When former Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, admonished leaders in northern Nigeria over the menace of children roaming the streets in the name of a system, which he said, has no place in the Koran, some of them said he was opening his mouth too wide. He said the Almajiri system was strange to Islam, the same religion those who practice it cite as their backing. They are children said to be undergoing, as they say, Islamic training under teachers, or mallams, as they are called. The man, who also houses them in a makeshift place, is unable to feed them. They now go out to fend for themselves by begging for alms on the streets. This system has tended to deny the children formal education as their parents, who aare mostly illiterate, assume or exonerate themselves from fending for their education since they are in an ‘Islamic school.’ They literally throw the children into the streets.
Former Emir of Kano Lamido Sanusi, who has been dethroned, had consistently told those in political authority that the concept deserved extermination because it was breeding children who would grow into ill-equipped adults. They would have no skills to enable them eke out a living. They would do menial jobs, and would ultimately become tools in the hands of rebellious people. It is believed that the bulk of Boko Haram insurgents evolved from the Almajiri system. There may have been no scientific proof of the foregoing, but such assumptions can easily be validated by research figures, if questions are put to captured Boko Haram fighters in that respect.
The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have provided an opportunity to end the negative system. Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, a strong advocate for abolition of the concept, believes that the death knell for the system now sounds with the fight against coronavirus. States in the northern part of Nigeria have begun sending the street boys and girls to their home states. Hundreds of them have been bundled into vehicles and sent back to their home states. They know their parents, contrary to the views that they have been abandoned. Their parents do not have the funds to see them through school, or are not convinced about the virtues of education. In Kaduna, el-Rufai is said to be spending heavily on education, as much as 40 per cent of th state’s budget.
He has made it a criminal offence for parents not to send their children to school because they would not pay for it, and government now feeds the children. There are 10.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria. The Almajiri children are bound to constitute a huge part of that figure. El-Rufai believes that, as the children head back to their states and rejoin their parents, state authorities would get them back into conventional schools. Parents would, hopefully, desist from sending them to mallams.
The hope faces a brick wall with the national ban on interstate travel, which implies that it is illegal for states to send back the children to their home states. Pundits have, however, argued that governors can agree among themselves to allow such travels. This does not seem to be the case because security agents have, in recent times, stopped such children who seem to be in the process of being smuggled into other states. Eyebrows are now raised in some instances given that the kids are now seen in states outside the northern parts. Why are they not being taken to their states of origin?
That is a question waiting for an answer. If these children are not forced into conventional schools, and seen to complete the first nine years, meant to be compulsory, the society would reap a bunch of people who become bombs waiting to explode. The massive drug abuse among youths in the nation, especially in the northern parts, for which President Muhammadu Buhari has set up a committee headed by General Buba Marwa (rtd), will become even worse. State governors have an opportunity to end the intractable problem. Governors in the northern region have seen an open window to throw out the menace. They have resolved to push it out through the window of COVID-19, which is why they agree to take back the children who hail from their states, quarantine them, and send them back to school. Now, lawmakers say the act contravenes the fundamental rights of the children. Their right to movement is being impeded. These lawmakers may be right but their action is antithetical to this open opportunity to sound the death knell to the Almajiri system, which has held the region down educationally.
It should worry them that the region has remained on the lower rungs of the education ladder on account of this misguided practice, which many have found not to have any root in the dominant religion in the zone.
Governors in the zone can decide, as they have done, to unite on the matter, and get the kids back to their states of origin, and take them back to conventional schools. These kids do well in school when they get the opportunity to be there. They only need time to fit into the school system and they begin to do well in their studies. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives should look at the larger benefits of moving these kids to their home states, and lend their support, rather than seek to appropriate freedom of movement for children who hardly know what should be good for them.
Governors in northern Nigeria should be focused in their resolve to sound the death knell to the Almajari system as they fight the coronavirus. It would be the positive outcome of the pandemic.