The Effect of Mobile Group Counseling on Nomadic Fulani's Attitudes Toward Formal Education

Abstract

The realization that formal education is key to economic, cultural, political, and social development has propelled most countries in West Africa toward providing formal education for their citizens. In Nigeria, effort to provide formal education for every citizen has resulted in establishment of Universal Free Primary Education (U.P.E.) which came into being in 1976. Universalizing education means, among other things, that every child of school-age should attend school. In order to encourage parents to send their children to school, Nigerian Government funds program almost one hundred percent. In his study of nomadic1 Fulani of some parts of Northern Nigeria, Ezeoma2 states that despite government encouragement, the Cattle Fulani parents are not willing to send their children to formal schools organized outside their camps for sedentary children. He found that among major reasons for these parents' unwillingness to send their children to regular schools were long distances of free schools from their camps, their children's involvement in herding, and fact that nomadic (or cattle) Fulani families are constantly on move in search of grazing grounds and water for their cattle in dry north. They have no land to call their own.