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By Uzair Adam Imam

President Muhammadu Buhari has commiserated the death of a five-year-old girl, Hanifa Abubakar, whose teacher allegedly killed, in Kano on Thursday.

The Daily Reality had reported how Hanifa’s corpse was discovered dismembered and buried in a shallow grave at the premises of a certain private school in Tudun Murtala Nassarawa Local Government Area of the state.

Hanifa was a pupil of Abdulmalik Muhammed Tanko, who allegedly abducted her on her way to a school located in Kwanar Yan Gana in Tudun Murtala.

The commiseration was in a release signed Friday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President, Malam Garba Shehu.

Buhari has commended the commitment of the police and the secret service in unravelling the mystery behind the disappearance of Hanifa.

The President also prayed for the repose of the soul of the little school girl and urged her parents to bear the sad loss with courage and fortitude in God.

By Aliyu Muhammad Aliyu

We often ask ourselves the question, “why do we lack reading culture in our contemporary society?” The answers we get are associated with our background and perspective on the issue. To a teacher, knowledge of all fields and disciplines is documented mainly in writing. We explore and acquire it by reading relevant resource materials of our interest for their information. We read enough literature persistently to acquire what is sufficient to be knowledgeable through either the education process or self-learning. To read and continue reading, the reading itself has to be easy, attractive and exciting to the reader. In this way, it becomes second nature and a hobby unwitting.

As a common saying, “the beginning of everything is the most important.” When a child learns how to read and comprehend the information, write what is understood by their readers, and express themselves verbally, effective communication skills manifest, hence reading culture and knowledge acquisition. This marks the beginning of intellectual independence achievable only through standard, sound and comprehensive primary education.

Children are taught to be literate in primary schools; they familiarize themselves with alphabets and numerals, words recognition, pronunciation, formation of sentence and paragraph and finally, the whole passage comprehension and composition in mother tongue and lingua franca. Reading begins by reading adventure stories in which the heroes get into difficulties. Then, using the suspense technique, the readers’ interest is held until they find how the heroes escape in the end. This boosts readers’ imagination and interests, which results in reading more stories searching for ways to be heroes themselves. With age, the readers grow older and develop an interest in how people think, talk, feel and handle situations and circumstances. That makes them critical in their thoughts and figuring out how to solve their problems through someone’s experience put in writing.

A society that adopts a reading culture will produce vibrant youth of revolutionary character that will be satisfied only with the best from anyone in all circumstances. On the contrary, anything one does with difficulty, the interest in that particular issue gradually fades away until one loses it completely, more so on the reading activity as energy and time consuming are immense. Those who are incapable of reading a quarter of the minimum words expected per minute of an average reader will certainly lose interest in reading since they are expending what isn’t worth it when they can use the same amount of effort that bear fruit in other activities comfortably. They have to abandon reading and then lose all its life-changing attributes.

The cascade of events that lead to poor reading culture begins with poor primary school back and forth. Pupils attend poor primary schools and leave without learning anything substantial. They move to secondary school still without learning much because of a lack of foundation to support the lessons taught. Somehow, they manage to pass the final exams by exam malpractice or otherwise. They get admissions to higher schools of learning and can sail through in different ways. Some do that by cheating, and others with great difficulty of mere rote learning due to inefficient lecturers that are probably victims of poor primary education or lazy in evaluating their students’ performances.

The poor products are the so-called qualified teachers that are given the available teaching job in primary school to continue the vicious cycle. It is common knowledge that one learns much less than one is taught. So, this indicates that a negligible amount of knowledge and motivation is to be learnt from incompetent teachers. Moreover, this results in the decline of knowledge in every generation.

The only way to correct this existing problem and prevent its future occurrence is to recruit enough competent primary school teachers. They should also be given sufficient orientation training that focuses on what they are to teach according to the syllabus and continuously retrain all existing teachers. Furthermore, educated parents and guardians are to monitor the ability of their children’s literacy and numeracy by themselves to ensure their performance since results are faked by teachers, especially those private schools to mislead parents.

Primary school leavers taught by competent primary school teachers don’t need to spend a dime on them in private secondary schools because they’re well equipped to muddle through and even be among the best in the current unsound state of public schools. A qualitative primary education that leads to unlimited reading culture and curiosity is what the first-generation students and their successors got and proved to be highly knowledgeable in virtually all fields of learning despite their lower certificates. Contrary to what is currently obtainable with those with all the degrees but never fails to hide their ignorance of general knowledge and simple basics that were not obtainable right from primary school.

To fix a society, fix education. To fix education, fix primary education, as simple as it sounds.

