You pick up your kids from school, and as you exit the school gate scores of Almajirai besiege your children begging for leftovers from their lunch boxes.
This was my daily experience in Kano while picking up my children from school. A heart wrenching experience etched in my memory. Most of the time the school children treat them with scorn and disdain. They don’t know any better.
The Almajirai ranged between the ages of four to eleven, they should have been inside the school not begging for crumbs outside it’s gates. What kind of society does this to it’s children? I won’t mince any words here, it is the Hausa society. You won’t find any other tribe with children on the sreets, hundreds of miles away from their parents. How does a father in Sokoto send his four year old son to Kano supposedly to be educated? How? Who will love and nurture the child for him?
Let us go back to the school scenario. The irony of thier situation is not lost on the Almajirai, they know they should be in school too, not begging for crumbs from thier ‘schoolmates’. They wish it was them emerging from the school gate clinging on to ‘Daddy’s’ hand. So imagine the daily anguish of the Almajiri and how it affects his heart and eats up his mind. Love cannot reside in such a heart, a mind like that can only contrive evil against society.
May God continue to rest the soul of late General Hassan Usman Katsina. He was the lone voice in the 80’s calling for the reformation of the Almajiri system and action against street begging. Many clerics labelled him an apostate.
Well, well, well, here we are today at the place he warned us about.
Are we in an impossible situation? I think not. Complicated and explosive, yes, but not insurmountable. The situation requires considerable physical and mental efforts on our part. Hausas must own this problem.
One of the reasons I believe the situation can be remedied is my experience with Yusha’u Mika.
Yusha’u Mika is an Almajiri I met around 2008/2009. By my estimation he was about 13 or 14 years old and was attending a madrasa close to my house. Inbetween Quoranic lessons he would move from house to house within the neighbourhood begging for alms, food, or refuse to dispose. His father sent him from Katsina to Kano before the age of ten.
Yusha’u was as raw as they come, scruffy and unkempt. He started out disposing refuse for me, then sweeping the compound and running errands. Within a short while he became part of my home, he began to call me ‘Daddy’, and my wife, ‘Mummy’. He now had a sense of family and the transformation in him was remarkable. Let me add this, Yusha’u was honest and trustworthy.
Fast forward to 2019. Yusha’u Mika is a ‘washerman’ earning a living, he’s been one for about four years now. He is also married and leads a responsible life. We are friends on Facebook and chat on WhatsApp. He calls me regularly to check on my wellbeing.
Hundreds of homes in Kano have many Yusha’u’s under their care, taking them off the streets.
By Governor Ganduje’s account there are about five million Almajirai in Kano alone. This is a scary figure that makes a solution seem improbable. The sad aspect is that we haven’t even begun to seek any solutions, so far we are just lamenting over it.
Peharps if we begin to put a face and a name to each Almajiri we might be moved by compassion and see it as the human disaster that it is.
Peharps I am being too naive and simplistic, but Yusha’u Mika is real and he is no longer part of the statistics.
* James Usman Bagudu is a Micro-finance Trainer & Consultant