Where little boys die young

• Deserted by parents, bruised by the streets, homeless almajirai suffer a raw deal
• The reduction of a noble Islamic culture to an exploitative venture
• Three of every six almajirai die in northern Nigeria, 50 percent perish before age 16 – Study

 By Olatunji OLOLADE, Associate Editor

In the shadows of Kebbi’s Dukku hills, lurks a tragedy etched in clay and sorrow. It loiters about the sandpit sodden with the blood of underage boys: Muhammad Bawando, Musa Kambaza, Dan-sayyada Kambaza, Abu Takai, Nasir Cheferu, Barmo Babanda, Kalije Bawanda, and Yakubu Aminu – eight almajirai who went to the mountains to dig for clay.

On Saturday, April 20, 2024, each shovel of dirt brought them closer to their goal; their hands stained with the rich, red earth, they shared dreams of new walls, sturdy roofs, and the warmth of a hut they could call their home.

But fate had a cruel twist in store. High above, perched precariously on the edge of the quarry, a massive boulder teetered on the brink of disaster. Unseen and unheard, it waited, biding its time until the moment was ripe.

And then, with a deafening roar, the earth shook as the boulder broke free, hurtling down the steep incline with unstoppable force. The boys barely had time to register the impending doom before the boulder crashed down, trapping them 10 metres beneath its weight.

Dust and debris filled the air as their screams pierced the silence, desperate cries for help that went unanswered. Surrounded by throttling darkness, the boys probably felt for each other, their voices fading to whispers, in the darkness of their tomb.

Nobody heard their dying cries. Nobody saw them writhe and resign to their final fate. That fateful afternoon, the blazing sun belched irrepressible misery and death as the corpses of the eight pupils of the Malam Dan-Umma Qur’anic School at Bayan Science, Badariya, Birnin Kebbi Local Government Area (LGA) of Kebbi State were exhumed from the rubble.

The proprietor of the school, Malam Dan Umar, said he had assigned the pupils to go on top of the hill near the school to excavate clay and gravel to mend the holes inside their rooms against an expected flood. Sobbing profusely, Umar admitted that in the process, a heavy chunk of the laterite fell on them, leaving seven dead on the spot and one hospitalised until his eventual death.

“It was sad for me. I was still in the house when someone called to tell me the bad news. I still find it difficult to believe,” said Umar.

Residents around the area said that apart from using some caved areas of the hill for convenience, the pupils used its mud to build a haven where they occasionally rested.

Barely one month before the tragedy, the Kebbi State Government disclosed its intention to streamline the almajiri system to conform with the formal system of western education.

The Commissioner for Religious Affairs, Muhammad Sani-Aliyu, identified the “Almajiri Integrated Education” as a unit under his ministry saddled with regulation and improvement of the almajiri system of education.

“The unit is carrying out a demography of Islamiyya and Almajiri schools to identify the age and number of pupils, their various origins, parents and their living conditions for appropriate actions,” he said.

Almajiri Integrated Education: Between farce and reality

The Kebbi State government’s Almajiri Integrated Education scheme is hardly the first of its kind to be initiated in response to challenges posed by the almajiri system of education.

In April 2012, the former President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN), through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), launched a national education policy initiative known as the Almajiri Integrated Model School (AIMS), to integrate Qur’anic schools into conventional schools with modern curriculums and provide skill-based education to the almajirai.

The AIMS initiative was also intended to increase educational access, specifically for the about 13.2 million “out of school children” (UNICEF) in northern Nigeria by providing classroom facilities, uniforms, books, and feeding programs. The move was also geared to assist each State of the federation to implement the Education for All (EFA) scheme and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Jonathan’s administration reportedly spent N15 billion on the establishment 400 Almajiri model schools with the aim of integrating the traditional system of learning Islamic education with western education. The AIMS initiative also rebuilt about 36 schools, the first batch of which covered the 19 northern states and Edo.

In spite of these efforts, the enrollment and attendance rates have remained low in these newly reconstructed model schools for various reasons.