Aliyu Muhammad Aliyu wrote from Kano via amabaffa@yahoo.com.

By Muhammad Abdurrahman

The former senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District and activist, Shehu Sani, advised Kano State Governor, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, to immortalise Haneefa Abubakar, the 5-year-old girl allegedly abducted and murdered by her schoolteacher in Kano.

He stated that in a Tweet, adding that Governor Ganduje should do that by “naming a major street or a public building or public school after her.”

Haneefa went missing while going to school in the Dakata area, Kano, in December 2021. Her abductors demanded and collected ransom from her parent.

However, fearing that she recognised one of them, he reportedly used rat poison to kill her. He mutated her body and dumped it at the school he taught in the neighbourhood.

The Kano State Police, in collaboration with the DSS, arrested the suspects yesterday, January 19, 2022. That led to the exhumation of Haneefa’s decaying remains. She has since been buried while the suspects remain in police custody.

By Muhammad Sabiu

Bandits raided a military base in the Shinfida community, Jibia Local Government Area, Katsina State, killing one soldier and an official of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

By 10 p.m. Tuesday, the bandits were said to have stormed the base, shooting indiscriminately.

During the attack, they set fire to two patrol vehicles and utilized another patrol vehicle to transport food from nearby villages.

DSC Muhammad Abdara, a spokeswoman for the NSCDC in the state, verified the attack and the number of people killed.

According to reports, the officers who were shot died instantaneously, while those who sustained gunshot wounds were being treated at an unidentified hospital.

“The terrorists attacked the military base located within Government Day Secondary School Shinfida last Tuesday. They killed one soldier and one NSCDC officer on the spot and left many others injured.

“They attacked the military base on their motorcycles. Despite the efforts of the military personnel, the terrorists killed the two victims and set ablaze two patrol vehicles and drove away one with food items stolen from neighbouring villages,” the source was quoted as saying.

By Sumayyah Auwal Usman

The Governing Council of the Kaduna State University has named Prof. Yohanna Tella the acting Vice-Chancellor of the university. Tella, a professor of mathematics and the current Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Administration, was announced on Thursday by the Governing Council.

Prof. Tella takes over from Prof. Muhammad Tanko, whose five-year tenure ended. This was after a heated debate lasting about five hours. The new acting Vice-Chancellor will act for six months before the appointment of a substantive Vice-Chancellor. 

The Daily Reality had earlier reported that electing the institution’s new VC has been tense due to clashes between various interest groups in and outside the university.

By Usama Abdullahi

The media is filled with the tragic story of the deceased Haneefa, who was abducted a couple of months ago in Kano State and later killed in a gruesome manner by her teacher—the abductor. When I came across the story, I couldn’t help but weep for the little pretty, innocent child. The shock in me is unbelievable. But did this happen for the first time? That was the question that popped up in my mind when I first read the news of her demise. 

That wasn’t the first occurrence, and I guess it wouldn’t be the last. A lot of babies have been killed for the past years. Still, more are being killed daily too. Sometimes we don’t hear about it because the abominable act is being done in private, hence beyond the reach of media. Unfortunately, irresponsible parents discard newborns like rotten cabbages; some get abducted while others are buried alive. Moreover, others are being sold as goods meant to be exchanged.

What is this telling you? Simple; it tells you more about our society and how unsparing we are today. This is a true reflection and clear proof of our today’s society. Indeed, we are a money-driven society. We crave excessive wealth badly. And we seek to get that in such venturesome and unacceptable ways. Unfortunately, some of us have turned beasts and cannibals in the process, thereby assassinating and eating the flesh of the unfortunate victims. 

This society stoops so low beyond imagination. Disturbingly, no possible help in sight to redeem such despicable acts and to tame or neutralise the evil-minded monsters doing these. Don’t we have leaders? You may perhaps ask. Yes, we do, but they are not helpful at all. Most of our leaders don’t deserve to live with us, let alone rule us. They are mostly the ones sponsoring these evils.

Imagine a so-called leader who hires hoodlums, feed them, rent five-star hotels for them so that he could assign them to abduct or take away the lives of those he wishes dead. When I was growing up as a kid, I used to deny the existence of “ritualism”. I thought that exists in fairy tales that we were taught at schools or watched on TVs. But, contrary to my kiddish thoughts, “ritualism” truly exists. It’s, in fact, become the norm.

As kids, our parents used to caution us against strangers, that we shouldn’t even exchange words with them. Because most of them are bad, they can wile us by giving us gifts, and when we take those gifts from them, we would be unconscious shortly after, and they would disappear with us to another world where they would waste us for their devilry reasons.

