Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, an Islamic cleric based in Kaduna, has stated that for the government to address the persisting insecurity in Nigeria, it should invest in education rather than carrying out what he dubbed “white elephant projects.”
The Muslim cleric also stated that the “tricycle of poverty, ignorance, and injustice” is what causes instability in Nigeria.
In order to stop the country’s instability, Sheikh Gumi said that the government must reconsider the necessity of providing resources to individuals at the grassroots and funding their education.
The Islamic cleric asserts that if citizens are not educated, instability would continue since ignorance and unemployment are consequences of a lack of access to education.
First, he said, “We need to understand that Almajarai is a cultural issue, and the fire brigade method won’t work unless you change the people’s thinking.”
He continued by saying that Almajarai is a method of education that has been replaced by modernity in the same way that camels and donkeys are no longer used as modes of transportation.
Sheikh Gumi asserts that there are still certain areas where people still utilize donkeys and camels for transportation and that if contemporary amenities were made available, people would abandon the traditional ones.
In such regions, he said, there are no good roads, let alone nice cars, and Almajarai is not simply a school—it is an underfunded educational system.
For the good of everyone in the nation, the Islamic cleric stated, education must be made universal from primary to secondary to even tertiary levels.
He argued that politicians in Nigeria should invest in education rather than flyovers, pointing out that the problem of out-of-school children in Nigeria, which is estimated to number millions, is only a small fraction of the country’s overall problems, which are caused by poverty, ignorance, and injustice.