A vice principal at one of the schools in Kaduna State stated that the government even though student enrolment increased at the state government’s introduction of free education as part of the AIMS system, attendance has reduced as parents and their wards exhibit sustained apathy for the initiative.

Another major impediment to the programme is the lack of adequate support from the states’ governments. Successive administrations have starved AIMS of funding and essential human resources. Eventually, many of the schools fall into disrepair even as its supposed beneficiaries, the almajirai, desert the classrooms to beg for alms on the streets.

Minors at the mercy of the streets…

Many almajirai, who are supposed to benefit from the AIMS scheme are left to roam on the streets. One such almajiri is Abdulaziz Abdulhamid. The 12-year-old’s day begins at dawn in Minna, Niger State, with a prayer whispered into the morning light.

In a subdued tenor, resonant with childhood innocence and the burdens of a life that has aged him beyond his years, Abdulhamid disclosed how his parents, grappling with poverty in Nassarawa, handed him over to Mallam Ali Usman, an itinerant Qur’anic teacher, with the hope of securing religious education for him. Alongside three other boys, Abdulhamid embarked on a journey that would lead him into the heart of the almajiri system.

The system involves sending boys, typically aged 4 to 12, to distant locations for religious study under nomadic Islamic scholars. For families like Abdulhamid’s, who are unable to afford formal schooling, this system seems a lifeline. However, the idyllic vision of pious learning often shatters as these children, instead of being sheltered by their supposed guardians, find themselves thrust into the streets, begging for survival.

Minna, with its bustling markets and teeming streets, for instance, has replaced Abdulhamid’s classroom. Instead of the Quran, he clutches a bowl; instead of lessons, he memorises the faces of those who might spare him a coin or a morsel of food. Each day is a test of endurance, each night a lesson in resilience. Abdulhamid’s existence is a far cry from the educational aspirations his parents had for him. The Qur’anic verses he recites under harsh circumstances are intermixed with pleas for alms, a stark testament to the intersection of faith and destitution in his newfound world.

Abdulhamid’s reality is shared by an estimated nine million (of 13.2 million out-of-school kids) almajiri children across northern Nigeria. These boys constitute about 81 percent of the country’s out-of-school children, a staggering statistic that underscores the scope of this crisis. While parents believe they are fulfilling a religious obligation, the children often become collateral in a system that is underfunded and overwhelmed. Many of these children have been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers in the spate of kidnappings, banditry and other terror attacks across the country.

The Mallams, who are supposed to guide and educate, frequently lack resources themselves, compelling their wards into the streets to beg, the proceeds of which fund their sparse living conditions and educational materials.

Hussein Muhammed endures a similar fate. A typical day for the 10-year-old begins at 4.00 a.m. with prayers and a Qur’anic recitation and ends at 10 p.m. with another Qur’anic recitation. In between, he spends seven hours begging on the streets of Damboa in Borno State.

The 10-year-old steps out at 6 a.m. immediately after Fajr prayer, every day, and returns around noon. He engages in Quranic recitation with 26 other boys under the tutelage of Mallam Kabir, in whose care his parent left him at age seven. They recite the Quran till Zuhr prayer (around 1.30 – 2 p.m.).

Then they return to the streets, begging for money and food from strangers and familiar faces in the neighbourhood.

Like Muhammed, Idrisu, eight, was entrusted with the care of Mallam Kabir by his parents immediately after he clocked seven years of age. But while Muhammed’s parents handed him over to Mallam Kabir in their village in Mahadiya, Yobe, two days after the Eid il Fitri festival of 2021, Idrisu’s parents gave him out via a proxy, his paternal uncle, who happened to be friends with Mallam Kabir.

“I miss my father. I miss mother. I miss my baby sister, Khadijah. I miss home,” said the 10-year-old, recalling the sad evening, when he was handed out to Mallam Kabir.

“My mother cried very much. Big mother (first wife) cried too. They begged baba to let me stay till the following Sallah festival but he refused,” said Muhammed.

Through his recall, the 10-year-old’s mind unfurled like a maze of harrowing realities; sorrow flowered nebulously from its fragile precincts as he relived the carnage of emotions and parental rejection that rendered him homeless in a strange land, at the mercy of a roving Mallam.

