By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327)
We may fully situate the on-going Almajiri debate by importing the expression that “the evil that men do lives after them”. Adjustments can be made. In that case, we may add that the evil in question may live with the doer. But in our case, it is affecting the innocent.
Faced with the realities of the time, governors of the 19 states of the North have eventually risen to the challenge of the Almajiri system which has for long confronted the zone. Almajiri education, in the best of explanations, is an Islamic school system with organised and comprehensive curriculum for learning Islamic principles, values, jurisprudence and theology.
Almajiri is a longstanding tradition in northern Nigeria, dating back to the 11th century. It usually refers to a person who migrates from his home to a popular teacher in the quest for Islamic knowledge. Under a special arrangement guiding the system, the community supported the students-in-training who in return, gave back to the society, mostly through manual labour. The students were at liberty to acquire skills in between their Islamic lessons, and so were involved in trades such as farming, fishing, among others.
The Islamic revolution of the 18th century solidified the practice under the Sokoto Caliphate. However, the British colonial administration of the early 20th century dismantled the system by stopping communal funding of the students. This resulted in the collapse of the system and loss of fundamental control of the kids.
In the present context, the Almajiris are less privileged children in many states in the North, unleashed on the streets by their parents and guardians, clad in rags with begging bowls. Some are used by odious individuals and groups for dirty jobs.
For long the North had condoned the system, citing religion and culture. The unfriendly economic climate in the country and ravaging impacts of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, are however throwing up the oddities of the system. Thus, at a recent meeting, governors of the19 states in the North, unanimously resolved to send the Almajiris to their parents or states of origin. Aside relocating the kids, the governors vowed not to allow the long discredited tradition continue because of its linkages to poverty, illiteracy, insecurity and social disorder.
Kebbi state governor, Atiku Bagudu and his Kaduna counterpart, Nasir el-Rufai who spoke on the action, said it was for the common good of the states concerned and Nigeria in general. El-Rufai, in particular, has vowed that the system is gone and would never return in the North.
In a system that readily makes heroes of monsters, the Kaduna governor and his colleagues have been prancing about on the feat and are being celebrated as modern day reformers. The question is what happens next, after the governors must have assumed momentary status of champions of a new social order.
Almajiri system as it currently operates is a sad story of the North. It amplifies the irony of one living by the river banks and bathing with his spittle. It is a reflection of leadership failure in the zone. For greater part of Nigeria’s existence as an independent state, the North has been holding the reins of power in a cultic arrangement that favours its elite and their families. Rather than using the instruments of power to better the lots of the people, the elite have nurtured an awfully stratified arrangement that caters for them while consigning the poor to the piteous state of hewers of wood and drawers of water. That is a system in which poor parents in the region who could not apply basic sense in the use of their lower regions, have exploited, waving the banner of religion, to litter the society with children they cannot cater for.
When therefore El-Rufai and members of his privileged class seek to appropriate the glory of moving these children from one state to another in sudden blaze of indignation, they should not be allowed to run away with the fleeting action. They rather owe us explanations on how they had used and managed the boys all this while. These were the same Almajiris that had been handy for vote manipulations in the north. They are underage voters deployed during national elections. In dealing with opponents at moments of religious crisis, the boys have been easy tools. Dismissing them now that their services are not readily needed, amounts to being clever by half.
What the governors have done is merely transferring the problem and banking it for the future. There is nothing on ground so far by the States in finding permanent solution to the Almajiri system, realistically speaking. Any genuine move by the governors in putting a stop to the issue should have come with appropriate legislations from the various Houses of Assembly.
The danger in this lip-service attitude to the Almajiri question is the current influx of the boys to the South, even with restrictions on inter-state movement still in place. In a situation where there are instances of more than 100 of them relocated to various states testing positive to Covid-19 disease, their movement to the South should be a matter of concern to the governors and leaders of the zone. In the last couple of days for instance, there have been reports of Almajiris tucked in trucks conveying goods to the South East.
The hideous manner of their transportation, gives room for suspicion. I am inclined to reason with the seasoned analysis of a colleague, Igbonekwu Ogazimorah, on the issue. In his words, “Those trailer/container loads may not even be Almajiris. They may be well trained fighters of the extremist Boko Haram. …Now, Boko Haram has been largely walloped in the Chad region due to the efficiency of the Chadian army. They must find bases and they may have rolled down South”.
There may be nothing wrong in governors of the South looking at the unfolding situation from this perspective. After all, self-preservation is the first law of nature, it is said.