Paying Lip Service And Buhari’s Unconvincing Explanation On The Almajiri Question
The Oasis Reporters
January 17, 2019
Inset; Justin Forsyth, UNICEF’s Deputy director.
Having watched a recorded version of Kadaria Ahmed’s Town Hall conversation with President Muhammadu Buhari and his Vice president on the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, a certain despondency overwhelmed me with the question on the Almajiri system asked the president by a young northerner.
There’s no gainsaying the fact that one of the ticking timebombs overhanging Nigeria is the monumental problem of the Almajiri system.
This is a social or religious system that enables children, at times as from the age of three to leave the comfort of their parents homes to go out with itinerant religious teachers to study the holy book.
Some of the toddlers at times never go back to their homes. While some get lucky and lead useful lives, many become street boys and with the menace of extremist religious groups and insurgency, this has become a huge source of worry not only to a very much destabilized north east of Nigeria, the entire nation and West Africa in its entirety, but it is becoming a problem that is causing concern to the whole world.
For President Muhammadu Buhari to try and dribble the problem by moving it like a ball tussle between state governments and local governments is just to further entertain the sore problem and this beggars belief.
Why succeeding governments who most of the time are headed by northerners allow this crying shame to continue by paying lip service to it is saddening.
There may be very many sides to the problem but the more it festers , the more it consumes the fabric of the society. Even non Muslims are as agitated over it, because when attacks are carried out against other groups in the north, they feel the brunt. Just as both Muslims and non Muslims are crying over it now.
Simply put, those young toddlers who leave home early to start this religious apprenticeship where any crafty adult can easily mislead them are children of human beings.
The question is, who are their parents? If an outright ban is placed on the system with functional educational system that combines the modern school system that integrates religious teaching, should be a first place to start. Assuming any almajiri seen on the street is arrested and traced to their parents, would that not be a start point ?
Everyone knows that most parents simply produce the children and send them off to the Almajiri system as a way to shirk their parental obligations.
Without a doubt, many parents find it difficult to cope with themselves without adding the burden of child care. It is expected that the government should work more on getting water to the vast and dry lands of the north for all year round productive farming. Solve the food security problems first. It will stop a lot more families from falling apart. As it seems that high divorce rate in society owing to lack of food makes the embittered Almajiri to have no home to go back to even if the kids wanted, thereby becoming a huge burden to society, with the attendant security issues.
Let the president fix food security. Then families would fall in line. There will then be reduced insecurity. Something drastic needs to be done for that ancient system has outlived it’s usefulness and has now become a threat to order and society.
