They are all beggars now
I was born and brought up in a predominantly Muslim community but the best schools around were fee paying Christian missionary schools. Our parents were ambitious enough for us that they had no hesitation about paying (government Schools were free) to get us into these schools. They were strong enough in their faith to trust that we were there 'for their knowledge not their God.’ And so it was. I can recall only one Muslim pupil converting to Christianity for all the years that the school was run by the Baptist Missionaries.
By the time we finished our primary education, the school had become majority Muslim and taken over by the State government and renamed Shehu Primary School.
In those days there was a clear distinction between kids exclusively going to Quranic Schools (Almajirai) and those of us either going only to ‘western’ schools or a combination of both. The Almajirai were often children living far away from their homes having been sent away to seek Islamic knowledge and upbringing by their faithful parents - a decision usually reached by the fathers. But those of us ‘Yan boko’ (pupils in state or missionary schools) generally lived with our parents/guardians. We went to school during the day and returned to the warmth and security of our homes in the afternoon. Quranic schools would then be open in the afternoon during school days and morning and evening during weekends.
The Quranic schools were private initiatives designed to ensure that the student learned the whole of the 114 chapters of the Quran by heart. This was in turn followed by going further into the religion as a knowledge system including learning the Arabic language. Unfortunately for many of us 'yan makarantan boko' the higher you climbed up the western educational ladder the less likely you were to return to the Quranic schools. So you got into the incongruous situation of knowing the Quran or parts of it by heart without actually knowing the Arabic language. Our knowledge was thus short-circuited through the interpretations by Mallams and Sheiks (teachers and learned Scholars).
There is also a bifurcated expectation about both schools. While the Quranic education may be preparing the pupils for a spiritual life style and possibly better prospects in heaven, when and if you get there, the western education offered better prospects for the here and now in terms of career and often, exaggerated expectations of material well being.
Consciously and unconsciously two classes of kids have emerged. Almajirai generally live off menial jobs, in between their learning sessions, obligatory labour on their teachers’ farms and begging. The western pupils live as all children are entitled to: cared for both physically and emotionally by their parents and guardians. The Almajirai live on the whim of their spiritual masters and the goodwill of the community.
If you look at these two groups of children on the streets of any Muslim area of northern Nigeria, you can distinguish who is who from their appearance. Generally the ones going to western schools will be better dressed, neater, wearing at least slippers and looking well fed. The Almajirai will be wearing formerly white kaftans that have become so dirty that neither jik nor any stain remover can return them to the original color; their feet may be full of blisters or even jiggers because of going around without shoes or slippers, in rain or sunshine.
In the Oil boom days the communities were generally better off and able to share. Therefore most home prepared more food than was necessary for their household. The rationale is not just that visitors may come but also that ‘akwai Almajirai’ (i.e. the Almajirai will come). This kind of culture enabled the Almajirai to eke out a living, and get decent meals on most days. Also spiritual minded people with disposable income or the elite wishing to spiritually launder their ill-gotten wealth were more than generous in contributing to the welfare of the Almajirai and their minders.
However as the oil boom gave way to the oil bust and people began to tighten their belts, disposable incomes became less and lesser, the welfare of the Almajirai (being the marginalised among the marginalised or to use a term not used often these days, periphery of the periphery!) went crashing. The system was too dependent on a perpetual ‘trickle down’ voluntarism from the better off. The hours the Almajirai spend on learning the Quran became shorter as the exigencies of survival in this world before preparing for heaven took precedence. SAP hit everyone in the 80s and 90s as the rich got richer and meaner and poor became poorer and life more brutish and the elite wantonly rapacious.
For many ordinary working and peasant families there was not enough to go round inside the house let alone think of the wandering children on the streets. And the really rich became more distant from the community. Even if they do not move from their local communities they live behind garrisoned perimeter fences with all kinds of ‘security’ around them that the poor cannot see them.
The impact on the children was and remains devastating. As the economic situation became harder the old distinctions between the Almajiri and Dan boko of my childhood days have became very blurred. The Almajirai did not become 'Dan Boko' but the 'Yan boko' became Almajirai.
A few days ago I was in the neighbourhood where I grew up, Tsohuwar Tasha, now called Goya road, in Funtua, Katsina state. The same building has been our family home since 1965. I looked at the children milling around the same trees as my peers and I did over four decades ago and it was difficult to say who is Almajiri who is Dan Boko. They have all become Almajirai whether at home or in the street.
In fact they have all become street children because the Almajiri at home does not have enough to eat therefore no one can think of the Almajiri on the street. Sadder still those in Quranic schools are not learning the Quran properly while most of those in Western schools cannot be said to be receiving education. So we are neither preparing our children for this world nor the hereafter - or for both.
What kind of country and leadership dooms the future of its own children this way? Of what benefit is the accumulation of foreign reserves in Nigeria if most of the children are surrendered to hard fate like this, their dreams robbed, and forced to grow up in neglect and denied their innocence? Is our conscience dead?
* Tajudeen Abdul Raheem writes this column as a Pan Africanist.
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