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As a pupil, I went through four different primary schools located in two states. My lovely dad was a policeman. He went with us to serve diligently wherever he was posted. My first primary school was a Local Authority school in Zaria and another in Kafanchan, both in Kaduna State. Then I was at Central School, Isiagu, and finally at Ikwuano Primary School, Okposi. Both were in Imo State, as it was then, but now, Ebonyi State. My experiences at the primary schools at Isiagu and Okposi shaped my understanding of physical deformity. Those days, we called them cripples. Today, we say physically challenged.
We were introduced to handcraft as a subject in Primary 3 at the Central School in Isiagu. There, alongside other pupils, I leanrt how to weave baskets, mats, hand fan and brooms. We also had tutorials on how to weave chairs and tables, using colourful ropes. They were interesting days. I guess those are no longer part of the curriculum of primary education today. But the most interesting thing about learning those things then was that our teacher (may God bless him wherever he is) was blind. His eyes were totally dead. He could not even see light. He came to school and went back home aided by a relation who was also a pupil in the school. Sometimes, we would go to his office just to look at how someone who had no eyes could weave chairs and even read. He had Braille.
Through him, I heard the name ‘Hopeville’. He was a product of Hopeville, Uturu. Hopeville was a rehabilitation and training institute owned and managed by Marist Brothers of the School, a Catholic Religious Order of Reverend Brothers who dedicate their lives to teaching. The order was founded in January 1817 in France by a priest, Marcellin Champagnat, now canonized. Hopeville was established in 1971 to cater for war victims and the physically handicapped. Our handiwork teacher was their product. I am not surprised that it has one of the best secondary schools in the South-East today. If you know the Marists and what they represent, you will understand my meaning.
When we left Isiagu and landed at Okposi, I encountered John. John was a cobbler. In fact, he was the best cobbler in Okposi at the time. He had a workshop around the Court area, beside a shop operated by my mum. Everyone brought their footwear to him to fix and he was very diligent. But he was deformed from the waist down. When I first met him, he was driving himself in a hand propelled tricycle. I guess that was why his biceps bulged. As his business grew, he dropped that and started out on crutches. He felt a lot better on that. He later got married. Again, John was a product of Hopeville. Hopeville, as the name sounds, gave hope to the physically challenged and children who lost their parents in the war. They rarely begged to feed and live. They all learnt different skills and lived by them. Also, those whose parents could not afford them to send to school went to workshops to learn some skills. You rarely saw children begging.
Fast-forward to today and equate this with the social system, where the physically unchallenged are out on the street begging. This is where I have a problem with Nigeria’s leadership, especially, those in the north of Nigeria who recently started deporting children they have bluntly refused to take off the streets but would always manipulate for votes.
Some analysts tend to argue that the Almajiri system is Islamic. I disagree with this profusely. Almajiri is a signature of failed parenting and failed social system made possible by bad leadership. It has nothing to do with Islam. For, if it were so, the streets of Saudi Arabia, the headquarters of Islam in the world, and the major Islamic republics, would be brimming with such kids. So, for me, it is classic failure of three things: failed parenting, failed social system and failed leadership. Leadership takes a larger chunk of the blame here because it sees in those children political instruments. I’ll explain. Recall the story often told by Senator (Lt. General) Jeremiah Useni. He was once the deputy national chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), now defunct. He has severally told the story of a trip he made to Borno State on the invitation of the governor at the time, Ali Modu Sheriff, to launch some projects. Useni had disclosed that, while on the tour, he saw children lining the streets and hawking petrol in disused water bottles. He also said he asked the governor why the children were not in school and the response he got was that they would be useful during elections. Some of those kids he saw may have become founding members of the Boko Haram terrorist sect. That is the mindset that has made the street kids issue in the North intractable.
However, the North was lucky to have Namadi Sambo as deputy to President Goodluck Jonathan. I said lucky because Sambo, as governor of Kaduna State, made a presentation, titled “Strategies for Addressing the Almajirai Phenomenon in the Northern States,” before the Northern Governors’ Forum. Part of his recommendation was a fusion of the Almajiri education system and a modern education structure that would enable the children to go to school. I have no doubt that Sambo’s recommendations of that presentation may have found favour with his boss, leading to the construction of Almajiri schools in the North by the Jonathan/Sambo government. In all, more than 100 of such schools were built by the government before 2015. In September 2016, the Adamawa State government declared the schools too expensive to run and abandoned them, just like almost all states in the North, where they were built. In 2019, Abdulsalam Amoo, in an investigative report, found that most of the schools were in ruin and not in use. Imagine the impact the school would have had on the lives of some of those children deported recently had they been encouraged to be in those school since 2015.
Sadly, the ‘leaders’ who deported those kids to their home states do so without looking at the implications for the future. What future is there for the kids in the places they have been sent to? A begging future? No! They will graduate from the street and likely become tools for banditry and terrorism. And when they grow to become the menace they are forced by leadership to become, the same leaders will hit the country with a request: to create a commission that will help rehabilitate them and bring them back into mainstream national politics. Please, ask, which is easier to achieve: to de-radicalize a terrorist or to win him over and deny the underworld of his mind?
Therefore, expelling those kids from the streets of Kano and Kaduna, “back to their states,” solves no problem. Rather, it creates a bigger one for tomorrow. Those kids that have been deported may return in years to come as a bigger menace to society.
