By Reno Omokri
One thing I find remarkable about many of us Southern Nigerians is how we often feel that people from Northern Nigeria are educationally inferior or behind. Actually, that is a fallacy, and the delusion of that fallacy is why they continue to dominate Nigeria politically. Because being underestimated is a blessing.
The average core Northern Muslim can read and write in Ajami or Arabic. Therefore, they are not backward or disadvantaged in their education. More accurately, they are Western education disadvantaged.
However, when they acquire Western education in addition to their Eastern and native education, they become even more spectacularly brilliant. But the modesty that Islam and the more conservative brand of Christianity practised in the North imposes on them prevents you from seeing it. So, you assume they are dull. And they like to let you continue in that delusion.
But have you ever considered that the Roman script, in which English and most European languages are scripted, is written and read from left to right? Just as you are reading this from left to right.
However, Arabic and Ajami are written and read from right to left.
Yet, millions of Northerners can read and write in English and immediately switch and read from right to left in Arabic and Ajami. Do you know the intelligence that such dynamism requires? The right and left brain interplay needed to do this requires much cerebral effort.
Then, consider also the fact that English and other European languages in the Roman script have upper and lower cases and very specific punctuations. In contrast, Arabic and Ajami do not use upper and lower cases and have different grammar rules.
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
And nowhere is this truer than in Nigeria. Look at how long Northern political hegemony has lasted. And their dominance is not just political. The wealthiest and second richest people in Nigeria are Northerners for a reason. Some people look down on them, yet their names are absent from the Forbes list of the ten wealthiest Nigerians. Humility does not mean poverty!
Even now that a Southerner is President, they are still vicariously powerful. Why? It is because of their ability to adapt to both Eastern and Western systems, while we in the South largely adopt Western ways of life.
Look at that word. Adopt. It is very different from adapt. When you adopt a culture, you abandon your own culture. Look at us in Southern Nigeria. Our women no longer have Black African hair. You now have Blond Black Nigerians. It is no longer strange to have a Western first name and surname. Moses Simon, Frank Edwards, Grace James. Then we attack our skins with ‘organic creams’.
Bleaching creams, so-called Brazilian hair from Asia, fake lashes and other things to make our women look less African are some of the biggest drains on our foreign reserves.
And languages are being displaced in Southern Nigeria. Please fact-check me. Other than Yoruba, almost all languages in Southern Nigeria face erosion and extinction.
Where is our identity if our names, hair, skins, language, and script are Western?
But look at how Arewa has adapted both cultures to their own indigenous culture. They did not adopt Arabic. They adapted it into Ajami. They speak their native or dominant language. They come to the South and learn Southern indigenous languages. Including languages that we Southerners are abandoning (if I mention one in particular, the insults I will receive will shock even my ancestors, so I will not name names).
Additionally, their women are as natural as they have always been, and they still build houses in their traditional architectural designs (albeit with a modern touch) and exist such that if Western civilisation ceases to exist tomorrow, they can continue their lives with minimal interruptions.
Can you speak your native language? Can you write it in an adapted script? Can you speak another Nigerian language? Or trace your male ancestry up to two hundred years?
Most core Northerners can.
So, let me ask you again. Are you sure the North is educationally disadvantaged?
