Re: Girl child education in Northern Nigeria

Permit me a space in your popular news medium to respond to the opinions expressed by Dr. Tijjani Salihu Shinkafi. In the letters to the Editor of Daily Trust of Monday, 10th February 2020, page 13, I felt slighted and humiliated by his remarks and unfounded opinion, as a girl and a student in the […]

Permit me a space in your popular news medium to respond to the opinions expressed by Dr. Tijjani Salihu Shinkafi. In the letters to the Editor of Daily Trust of Monday, 10th February 2020, page 13, I felt slighted and humiliated by his remarks and unfounded opinion, as a girl and a student in the university.

 

To over generalise that ‘girls are lazy’ as he said is not totally true. As a scholar that I believe he is, it is expected of him to qualify his statement by “some girls”. If he had said that there will be no qualms about that but for him to generalise is going beyond limit.

Even in his Usmanu Danfodiyo University, in Medicare, Pharmacy, Nursing and even Biochemistry, I believe girls are doing well side by side with boys.

Secondly, to generalise about a whole region as ‘Northern Nigeria” and condemn all the girls as ‘been light’ about their education is a fallacy. Here, he is talking about 11 Northern states of Nigeria which includes Kwara, Kogi, Kano, Borno, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna, Zamfara, Nasarawa and Plateau states respectively. By whatever research parameter one follows, it is “lazy for any researcher or observer to say all the girls from these states “are lazy” and are always chatting and light about their education”. May be  Dr. Shinkafi is talking about feW girls he knew around his UDUS Campus and even at that, his “research” does not capture the reality on the ground.

Finally, let me humbly advise Dr. Tijjani Salihu Shinkafi to make adequate research before sending materials to be published for wider consumption like in the Daily Trust Newspaper, which is a global newspaper per excellence. However, I agree with him in his view on the role of parents in the education of their children whether boys or girls. I also agree with him that women are the bedrock of every society and must be educated to provide firsthand knowledge and guidance to children and the fact that if one’s wife is educated, one will have a peaceful home.

But my point of departure is where he condemns all Northern Nigerian girls as ‘lazy’.

I, Shamsiya Umar Jibril, I am not lazy, and there are hundreds of thousands of girls in Northern Nigeria in institutions of higher learning like my humble self who are not lazy.

Shamsiyya Umar Jibril, Federal University Gusau, Zamfara state Nigeria, [email protected]