On his part, Idrisu dreams of returning home before the Sallah celebrations, later this year. “My mother will come for me,” he said, enthusiastically.

“She will,” affirmed Muhammed, in the tenor of a foster brother, who knows better than to dampen the spirit of his beloved sibling even though he lives in denial.

“Denial is a phase that many almajirai go through. First, they are broken and dejected by their sudden departure from home. Most times, they are taken far away from home to prevent them from returning soon after they leave. If they migrate to live elsewhere within the same city or state, they eventually begin to plot their return back home sooner than expected. But if taken far away from home, across state borders, they eventually accept their fate and resign to their new life as almajiri,” said Hajaratu Bello, a social worker and contract staff with UN multilateral agencies.

Why almajiranci thrives

Poverty is a major cause of almajiranci. Associate Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna, Salim Bashir Magashi, argued that, traditionally, African societies cherished large families, considering children assets. The progress of an agrarian family, for instance, depended on its size. A large family seldom required paid labour to work on its farmland. As a duty, every member of the family participated in farm labour and even helped other members of the community as a neighbourly gesture – which is reciprocated.

For this reason, men married as many wives as was permissible. However, the society became capitalist and individualistic, owing to cultural imperialism by Western civilisation and its attendant traits – the use of money as a medium to get goods and services affected the erstwhile communal and egalitarian societies fostered by traditional African families.

The size of the family, in time, became a burden to family heads, who must provide the necessaries of life to the entire household. Hence, parents sent their children or wards away to seek knowledge, thus reducing their familial responsibilities.

Many almajirai emerge from these family divide. On the other hand, children from affluent families rarely left the comfort of their homes for such purpose; whenever they did, the families made proper arrangements for the children’s welfare, said Magashi.

There is also a lack of political will by the northern elite to address the issue because they fear it might result in a loss of political advantage during national elections.

“Many of them fear offending the people, who have been known to scoff at organised attempts to promote family planning. We also mustn’t forget that these almajirai are often deployed as political capital by northern politicians during national elections. These are some of the reasons that we can’t resolve our almajiri problem in Northern Nigeria,” said Adamu Aliyu, a Kebbi-based teacher and sociological researcher.

What Islam prescribes

Islam prescribes that the primary legal and moral duty of parents is to take care of the welfare of their children, to provide them with food, shelter, security, health, education. Parents are also instructed to instill morals into their wards, to the best of their abilities.

Thus, memorising the Qur’an, which is largely what an almajiri does, is a desirable (mustahab) act. It is not compulsory for every Muslim, though it is encouraged, but because of bandwagon following (and of course poverty), most parents would rather trade their compulsory duty (wajib) for a desirable

one (mustahab).

The Hausa word almajiri was derived from the Arabic term

almuhajir, meaning ‘a migrant.’ In a Nigerian context, it could mean a boarding student of Islamic studies; a student learning the science and truth of the Qur’an, as revealed by Almighty Allah, while committing the text to memory.

In Hausa, almajiri means ‘child-student’; almajirai is its plural, and almajiranci is the process or practice of learning, traveling, and all things that come with travel.

The school itself is called makarantar alio or tsangaya in Hausa. Historically, it was rooted in Muslims’ religious obligations to learn the Qur’an and acquire knowledge for this world and the hereafter.

Types of almajiri

According to Jimoh Amzat a Professor of Medical Sociology and Social Problems at the Department of Sociology, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, it is pertinent to distinguish three sets of almajirai. The first set of almajirai is sent to the urban centre to live with an Islamic scholar (Mallam) permanently until the completion of their Islamic education. Those almajirai are generally given in trust to a resident mallam but they have to fend for themselves and may not return until they graduate. Another category may return to their parents during the raining season for farming activities. The last category migrates from rural areas with their Islamic scholars during the dry season to the urban centres to return to rural areas for learning and farming in the raining season. However, majority of them, now live on the streets and attend lessons according to their whims.

