It was baffling to have read a story on Wednesday, March 29 which indicated that the Sa’adatu Rimi College of Education, Kumbotso, Kano State had claimed to have conducted acculturation exercise for 415 of its Arabic students for 2015/2016 session.
Evidently, this is frivolous because the acculturation, which is a prerequisite for graduating Arabic students, was done by the Nigerian Arabic Language Village in the same year in July/August 2016 and at the same college in Kano.
We therefore wondered why the duplication. We are now in 2016/2017 session but the college authorities, in the said story, said that they purportedly did not participate in the programme because of insurgency!
Sa’adatu Rimi College knows very well that the Nigerian Arabic Village, which is statutorily mandated by relevant laws, no longer conducts programmes at Ngala since 2014. We divided the country into zones e.g. Bauchi, Daura, Sokoto, Yola, Biu, Gashua, Kano and Ilorin, where we hope to go next. Saying the programme has been ‘shifted’ to Kano in the story is misleading and subversive. The proper word is that we are conducting our programmes in zones because of the peculiar challenge.
Most importantly, Sa’adatu Rimi College’s ‘collaboration’ with foreigners, precisely the Egypt Centre for Cultural and Education Affairs to conduct the acculturation programme was an unpatriotic act that smacks of usurpation of the mandate given to us by the Federal Government.
Egypt Centre for Cultural and Education Affairs Kano has no mandate to conduct the programme and there is a reason the programme was situated at the Arabic Village in Ngala.
We have four Inter University Centres in the country; has Rimi College treated the rest the way it treated us? Definitely insurgency is no longer a factor because the Nigerian Arabic Village, Ngala had taken the burden- both financially and physically, to follow our students to where they are studying in order to enable them graduate in time, because acculturation and immersion courses are mandatory.
Acculturation and immersion cannot be conducted in any place except in an institution, and Egypt Cultural Centre Kano is not a learning institution, and it is not their mandate. The section quoted by Rimi from (N.C.C.E. 2012 Edition) does not affect us. Therefore, the certificates given to the students who attended Rimi College’s foreign collaboration programme is illegal and therefore null and void.
Obviously, the National Commission for Colleges of Education should wade into the surreptitious and clandestine effort of the Provost of the college, Dr Sule Musa to move out the Arabic Village from Borno State. We are going to take all legal and political actions to fight for the Centre to remain in Borno because of the environment and other relative things. Let the Provost refer to: national Policy on Education 6th Edition (2013) Page 27. Egypt Cultural Centre is not a Tertiary Institution.
We thank all law abiding colleges, including Aminu Kano College of Legal and Islamic Studies, Federal College of Education Kano, Nur College Kano and so on who attended the mandatory program in Kano for their cooperation and magnanimity and urge them to continue with the nobility until we go back to Ngala Borno State. We also wish to express our appreciation and gratitude to His Excellency the Executive Governor of Kano State Khadimul Islam and His Commissioner for Education for their love for Arabic Language and its progress. We are most obliged.
Malam Tahir Musa,
Registrar, Nigerian Arabic Village, Borno state
