How Gwoza excelled in education

Western formal education took time to take off in many parts of the former Northern Region. It was even more so in pockets of the region. In the Gwoza area of Borno State, the resistance was manifestly stiff. The first primary school was built in 1929 in Gwoza town and it spent its entire pioneering […]

Western formal education took time to take off in many parts of the former Northern Region. It was even more so in pockets of the region. In the Gwoza area of Borno State, the resistance was manifestly stiff. The first primary school was built in 1929 in Gwoza town and it spent its entire pioneering first year with only eight students. And even those eight students who were wards of village heads were wrested from their parents and admitted into the school under duress. Another three more years garnered only a paltry 13 more students totaling 22 students in four years.

The colonial administration was at the end of its tethers and had to throw in the towel and return to the drawing board. The school was specifically targeted at the hill dwellers that were largely traditional worshippers but was patently shunned by them largely because it was a boarding institution and would separate them from their kids who helped with household chores and farming. In 1933, the colonial administration decided to relocate it as a day school to Hambagda, a settlement higher up the hills, surrounded by a good number of villages within walking distance. Improvements were quickly evident which coupled with more coercive measures on parents ensured a good number of admissions.

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In 1941, three more schools were opened with clearly distressing results. The school at Ngoshe started with two pupils, Warabe four pupils, and Guduf four pupils. Acceptance was slow as age-old distrust persisted. These were the turbulent beginnings of western formal education in Gwoza which Haruna Idrisa Timta painstakingly chronicled in his book, The Historical Development of Western Education in Gwoza since 1929. The book was launched in October 2021. Though I missed attending the event, the author has been acquainting me with the progress of writing it over the years.

Haruna has been diligently working on the book since he retired from Borno State public service in 2005. He has been a teacher for most of his public service career, starting as a Grade 2 teacher in Gwoza Native Authority, then an NCE teacher, and upon graduation in 1978 from ABU Zaria, taught History in various schools in Borno State. He was the Registrar of BOCOLIS and subsequently its Provost. He also served the Borno State government in many other capacities as a local government secretary, commissioner, permanent secretary, and head of the civil service, where our paths crossed time and again.

The book is replete with stories of anguish in the earlier pursuit to bring western formal education to the Gwoza area and the upliftment that redounded at the successes that were achieved later. More schools were built from 1941 onwards with the numbers exploding after independence. Besides the government intervention, the author also acknowledged the crucial role played by Christian missionary schools in raising the standard of education and enrolment in Gwoza. Subsequently, many from Gwoza left for secondary schools in Maiduguri, Keffi, Zaria, Kaduna, and many other far-flung places. They ended up populating many tertiary institutions in the North.

Though the author is eminently qualified to deal with the subject matter, he nonetheless was indefatigable in reaching out to the National Archives and Arewa House in Kaduna to dig up material. He also interviewed quite a number both at the local level and elsewhere to amass an impressive amount of data to reconstruct events leading to the rapid progress of education in Gwoza.

The book is also appended with a list of Gwoza pioneers in scholarship and public service, showing at first glance an impressive number of 33 professors, 60 medical doctors, 85 engineers, and 69 lawyers, making Gwoza today one of the most educated enclaves in Borno State. From the list, I can easily fish out the name of our ABU Zaria contemporary, Prof. Abdullahi Mahdi who at a time became its vice-chancellor. He also went on to become the first vice-chancellor of Gombe State University. I also found the name of my late friend and colleague, Senator Umar Hambagda, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, the present enfant terrible of the National assembly and the first Gwoza national female legislator, Dr Asabe Vilita Bashir now in the House of Representatives.

Re: As the election campaign beckons

I read your piece, “As the election campaign beckons”. Although your main focus was on the problems facing the two leading parties, APC and PDP, your take that, “The country needs a strong and stable PDP as a counterpoise to the APC for the benefit of political plurality and the survival of democracy” completely ignored the emergence of a third (and even fourth) party. Not once did you mention the imminence of Peter Obi and his Labour Party, nor of Kwankwaso and his NNPP. Recent polls by at least two credible pollsters indicate that at a minimum this election cycle would likely be a three-horse race, which could go to the second ballot. If this is not statistically significant to be reflected in your write-up on this subject, I thought I should bring it to your attention. Several variables are aligned to give credence to the three-horse race forecast; namely; Technology, Demographics, and Length of the campaign period (5 months; had been about 2-3 months in the past).  I wager that this election cycle would be different from what we’ve seen in the past 24 years. Dale Emmanuel Bagaiya