The Dapchi Girls Debate By Wale Olaleye

For personal reasons, I have refrained from the controversy on whether or not the Dapchi girls’ kidnap was arranged or real. However, I am concerned about something different and disturbing. I saw it on the countenance of the girls.

They come across as the quintessential “poster kids of the pervasive poverty and under-development in the North”.

The northern political and traditional leadership should be ashamed of what the north still represents after many years of being in power. Even in ramshackle schools in the South, children in creche, play group or pre-schoogl still speak “learner’s English”.

But hey, these secondary school lot cannot even string the simplest of sentences together. WTF!!! In the present day Nigeria? This is disturbing.

What kind of education is applicable in the north? What are they teaching them in school and in what language?
Like it or not, that these kids are unable to communicate in our national language is a disaster. Let us halt the debate over the veracity of the kidnap story and focus on a more important issue.

The north needs help. The whole of Nigeria needs to come together and save the North from itself. If it has taken the northern leadership this long to not realise there is an existential threat to development in the north, the rest of Nigeria sure knows the danger of a growing illiterate population. Let us help the north.

It is an emergency; it is urgent!

*Source: Facebook