The Northern political elite have over the years tolerated the existence of the Almajiri culture for its nuisance value. The Almajirai are street urchins, who aimlessly roam the streets of major cities of the northern states, begging alms. Their livelihood depends on whatever they get from ‘Good Samaritans’.
Over the years, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has come under intense criticism over its inability to check registration and accreditation of underage children during elections, in the northern part of the country, against the principle of Universal Adult Suffrage.
Up till the last general election last year, cases of child-voting were rampant in many parts of the North. It is also a known fact that politicians in the North have found the Almajirai useful during elections. They mobilise the children to cast votes for them in connivance with agencies that should check such electoral fraud.
During elections, the Almajirai, who roam the major streets in those parts of the country come handy. A plate of food to the hunger-buffeted children could serve as a compensation for a vote cast. And because this class of people lacks the mental capacity to analyse the programmes being mouthed by the politicians and their political parties, in relation to their future; they always fall prey to those politicians.
Every election, photo clips of voting proceedings usually show long queues of voters filled with these underage Almajirai with their permanent voters’ cards. During this period, politicians that recruited them could go to any extent to protect them. As soon as elections are over, they are forgotten. It was also alleged that they usually surrender the voters’ cards to those who recruited them.
Today, with the raging coronavirus in the country, the Almajirai have become endangered species. They are being tossed to and fro- from one state to the other. And their presence in any state now is being considered a huge threat to public health. They are susceptible to COVID-19 as a result of their roving lifestyle. They move in droves, and are always dirty.
They neither adhere to the principle of social distancing nor frequent washing of hands, not to talk of use of sanitizer. The advent of the coronavirus in their traditional states has made them persona non grata.
In the last few days, the media have been awash with news about repatriation of Almajirai from one state to the other, and rejection of same by some other states. There have been reports over blame game among the states on the possibility of infected Almajirai being moved to other states.
The decision of the authorities in Kano to move about 167 Almajiri children to Kaduna sparked a row.
Kaduna State government had claimed that some of the children were COVID-19 positive, and wondered why Kano should move them down.
But responding through its Education Commissioner, Sanusi M. Sa`id Kiru, who doubles as the chairman of a special task force in charge of the Almajiri evacuation, Kano said: “This issue is very disheartening because the whole matter of Almajiri repatriation was started by the Kaduna State government, which first moved about 2000 Almajiri from the state to Kano without proper handing over to us.”
The commissioner further said: “The 155 we evacuated to the state, were properly screened, profiled and well documented before we handed them over.”
A few days ago, Taraba State rejected about 100 Almajirai sent to it by the Nasarawa State government.
There has been massive clamp down on the Almajiri children relocating from North to the states in the Southern part of the country. These children are said to hide inside truck load of cattle coming to the South.
The other day, Ondo State “deported” 20 Almajirai that were said to have been dumped in the state in the dead of the night.
Currently, every state is on the lookout for the unwanted visitors.
An analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was only now that COVID-19 is ravaging every state that the Northern states realised the serious danger the Almajiri children posed to the nation.
“Are the Almajiri children not part of the over-bloated population of Kano? Why are they rejecting them now? When it is convenient for them, they recognize them as integral part of the state, but now they are no longer indigenes of Kano. Can you see politics?” the Analyst said.
Pat Egeruo, a Computer programmer, said: “I think the coronavirus is in Nigeria purposely to expose a lot of shenanigans in the country. For the first time, it has reduced everybody to ordinary person. We have for once understood that we are equal mortals after all.
“It has also opened the eyes of the so-called leaders to the real meaning of life. Some claimed they did not know that the Nigerian health care system was this terrible. Now, it has exposed the hypocrisy of the political North. Every election year, they use the Almajiri children against the Constitutional age requirement, now they are rejecting them, tossing them from one state to the other. It is simply amazing.”
A media practitioner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “I first came into contact with the Almajiri children a few years ago. I was travelling to Jigawa through Kano. I saw an army of dirty, plate-carrying children along the road begging alms from motorists. Some of them were following a particular boy carrying a transparent bucket containing fried food (I really did not know what it was). The hungry-looking children were begging motorists to buy that fried thing for them. These are the children politicians in that part of the country use to rig elections.”
Before his dethronement in March as the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had repeatedly warned that the refusal of the Northern elite to take a hard look at the Almajiri system with a view to ending it would snowball into something sinister in the nearest future.
On Monday, February 17, 2020, while speaking at the 60th birthday of Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, in Kaduna, Sanusi had highlighted the main problems facing the north as poverty, millions of out-of-school children, malnutrition, drug abuse, Almajiri, and the Boko Haram insurgency.
He warned that northerners were on the verge of destroying themselves if they failed to address the myriad of challenges facing them.
The warning came a week after the World Bank in a report said 87 percent of the poor in the country resided in the North.
According to him, investing in education is the only way the region will save itself from imminent destruction.
“…You can’t be happy with the drug problem, you can’t be happy with the Boko Haram problem. You can’t be happy with political thuggery. You can’t be happy with all the issues; the Almajiri problem that we have,” he said.
Challenging the northern youths, he said: “You don’t need to rise on being from Kaduna State or being from the North or being a Muslim to get a job, you come with your credentials, you go with your competence, you can compete with any Nigerian from anywhere.
“We need to get northern youths to a point where they don’t need to come from a part of the country to get a job. And believe me, if we don’t listen, there would be a day when there would be a constitutional amendment that addresses these issues of quota system and federal character.”
According to him, “The rest of the country cannot be investing, educating its children, producing graduates and then they watch us, they can’t get jobs because they come from the wrong state when we have not invested in the future of our own children.”
It has been said over the years that the Almajirai are easy preys to violent groups in the North. Allegations are rife that some of the suicide bombings traced to the Islamist Sect, Boko Haram, were carried out by aimless and naïve Almajiri children who were conscripted by the insurgents, and their bodies strapped with lethal explosives.
Some people said that a plate of food to a hungry Almajiri child could be enough to enlist him.
Over time, some groups that see religion in everything had resisted some initiatives by some religious organisations to provide reorientation and quality education to the Almajiri children.
A case in point was the initiative in 2017 by the Most Reverend Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, who wanted to take off the streets about 10 million of the children in a special education and skills acquisition programmes.
Kukah, had, at a forum for the promotion of inter-religious harmony held in Minna, Niger State, said: “One of the greatest concerns in Nigeria now is to get the Almajiri children off the streets.
“The (Kukah) Centre will soon sign a (Memorandum) of Understanding with a foreign partner to make sure we get the Almajiri children off the streets”.
But a Muslim rights group, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), had resisted it, saying it was geared towards converting the children into another religion.
Ishaq Akintola, a professor and director of the group, had declared: “We welcome ideas from everyone but the implementation must be in the hands of Muslims in the region. Any other thing will make the intention questionable. We cannot pretend to be so naïve as to entrust our Muslim children to Christian gospellers”.
He alleged that Kukah’s idea was “a ploy for evengelisation, modern colonialism and a potential time bomb.”
Analysts speak in tandem that from what is happening currently with the Almajirai, Sanusi’s warning appears to be fulfilling.