Our parents are damn right. But what our beloved parents need to know today is: it’s no longer strangers but our relatives; it’s now those we trusted and confided our care to. We might even feel more secure in a stranger’s abode than in some of our relatives’. Disgustingly, an uncle rapes his niece; a father kills his daughter; a mother copulates with her biological son, all these for worldly gains.

This is what we are now. One who’s supposed to protect and cater for you now turns to be your enemy. Our society is no longer safe. There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing amongst us. Thus, we need to be extra careful because human lives aren’t sacred anymore. Sadly, humans are often hunted like wild animals in the jungle. Worst still, there’s a market for human organs, where every human body organ is available for sale.

Usama Abdullahi wrote from Abuja, Nigeria. He can be reached at usamagayyi@gmail.com.

By Salaudeen Teslim Olamilekan

Over the years, there has been an erroneously hard held belief among some Nigerians, especially the teeming youths of intellectuals, that, ordinarily, electorate votes don’t count in an election. This belief is more evidenced in social media discussions, particularly Facebook. Whether they vote in an election or not, the winner of an election is already known to the powers that be, even before the election day.

In preparation for the 2023 elections, I visited my local government secretariat to register my voter’s card. It was pretty disheartening and mind-boggling for me, realizing that what I observed the very first day I went, there was still the same thing I noticed. About 85% of the people on the queue waiting to be captured are old and mostly unlettered. They are illiterate market women, farmers and some senior civil servants. The numbers of youths in the queue were minuscule.

Many acclaimed young, exposed, and educated individuals who should know better about how a country is built are focused on venting anger and frustration on social media and gatherings against politicians. We fail to do what truly matters for the betterment of our country. It’s safe to say some youths and informed older people don’t even have voters cards, much less planning on voting. A fragment of this proportion doesn’t obtain the card for election purposes. It’s only some one-third among the youthful large social media users who lament and often weep for the country now and then will vote. In the end, the irony is, when an election comes, the old market women and farmers we often view as ill-informed and uneducated are the ones that pull the most votes.

In my conversation with some youths my age in my neighbourhood and the older ones, I discovered seemingly educated people who pride themselves on not having voters cards. They even hold and justify such ignorant views with their full chest. More surprising, a lady once told me that voters are the problem of Nigeria. She believes she’s wiser because she has never voted for any corrupt Nigerian leaders in the past. She has never exercised her right to choose who governs her country and who doesn’t, and she doesn’t seem to care. She sees people that vote as accomplices to the fraud in government. She’s among the many complainants that know every politician that’s not performing by their names but failed to see voting as a reasonable way to push them out of government and establish a new people-oriented government.

To say our votes don’t count in determining who wins or loses the election in Nigeria is a talk borne out of utter ignorance. The fact that the educated ones propagate such opinions makes it more embarrassing. Don’t let us fool ourselves. If our votes don’t count, politicians will not be spending billions of naira on advertisements and campaigns, touring every nooks and cranny of the country begging for votes. I believe anyone who shared in the anger, disappointment and dissatisfaction many of us have towards this current government and doesn’t have a voters card shouldn’t be taken seriously. You can’t complain your way into changing the political order of your country. You take action by voting. Your ignorance towards the poll keeps terrible people in power.

The thing about democracy is that you can’t separate or remove elections from its guiding principles and practices. The moment a country fails to choose its leaders by the polls, directly or indirectly, it cannot be identified as a democratic country. Elections are conducted to elect a leader to represent the people and ensure people’s dreams and aspirations are fulfilled. This mechanism hasn’t proven to be successful in choosing good leaders all the time, but it’s successful in making the majority’s will come to fruition.

It is wise that your hatred towards the ruling government should be why you’re voting, not why you’re apathetic to the poll. If you refuse to vote because you hate the government, your apathy will continue to keep bad people in power, and in so far as bad people are in control, their poor decisions will be ruling every aspect of our lives.

Nigerian politicians understand the power voters have. That’s why they focused more on enticing our poor, uneducated and easily-deceived parents with some handful of rice and N500 so that they could vote for them. Unfortunately, politics is a game of numbers. The more crowd a wrong person pulls based on his war chest, the more that wrong person will have chances of clinging to power.

My fellow Nigerian youths, come 2023, blame yourself if the wrong people win our most important national and regional political offices. Never complain. It’s your fault that you don’t vote. You should now understand that the quality of your life determines the quality of the people in power. How safe and healthy you’re, depends on the outcome of your political decisions. The political aspirations of the government in power affect the country’s political economy, including the highly established businesses and the small and medium scales. It will affect the bread sellers, labourers, and our society’s disadvantaged. We should do away from ego and ignorance and exercise our rights to vote for good and future-focused leaders.

