Talking the girl-child education

Both women saw themselves as politicians. Gambo Sawaba was of the radical Northern Elements Progressive Union, more emotively known as “NEPU’’. Leila Dogonyaro saw herself as of the ‘’Sarauta’’ or ruling class brand. I delivered to her the copy of the magazine carrying her interview as she arrived at Muritala  Square in Kaduna to join […]

Both women saw themselves as politicians. Gambo Sawaba was of the radical Northern Elements Progressive Union, more emotively known as “NEPU’’. Leila Dogonyaro saw herself as of the ‘’Sarauta’’ or ruling class brand. I delivered to her the copy of the magazine carrying her interview as she arrived at Muritala  Square in Kaduna to join a crowd waiting to be addressed by  Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the presidential candidate of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN.
Hajiya Gambo was soft spoken and combative. She was happy that the military were leaving, but glad that they had broken the power of local rulers to use prisons as holes to silence and torture challengers of corruption, like her. When she recalled brutalities and humiliations and repeated desecrations of her womanhood, tears streamed down her face with ease. Her pain was deep but she sounded triumphant – she had survived. She wanted it known that she would fight again by running for Nigeria’s presidency in 1979. She was a woman with a doctoral degree in political rebellion but with literacy from NEPU’s schooling. Here was a deep loss for Africa that this defiant soldier for human development had not had access to high quality education.
Hajiya Leila had been a beautiful Nigerian Airways cabin crew staff flying between London and Lagos; become a business woman whose husband was Nigeria’s ambassador to Japan. Her imposing and urbane frame also carried a record of combat. Her physical beauty had become a prison for her potentiality. When she was due to enter Queen’s College secondary school in Ilorin, family duties took her into a marriage. She hit back by clandestinely teaching the older co-wives how to read and write. When that subversive activity was betrayed, she was booted out of that marriage and household. She summarised her anger with the proclamation that ‘’in Northern Nigeria one becomes a grandmother at fourteen (14 years of age”’. Here too was a deep loss to Africa of a talent not allowed to be born and beautiful.
Their stories are masts from which to fly flags for the education and welfare of the over 430 million women and girls all across Africa.  The cause of girl child’s education, however, tends to be hidden under clouds kicked up by worthy campaigns for the ‘’empowerment of women’’ as leaders in politics, cabinet posts; public administration, corporate governance and money-making enterprises. Using the symbolic power of strikingly colourful dresses and imaginative architectures of head-ties, women beating drums into political winds may not be also effectively focusing on raising the education of the girl child.
 “Stakeholders’’ like UNICEF and UNESCO tend to wave the girl child as a statistic. She is 54% of the 32 million children in Africa who are not attending school, they say. In 2008 only 25 % of students in secondary schools were girls; 38% were in tertiary institutions, and only 40% of those attending technical and vocational institutions were females. They are quick to roll out evils by African males against the girl child, notably: demanding that she meet men’s sexual appetites; she prepare food in homes; look after babies and lead blind men out to beg; that she must work on farms, gather firewood from wild bushes, carry water from distant wells, risk her limbs selling bottles of groundnuts at traffic junctions, etc.
Officials of UN agencies are allergic to words like ‘’imperialism’’ and ‘’neo-colonialism’’, and what Susan George rudely calls ‘’debt violence’’. Yet it is true that soon after independence African politicians borrowed ‘’aid’’ money and built schools –including those for girls – without realising that they were tricked into sky-rocketing debt- slavery. The African coffee or cotton growers get a pittance from values of these crops in industries and urban stomachs; lacks electricity, goes to bed early and turns to sex –not opium- to calm his/her frustrations and despair because they cannot buy school uniforms, textbooks, chairs, school fees, and transport money or a bicycle for their little girl to ride to school and back. And they cannot drop bombs on debt-collectors.
If women in combative head-ties would storm and shout at European Union, American, Japanese and Canadian embassies to protest about robberies through debt repayments that are killing the girl child through denying her nutrition, education and exposing her to early marriage, they might provoke ASUU and NLC into joining their rallies. If the women were protesting about the girl child being robbed of education because corruption-gotten billions of dollars hosted by economies of these countries yield horrible statistics, such as: only 2 % of architects are women; only 4 % are quantity surveyors; 12% lecturers; 8% are obstetricians & gynaecologists –a dreadful statistic in the face of millions of women dying at child delivery – the world would tremble.
The power of women must storm classrooms hosting pupils attending three different lessons at the same time; schools without computer or chalk; without sanitary pads and toilets for girls; health clinics, mid-day meals or water taps. They should invent creative leadership-training for the girl-child; and reward teachers who conquer mountains to deliver education. Leila and Gambo Sawaba want to smile.