The almajirais schools are built differently from orthodox or modern Islamic schools. Classes are held early in the mornings and late afternoons, allowing the boys to roam and beg on the street, through noon and late evening. This freedom is exercised without the supervision of their mallam but along the carefree urban streets.

Mostly, classes are held under trees or in other available open space or in zaure (open space just at the entrance to the compound. At night, a burning hearth becomes their source of light and the pupils sit on the bare floor with wooden slates.

There is no formal register for checking attendance and the mallam might not know all the students thus it is often possible for a few of them to abscond and play truant.

The teaching is to some extent coercive, as the mallam always possesses a cane which he swings at slight provocation. While some of the boys still attend classes, many others don’t; eventually, they take completely to the streets thus constituting a nuisance to the urban community.

Past attempts at reform

Several attempts have been made to modernise the system, ranging from personal efforts to government intervention. For instance, Sunni (Izala) Muslims, who view the practice—the method, not the teaching—as anti-Islamic (bid’a) for

dehumanising the child, established Islamiyya schools, which teach both conventional Western education and Islamic education simultaneously. However, these schools are elitist in character, commonly situated in urban areas, and rarely appeal to rural dwellers.

Again, Islamiyya schools, unlike the almajiri (or tsangaya) or makarantar allo are organised as conventional schools and are mostly day schools. The pupils continue to enjoy the comfort of their daily lives from their homes, as against the almajiri system, which is mainly a boarding and nomadic setup.

The first attempt to reform the system was made in 1959, when the Kano Native Authority warned parents against abandoning their children in the name of Islamic education and the teachers were directed to refuse any almajiri. This was unsuccessful.

In 1985, the military government enacted an edict to control Quranic schools. The thrust of the law was to regulate these schools and the movements of the teachers and students to certain urban centres – however, like the previous measure, the law was ineffective, in part, because most of the teachers and the students were unaware of its existence. The law generated criticism as many considered Western standards weak and doomed to fail, because they fostered “individualism, careerism, and materialism.”

Between 2003 and 2011, the Kano State government tried unsuccessfully to improve the system by providing free food to the students and giving the mallams monthly salaries and cattle for farming. Also, the federal government, under former President Goodluck Jonathan, devised a means to reform the system by integrating the almajiri system with orthodox model schools, but these efforts remain ineffective as the rights of children to education, parental love, care, good health benefits, are often bargained away without legal consequences.

Prominent northerners, including the deposed Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, have expressed concerns over the menace that has denied so many children in the region their rights to basic education. The former CBN governor said fathers should be arrested for sending out their children to take alms. He argued that fathers who can’t fend for themselves should go out and do the begging themselves instead of sending out their children.

He said, “Every day, wives are complaining about their husbands who claim their rights but abandon their responsibilities of marriage, women being divorced with their husbands not taking care of the children and those children ending up on the streets, drugs, political thuggery, violent extremism.”

Minna, Niger-based Islamic scholar, Mallam Ishaq Hussein, said, “Everybody accuses us of maltreating the boys but all we do is impart useful knowledge into them. Many parents are too poor to educate and take care of their children. Most times, they beg us to go with them and we do our best to take care of them. But whenever anything bad happens, we are blamed. Allah knows best.”

To sanitise almaijiranci

Good governance is at the heart of the solution. Several measures including firmer enforcement of anti-trafficking laws protective of minors and bio-data tracking have been suggested to curb the menace. Experts urge the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to track and provide specific data on almajiri children and their parents. Sourcing accurate data can help to forge a partnership between policy makers and the parents of the almajirai who are far away from their family homes.

While successive governments have been accused of displaying a lacklustre approach to sanitising the almajiri system, Sheikh Ibrahim Adam, an Abuja-based Islamic cleric and scholar, argued that aside from government and other stakeholders including non-governmental organisations, parents must also accept to play their part by having only the number of children they can cater for.

“It is very wrong and irresponsible of parents to have more children than they can care for. Islam forbids this,” he said.

