Adamu Adamu’s 20 million out-of-school children

The menace of out-of-school children, of which the almajiri group constitutes the largest chunk, only began to receive attention in the last 60 days of the eight years in office of Nigeria’s longest-serving Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu. Daily Trust is shocked by this scandalous waste of a rare opportunity for tackling one of the country’s long and critical social challenges; worse so by someone who, hitherto, had passionately wished for a chance to revert the ugly trend.

Given the complexities of Nigeria’s politics, where policies are often politicised along religious lines, tackling the Almajiri situation couldn’t have come at a better time. As a minister of education, in addition to being a Muslim from the northern region of the country, where the Almajiri trend, for example, is endemic, and more so, serving under a Muslim president; Malam Adamu could not have suffered any difficulties or been accused of being sentimental in whatever steps taken to reform the intractable almajiri system along with other forms of factors that keep school-age children on the streets instead of in classrooms.

The House of Representatives recently held a public hearing on a bill to establish the National Commission for Almajiri Education, for pupils and children who do not go to school, with a view to reducing the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria. However, a day before the public hearing, which was held at the National Assembly Complex on Tuesday, March 28, 2023, the Civil Society Coalition for Transparency and Good Governance (CSCTGG) advised the House of Representatives against creating the commission; arguing that such a move would be a duplication of agencies and governmental duties.

Addressing a press conference on behalf of the CSCTGG in Abuja, Victor Udoh said what is needed in place of the commission is for the government to enhance the capacity of related existing agencies. He said the Universal Basic Education Commission as well as the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education are sufficiently covered by law to perform all the functions that the bill seeks to offer. 

It would be recalled that the bill to establish the commission to tackle the crisis of Almajiri and other out-of-school children had earlier scaled second reading in the House of Representatives in November last year.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in a report published in September 2022 by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) said Nigeria had about 20 million out-of-school children; the highest figure for any country in Africa. Globally, Nigeria, India and Pakistan have the highest figures for out-of-school children. For a long time, the figure in Nigeria was between 10.5 and 13.5 million. The effects of banditry, kidnapping and general insecurity in the country over the past few years are believed to be responsible for the surge in the figures. An overwhelming majority of these figures are in northern Nigeria, buoyed as it were, by the number of almajiri children.

Of all the groups of out-of-school children, including those engaged in child labour and street hawking, almajiri pupils are the most vulnerable. Coined from the Arabic word “al muhajirun” which is translated as “an emigrant”, “almajiri” is the corrupted form of the word in Hausa and simply refers to a seeker of Qur’anic/Islamic knowledge in a town far away from his home. 

It is a relic of a dominant tradition from the past throughout northern Nigeria where many parents believe that Qur’anic/Islamic education is best acquired by their children when they are taken to distant places. Then and now, the practice is, in a sense, akin to the “boarding school” format in the Western education system. 

Unfortunately, parents enrol their children in almajiri schools without any provisions like feeding and clothing for their boarding, which is why most almajiri school children resort to street-begging to survive because the proprietors of such schools lack everything needed to make this vulnerable group of children live a healthy life in a learning-friendly environment including shelter, food, clothing, care and love.

We are saddened that Malam Adamu Adamu will be leaving office next month without making any significant difference in this most troubled aspect of social and economic life in northern Nigeria, even after serving as the Minister of Education for eight years. We recall that as a columnist and public commentator, Adamu Adamu was a passionate advocate of education in northern Nigeria, especially about the need to close the gap between educational development in the region and in the rest of the country. 

Addressing the education of almajiri children is one of the surest ways to bridge the gap between education in the North and in the rest of the country. And eight years is long enough for a government department to make considerable progress on a single issue.

We are compelled, therefore, to wonder what the minister had been doing with his official time if an issue as important as this did not feature prominently in his ministerial agenda over the past eight years, as his record of little or no achievement in the sector now confirms. We wish Malam Adamu Adamu all the very best in his personal and official endeavours going forward, but we cannot help noting that a lot more was expected from him on Nigeria’s out-of-school children.