Northeast Nigeria 500 years behind South in Education – VC

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Maiduguri, Abubakar Njodi has said the North East is far behind Southern Nigeria in educational standards.

Njodi said this on Friday when he received a delegation from the Victims’ Support Fund, VSF, on a condolence visit over the January 16 suicide bomb attack in the institution.

Njodi, a professor of Physical and Health Education, said studies showed that hat the region was about 150 years behind other parts of the country before Boko Haram emerged.

The professor noted that it may take 500 years to measure up with the South now that Boko Haram has continued to destroy education in the region.

“Education in the North is endangered,” Mr. Njodi lamented.

“I have said it at different fora that prior to Boko Haram, there were some studies, some real, some speculative, that showed the north was 100 years behind the south. And that was before Boko Haram came. What it means here is that, at that time if the south should stop going to school, it would take the north 100 years to catch up.

“When the north was broken up into North-east, North-west and North-central, the North-east was 150 years behind. And also at that time, if the south stopped going to school, it would take the North-east 150 years to catch up.

“With the situation that the Boko Haram has put us now, if those studies are anything to go by, the North-east may require about 500 to 1000 years to catch up with the other parts of the country”, said the vice-chancellor.

He said the University had been the target of Boko Haram since its inception but had manage to survive up till now.

“We knew from the onset that we are their (Boko Haram) prime target because going by their name, Boko Haram, which goes against Western education, we should not be in existence at all.

“And when they attacked us on the 16th January, we were not surprised but shocked in the sense that despite all the efforts we put in place, we couldn’t contain everything. And during the attack, we lost a very hard working professor, Aliyu Mani, the Director of Veterinary Teaching Hospital, along with him were two students who were wards of two of our staff”.

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