On his part, Professor Magashi argued that destitute almajirai can be saved through the instrumentation of the law. He said, “To save destitute almajirai and to educate and care for them with the dignity and respect they deserve, laws already in place need only be enforced. This, however, must be a firm and focused decision, which may require the use of force and diplomacy, as well as the provision of the necessary environment to benefit from a reformed, available, affordable, acceptable, and in some cases compulsory system of education.”

The northern almajirai must, however, stay alive to enjoy the full benefits of such measures. Many of them contend, daily, with dangers lurking in plain sight, like the peking order that empowers senior almajirai to bully younger boys in their informal school setting. A recent video, obtained by The Nation, shows a young almajiri boy displaying grievous wounds comprising lacerations to his body, three gashes on his head and a severe wound that has caused blood to secrete permanently beneath his left eyeball.

His crime? He failed to go out and get food for his seniors. The latter didn’t care that he had no money to get them a meal, they simply expected him to go on the streets and secure it through begging. His failure to do so earned him a life-threatening thrashing overtime.

Study proves many almajirai die before age 16

A recent study revealed that, “half of the boys who go into the almajiri system will die in the long run; 17 percent survive, and the remaining 33 percent get lost, of which some will eventually also die. In other words, at least 50 percent of the boys born into this system die.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers across four universities including Funom Theophilus Makama, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, United Kingdom (UK); Esther Funom Makama, Department of Business Administration, University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Borno State; Peter Maitalata Waziri, Biochemistry Department, Kaduna State University, Kaduna State; and Attahiru Dan-Ali Mustapha, Resident Public Health Doctor Community Medicine Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State.

The research team noted that at least three of every six boys involved in the almajiri system die prematurely because they “are exposed to harsh conditions and subjected to begging to fend for themselves, leaving them susceptible to violence, hunger, starvation, infections, child predators, and being used as elements of violence. This decreases their chances of surviving till adulthood as a lot die even before they reach age 16.”

The research, which was carried out to determine the survival rate of boys enrolled in the almajiri system was conducted in 137 villages across two northern states, Kano and Kaduna, where the practice is endemic.

The study concluded that for every six boys sent away to participate in the almajiri system of seeking knowledge in northern Nigeria, three die, one stays alive and the other two get lost, their whereabouts unknown. This is at least 50 percent of the child mortality of boys born into the almajiri system of northern Nigeria.

A system that kills three out of every six children and subjects two more to be missing, leaving only one to survive, is not a system to tolerate, no matter its cultural or religious correlation, according to the researchers.

This is clearly a case to be investigated and urgently resolved by all stakeholders including the parents, civil societies, religious and political leaders.

Against the backdrop of the conundrum, the sad fate of dead and forgotten almajirai presents a sore note; few people would forget in a hurry, the sad event of July 7, 2023, when three almajirai were burnt to death in a fire ignited by a burning mosquito repellent coil killed, in Yola, Adamawa State. The trio, comprising Ismaila Muhammadu, 12, Yusuf Abubakar, 13, and Mustapha Ahmadu, 17, resided in the premises of their school at Sabon Pegi, a community in Yola South Local Government Area. The owner of the school, Malam Abubakar Usman, confirmed that the pupils died due to the fire from the mosquito repellent which engulfed their room.

Equally instructive was the sad fate of the Kebbi eight, who were crushed to death in a burrow pit while digging for clay to mend their hut.

In the wake of their demise, the state governor, Nasir Idris, sent a delegation of State Commissioners and Special Advisers led by the Head of Service (HoS), Safiyanu Garba Bena, to condole with the boys’ families, and donated N20 million naira to the bereaved.

But can N20 million bring back eight promising boys, teeming with life? Is it a worthy consolation to the bereaved families of Muhammad Bawando, Musa Kambaza, Dan-sayyada Kambaza, Abu Takai, Nasir Cheferu, Barmo Babanda, Kalije Bawanda, and Yakubu Aminu?

Can the money revive their boyish chants, where dreams of home are shaped from earth? Can it reignite their heartfelt quest for warmth and delicate balance atop the shifting sands of fate?

In the shadows of Dukku hills, memories of the eight almajirai haunt rock and earth, their ghostly presence free from the weight of crushing boulders and the weightier burden of parental neglect.