Sketches with Zebulon Agomuo

Ganduje and the Almajiri challenge in Kano

A few days ago, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State raised the alarm to the invasion of his state by multitudes of Almajirai which has swelled the population of out-of-school children in the state. The governor raised the alarm during the recently concluded Kaduna State Economic and Investment Summit. He said that his administration discovered that there was an influx of Almajirai from Niger Republic, some from Chad, Northern Cameroun and some from states of the North-West.

This lamentation has again brought to the fore the oft-neglected complaint of porous borders. Nigeria is a country that has no verifiable statistics of the number of people trooping into it on a daily basis. In the northern part of the country, borders are not closed, giving easy access to nationals of other countries to stray into the country. This is one of the reasons the Boko Haram crisis lingered until this moment. We are told that a good number of the abducted Chibok girls had since been transferred to Cameroun and other neighbouring countries through porous and unmanned borders.

The Almajiri case is worse now than in the last few years. One reason analysts believe may have fuelled the influx into Kano is that since the inception of the current administration of Muhammadu Buhari, the Almajirai from the neighbouring countries believe they are welcomed here since a Moslem is at the helm of affairs, particularly in Kano that is already known to be heavily populated with the Almajirai.

It is the same reason that in many cities of the country today, particularly Abuja and Lagos, the number of commercial motorcyclists (‘Okada’ riders) has tremendously increased in the last two years. Many of the invaders are not Nigerians but from neighbouring countries. It is really a serious problem for Nigeria, and the earlier government begins to take decisive steps to halt the dangerous trend, the better for all of us. Governor Ganduje is in a better position to discuss with President Buhari whose name is often being dropped by these intruders as their reason for the invasion.

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Train driver from hell?

Last Wednesday, April 19, 2017, would have been a tragic day at the Jibowu railway crossing in Mushin, Lagos, as some motorists and commercial motorcycle operators escaped death by a whisker in the hand of a train driver, who apparently was under certain influence.

Although it is often said that anyone killed by a train died of his/her own deafness, because of the vibrating sound of a train and the loudness of its horn, this particular day, it appeared that the train stole in on unsuspecting commuters who were trying to escape a hold up that had built up on top of the rail track.

On that day, there was no sign as there was nobody to signal anybody that train was coming. Some vehicle drivers who had their glasses wound up only suddenly discovered they were standing in the way of death. The train driver who must have also noticed the commotion at the crossing far away only began to hoot the horn a few metres away to the intersection.

The drama could have been better captured by a movie maker. But for sheer providence, what could have been a tragedy was avoided. It was unimaginable that a train driver who knows that there is a road crossing at Jibowu, which is also less than  three minutes drive to a major railway station in Yaba could go at the neck-break speed at which the man was running on that day.

One of the rules of driving is to reduce the speed once one gets to a junction or an intersection. I think this is also applicable to everything driving, train inclusive. The train driver behaved as if he was on a suicide mission. Recklessness has become a stock-in-trade for many train drivers.

 For instance, Ogbete Railway Crossing in Enugu has become a killing field, where people are routinely killed by over-speeding train drivers. Train drivers must be cautious enough to know that since the tracks are not underground, they will always contend with other road users and common sense demands that required speed limit be applied when they approach intersections, particularly in towns and busy cities.