Salaudeen Teslim Olamilekan is an undergraduate of the Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara, studying Mass Communication.

By Ishaq Habeeb 

So I made a rather lengthy comment on Prof. Farooq Kperogi’s Facebook post regarding Bola Ahmad Tinubu’s presidential candidacy. He thought it was an excellent observation and thus an independent write up. Here is part of what the comment entails: “Tinubu is too old, too inebriated, too corrupt, too unhealthy, too controversial and too unfit to lead a nation that had just survived a tsunami”. That was my first reaction to the news making the rounds on social media since Tinubu officially made his intention public to run for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria come 2023.

A week before Tinubu’s announcement, our Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, declared his intention to run for the same office come 2023 and officially informed his principal to seek blessings as he intends to succeed him. My confusion here is: Mr Osinbajo’s declaration didn’t generate half the noise, Tinubu’s declaration is causing – although mainly in the negative. It makes me wonder, why are we all too focused solely on Tinubu? Everybody talking about what a terrible choice he’d be for the job, all attentions shifted away from Osibanjo.

Osinbanjo, Buhari’s VP since 2015, has never had any rift or imbroglio with his principal regarding the state of the nation. So now I put this to sleepy-eyed Nigerians: if Buhari is Pharaoh, doesn’t that make Osinbajo, the Vizier? Pharaoh’s Second-in-Command. That said, Osinbajo’s nonchalance to Buhari’s bad governance can only mean one of three (3) things:

1. That Osinbanjo is 100% with and actively part and parcel of the Buhari govt hence part to blame for the crass mismanagement of this country since they took over in 2015.

2. That he’s indifferent to the misruling and mismanagement of the country by his principal, so long as he remains the country’s VP and his family is safe and far away from the horrible effects of the bad governance, the Buhari regime – in which he’s the VP – has unleashed on Nigerians.

3. That he is not happy with the status quo but lacks the integrity and moral decency to do the pastoral thing and speak out against the ills or even step down, rather than feign indifference, watching the daily destruction of Nigeria and Nigerians by his principal, with himself, as second in charge.

Concluding thoughts…

Osinbajo is just as terrible as Tinubu for the job they’re eyeing, and Nigerians shouldn’t reject Taye but accept Kehinde. They’re two sides of the same coin. However, imperfect as they both are, if they’re the only two options, between the two, I’d rather go for the least, healthy, mentally and physically fit Osinbajo, over a sick, decrepitly-old, shady, and stinkingly-corrupt Tinubu. But thank God for multiple choices.

Ishaq Habeeb writes from Kano and can be reached via his Twitter handle @realishaqhabeeb.

By Hussaina Sufyan Ahmed

Forty-six days of Haneefah’s kidnapping ended in sorrow after she was today, Thursday, January 20, 2022, found dead with severe injuries in her body.

Haneefah Abubakar, a five-year-old girl, was abducted on November 4, 2021, on her way back from an Islamic school at Dakata quarters, Kano State.

The decry by some social media users during her kidnap was rampant as fliers were created to show support for the family in finding out about her whereabouts.

According to Haneefah’s uncle, Suraj Sulaiman: “The kidnapper took Haneefa to his wife, but she refused to hide her. He later decided to take her to Tudunwada where he operates a private school. First, he poisoned her tea with pesticide. Then, after she died, he buried her there.”

The kidnappers were apprehended yesterday, Wednesday, January 19, 2022, in Zaria, at their point to collect the second round of ransom after the initial 6million naira.

The news of Haneefa’s death has stirred a lot of reactions from people online and offline. People have been posting about it, sending condolences to Haneefah’s family and praying for immediate action against her killers.

Haneefah has since been buried according to Islamic rites.

May her gentle soul rest in peace.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

Bashir Ahmad, Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Digital and New Media, has completed a block of flats to serve as a centre for the learning of the Qur’an and Islamic literature in his hometown.

Mr Ahmad named the school after his late grandfather and announced it on Facebook.

He wrote, “Months after the foundation laying of a newly Islamiyya, established by my Foundation the Bashir Ahmad Foundation (BAF) in my hometown, Gaya LG, Kano State. I am glad to announce that works have been completed, and the school which is named after my late grandfather, Late Ishaq Ibrahim Model Tahfiz Qur’an, will be commissioned for [the] public in the coming weeks.”