru
Just recently, the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi spoke to the North in a manner few would dare.
In his remarks at the 60th birthday celebration of Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State on Monday, Sanusi, said that policies like ‘quota system’ and ‘federal character’ have done the north of Nigeria more harm than good over the years.
He said that in trying to implement affirmative action to allow the north catch up with the more developed and well off south, the region has emerged worse off.
The Emir added that the north is in such a bad place today because it hasn’t sufficiently invested in education.
“We have been saying this for 20 to 30 years. If the North does not change, the North will destroy itself. The country is moving on. The quota system that everybody talks about must have a sunset clause.
“You don’t need to rise on being from Kaduna State or being from the North or being a Muslim to get a job, you come with your credentials, you go with your competence, you can compete with any Nigerian from anywhere.
“We need to get northern youths to a point where they don’t need to come from a part of the country to get a job.
To be sincere to the emir, he has over time proved to be the lone voice in the desert.
Sanusi was educated at the prestigious King’s College, Lagos, where he graduated in 1977. He also spent some of his working days in the South. His sojourn across Nigeria and his very many friends from all strata of the society may have opened his eyes.
Hear him: “The rest of the country cannot be investing, educating its children, producing graduates and then they watch us, they can’t get jobs because they come from the wrong state, when we have not invested in the future of our own children,” Sanusi says.
Same week the Emir spoke on this burning issue, another prominent northerner, the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Ambassador Mariam Yalwaji Katagum, lamented over the alarming level of poverty and illiteracy in the North as well as the rate of unemployment in the area.
“According to statistics, there are about 13 to 14 million out-of-school children in the North today,” she said.
Not many in the North will agree with the Emir and the Minister on this, for obvious reasons.
But reflective of the deep challenges ravaging the north vis s viz Insecurity, economic backwardness, etc one begins to trace the malaise to the lack of deliberate policies to harness the very rich human resource of that region.
It is same north that produced Jelani Aliyu, the United States-based Nigerian automotive designer, who designed the General Motors’ leading auto brand, Chevrolet Volt. He is acclaimed as the world’s best car designer.
Mention is also made of Mohamed Bah Abba from a rural area of northern Nigeria. He developed the pot-in-pot refrigerator i,e, Pot-in-Pot Preservation Cooling System in the 1990s.He received the Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2001 and used his $75,000 award to make the invention available throughout Nigeria.
Speaking on the effect of quota System, Olabisi Deji-Folutile said: “The country operates a quota policy that robs Peter to pay Paul, thus enthroning mediocrity above meritocracy.”
Attempts at bringing solution to the crisis include building of the almajiri schools in the North on which former President Goodluck Jonathan spent a whopping N15 billion.
While some of these schools have been remodeled into conventional basic educational institutions, some lay waste because the pupils have returned to their old ways.
How sustainable is quota system in an environment where equality and development is urgently needed?
Sanusi warns, “And believe me, if we don’t listen, there would be a day when there would be a constitutional amendment that addresses these issues of quota system and federal character.”
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