Ndugu yangu kibri si maungwana adabu ni sifa njema labda haya huenda haya yakakusaidia japo kidogo na utakaporudi tena utarudi na heshima :
"In 1987 the then Minister for Education and Culture the late Professor Kighoma Malima discovered that deserving Muslim candidates were deliberately being denied access to secondary education.(It is curious to note that throughout his 25 - year rule, Nyerere had always appointed a Christian to head the Ministry of Education and a Muslim to head the Ministry of Home Affairs.)
The trick used by the Christian dominated panel was to select the candidates after decoding their examination numbers. Professor Malima directed the panel to select and announce the results using examination numbers only. In that year the percentage of selected Muslim candidates rose by 40 per cent! He alerted the president about the matter and suggested a thorough investigation be carried out. He was branded "Mujahidina" and removed from that portfolio and the selection panel reverted to its old system. He repeated those charges at a public rally in Dar es Salaam in 1995. Any government which is "fiercely secular" would certainly wish to know the truth of the matter.
Apparently there was no need for the government to investigate the obvious. On July 7, 1999 Muslim leaders paid a courtesy call to President Mkapa at the State House in Dar es Salaam. In the course of their informal discussions Muslims raised the issue of decoding examination numbers. According to my informant the president was clearly surprised. When he asked his Minister for Education and Culture who also attended the talks, the minister confirmed the Muslims' account. As a result one of the numerous but supposed "isolated" cases came to light in January 1999.
A Muslim candidate one Adam Ramadhani Kindenge of Gilman Rutihinda primary school was not selected.
His father disputed the fairness of the selection process and demanded to be shown the scripts. It was anembarrassing case. Christian candidates with lower points were selected and Adam who had higher points was left out. No one in the ministry could hazard an explanation. The case was disconcerting in view of Kitwana Kondo's question in Parliament. But it was a case which like others in the past the ministry managed to suppress. For details see Ramadhani Kindenge's two letters to the Ministry of Education and Culture (1999).
Despite protests from Muslims, the same ministry had also successfully managed to hide from many unsuspecting Tanzanians another discomfiting letter bearing Ref. No. E10/MMC-1/183 of 9 June, 1998 from the Morogoro Municipal Education Officer directing all Headteachers to submit to that office the names of all Standard Seven Catholic students! When a weekly Muslim newspaper An-Nuur confronted the ministry with that letter the spokesperson was too embarrassed to comment. He promised however to investigate the matter. A time-tested device of dropping a hot potato!
Adam Kindenge's case above is not an isolated one. Muslims have a long list of such cases. The name of a selected Muslim candidate, Kopa Abdallah of Kichangani primary school, in Kilosa was in 1983 unfairly cancelled out in favour of a Christian, Mr. Anthony Samirani who scored less points. Mr. Kopa is today employed as a driver. Was it merely a case of corruption? In his long career as a Secondary School Headmaster and later as a high ranking civil servant, Mr. Bori Lilla was twice confronted with incredible discoveries of religious discrimination in the country. Mr. Bori Lilla is today one of the highly respected Muslim elders in the country and is affectionately referred to as "Mzee Lilla".
He told me and he has repeated this account to many others that he was once in the marking and selection committee and was mistaken for a Christian. After marking the scripts he decoded and recorded the names according to their pass marks, and there were as many Muslims as there were Christians. A fellow panelist who was a Christian saw the list and was very furious, he said in a loud voice, "Wewe huoni kama orodha yako ina Waislamu wengi sana, au wewe ni mgeni nini hapa?" (Don't you see that your list has so many Muslims, or could it be that you are a new comer here?). Mzee Lilla says that he responded in an equally loud voice, "Mimi siyo mgeni, mimi ni Muislamu". The room was gripped with an eerie silence.
Mzee Lilla witnessed the second revelation of deliberate religious discrimination when he was in the selection panel for allocating High School places for deserving Ordinary Level candidates. It was during the Islamic holy month of Ramadhan and they had almost finished their task when Christian panelists broke for lunch. The panel had only two Muslims who stayed behind. The other Muslim panelist, Mr. Abdulrahman Mwalongo, was writing something and needed a ruler which was in the Chairperson's draw.
When he opened it he found along with the ruler, a list of 25 First class Muslim candidates who had not yet been allocated any place in High Schools while all their Christian counterparts had already been placed.
And the panel's chairperson who was also a Reverend had not even hinted that there was such a list.
Mwalongo is from the Hehe ethnic group. And the Hehe are known in Tanzania as fierce warriors. When their colleagues returned, Mwalongo reminded the chairperson about the list in his draw. He brushed aside Mwalongo's concern saying that those candidates would be taken care of later.
Quite unexpectedly,Mwalongo banged his table so forcefully that all members were taken aback. Shaking with rage Mwalongo told the chairperson no business would take place in that room before the allocation of the 25 Muslim students. The chairperson backed down and those students were placed. In July 1997 I cross-checked Mzee Lilla's account with Mwalongo himself. He confirmed the story. As I am writing this book, both of them are still alive and can easily be contacted for further details."
Baada ya kuonekana ukweli huu katika kitabu cha Prof. Njozi serikali ya Benjamin Mkapa ilikipiga marufuku. Kuwa na kitabu hicho ni kosa la jinai.