This was at a side of the crossroad in the heart of Daura, Katsina State, the hometown of President Muhammadu Buhari, and the children are almajirai
, the boys forced to beg for survival, while they are kept with Islamic teachers, or mallams, supposedly for Quranic education. They are mostly pre-teen.
Apart from Mr Buhari’s Daura, the practice is a common feature, deeply rooted in Nigeria’s north – especially northwest and northeast, the country’s poorest regions – with most urban centres there ubiquitously having these malnourished, ragged, and abused children begging for alms. They return parts of the alms, money or food, to their mallams.
According to the UN body, in the northwest and northeast, 35 per cent and 29 per cent of Muslim children, respectively, receive Quranic education which does not include basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, and “the government considers children attending such school to be officially out-of-school.”
Mallam Kasibu in Argungu, Kebbi State, holding a whip used for the almajirai labouring on his farm.[PHOTO CREDIT: Taiwo Hassan Adebayo/PT] “And we have evidence in what Mohammed Yusuf used; he mounted a social welfare system, fed these children, preached to them about injustice which they can experience,” the professor told PREMIUM TIMES.After a long history of its existence and associated implications for the human rights of the children, security and social order, and perpetuation of poverty and illiteracy, northern governors now say they want to end the almajiri system.
“We have repatriated over 30,000 almajiris back to their states and we are happy to receive any almajiri from any state of the federation that is indigenous to Kaduna State,” said Mr El-Rufai in the Channels interview. the northcentral state had documented 63,358 child beggars and that thirty thousand of them were below age 10.Ms Jabiru said, “those that are below the ages of ten years, we will take them back and reconnect them with their states of origin,” while others would be allowed to remain in the state for formal and informal education.
The commissioner for education in Bauchi State, Aliyu Tilde, told PREMIUM TIMES that returning the almajirai to their parents in their various states of origin amid COVID-19 threats was in pursuit of the policy to “wipe out the menace of child begging through the almajiri system” and a public health necessity.
“The beauty of the two options is that they accord them the chance to pursue secular education that will come handy to them as they grow and engage in the tough survival battle in Nigeria.
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