By Hashim Muhammad Suleiman, PhD
You see, we may have our misgivings about many societal problems, we may even disagree on what causes what and what remedies what. However, our discursive agreements or disagreements do not put away a social malady. Rather, concerted and wilful decisions and actions chip away social problems and place acceptable practices in place of those identified problems. And, societal problems are not eroded by pulse actions, no, they need continously sustained actions.
It is with the above perspective that I write this piece to call our attention to a creeping but silent social problem among ‘yan-boko’ in Northern Nigeria. In times past, governments, NGOs, educational associations, institutions and even transnational organisations have set shops in many Northern Nigerian societies to promote girl-child education. Yes, there has been remarkable success in places, our girls now go to school. Many of them have graduated from various disciplines and many more are on the way… a wonderful development.
However, my concern is the growing negation of lady-gradautes by many people including graduate themselves. To many men and guys in Muslim Northern Nigeria, a lady who is a graduate is not a marriage material. Such men bring on flimsy excuses of why they can’t settle into matrimony with a lady who’s a graduate. Some of those excuses are mostly out of stereotypes and long held cultural negation of all things Boko.
My quest is this, if our society negates our ladies, simply because they happen to be graduates, who then is going to accept them? Is it acceptable to ask ladies to seek for knowledge and in turn use their knowledge as a reason for negating them? All the excuses we bring forth against lady-gradautes, are they true or out of our cultural biases?
Indeed, I am not positing that such ladies have no social issues that may warrant some of the reasons for such negation. What I take exception to, is to single out ladies for condemnation on what few of them may have done. What more, what we are accusing such ladies of, do they do it alone or with guys? Our tertiary institutions are microcosm of our societies. In our schools, just like in our societies, we have the good, the not so good and the bad. To lump all lady-gradautes as bad is a moral quagmire on who ever engages in such.
And, to our lady-gradautes, I have to talk to you in straight manner. First, let me ask you, is your education a means to an end or an end on itself? Is education meant to make you a better person on yourself, your family and your home or is meant to send you into self destruct motion? As a lady, you are an embodiment of societal expectations. In Muslim Northern Nigeria, whatever you do, will be perceived through the moral prism. After all, the same society sees moral decadence as a dent on you and as a scent on men. The society insist that “iskanci ga namiji kwalliya ne.” My sister, you have a burden which you are expected to carry. As such, do your best and see your education as a means to an end.
Now, you and I, the Northern Nigerian men, why do we engage in selective justice when it comes to lady-gradautes? Why do we always use stereotypes when analysing ladies who have acquired education? Why do we use one parameter on all of them? If I refuse to marry your sister and you refuse to marry my sister because they’re graduates, whom do we expect to marry them? The spirits? Moreover, the reasons we adduce in negating lady-gradautes, are they genuine? Have we cared to really know that some of the most morally high ladies are graduates?
This social problem of negating ladies, simply because they are graduates, is becoming pronounced among us. The right time to check it out is now, not later.
Hashim Muhammad Suleiman, PhD
mshashim@abu.edu.ng