Will Yobe State be the almajiri sanctuary?

One was taken aback by the announcement last week that Yobe State is opting out of the decision of Northern governors to ban the almajiri system within their states and evacuate the children to their states of origin.

The governors reached this unanimous agreement via teleconferencing in April this year, ostensibly to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The decision to ban almajirci, as is practised in this part of the country, has been on the cards for quite some time now but regime after regime have been slow-footed in taking a firm decision on the matter. One therefore applauds the Northern governors for taking the decision.

Some months ago, even the federal government was poised to announce a ban but it dithered, probably reflecting that it didn’t have exclusive jurisdiction over the matter.

Nevertheless, the National Security Adviser (NSA) had been on the road loudly drawing the nation’s attention to the dangers posed by the almajiris to the security of the nation.

Last December at the launch of the revised National Security Strategy for 2019, the NSA said that government could not continue to paper over the dangers of the almajiri system of education to the security of the nation.

He said: ‘We cannot continue to push it under the carpet because eventually it will come back to bite us’.

The NSA, in the same month, had briefed the Federal Executive Council on the same vexatious matter, and had made the same plea.

But the official position of the federal government was that the almajiri ban could only be attained after wide consultations with all stakeholders.

Also about the same time in November last year, Professor Ahmed Modibbo of Nasarawa State University, in a well-attended lecture in Kaduna, organised by the Centre of Historical Research and Documentation of Ahmadu Bello University, titled, Before the ban on the Almajiri System of Education in Nigeria, had lamented that the custom-built schools for almajirai by the Jonathan administration were left ‘unoccupied, abandoned and vandalised’.

He said that the state governments were not happy with the decision of the federal government to undertake the project through the Universal Basic Education Commission(UBEC) and the Education Tax Fund (ETF), as they wanted the money to be given to them so that they could nominate contractors for the project.

Professor Modibbo, himself a former Executive Secretary of UBEC, posited that for the ban to be effective, we must address the challenges plaguing the Islamic system of education in Nigeria.

And that is only possible by ‘strict implementation of the UBE act, introduction of school time marshals and catering for the welfare of the children’.

It was therefore, cheering news to hear that the Northern governors have at last banned almajici, as it is practised here.

However, what galls me and many people I have spoken to on the matter, was the rider to the pronouncement to evacuate the children to their states of origin.

Besides many other reasons, forced evacuation smacks of tyranny. Uprooting citizens who have lived anywhere in the country and forcibly transporting them to their states of origin goes against the grain of many provisions of the constitution that allow freedom to live in any part of the country.

Despite protests from many quarters, some governors went ahead.

The evacuation exercise was carelessly done, putting hapless children in great distress and jeopardy as some were already infected with the dreaded coronavirus.

Certain states such as Taraba refused to receive their share of indigenous almajirai, thus putting them in limbo.

But it came as a surprise that Yobe State did not think much of the decision and would unilaterally act contrary to it.

The report from Yobe was blunt: The state would not ban amajirci, would not evacuate children that were not state indigenes, and would happily receive its indigenes sent from other states.

Honestly, I thought Yobe was just on an ego trip to create an almajirai sanctuary in the state. Along with Borno, its sister state, Yobe falls smack within the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, and I know that its educational infrastructure had been mercilessly buffeted by the rampaging terrorists.

Whole schools have been burnt down in many parts of the state tragically along with many teachers and students. You could say without any fear of contradiction that for many years now, Yobe schools have practically been under siege.

To worsen matters, the state had not been doing well in competitive examinations nationwide. I therefore wondered how the state would cope with the additional number of students it would take in these times of lean resources.

But I was struck by utterances of Dr Mohammed Sani Adam, Yobe State Commissioner of Basic and Secondary Education, in the BBC Hausa programme Taba Kidi Taba Karatu which was aired the penultimate Saturday and Sunday.

I listened to the programme intently and came away much better educated.

Throughout the programme, Sani Adam came off as self-assured and confident in the course action Yobe is taking to confront the almajiri issue.

He was appointed last year from the job that he had held for some years now, as a Director of Elkanemi College of Islamic Theology.

It is an old, private, institution ubiquitous on airport road, Maiduguri – a college that over the last 50 years or so, had successfully combined offering Islamic studies along with the modern curriculum.

The college which runs nursery, primary and secondary school sections had continuously uploaded students fluent in both Arabic and English that have gone to universities within the country and abroad.

There are now quite a number of medical doctors, vets, engineers and other professionals in the country that had their roots in that iconic college.

Probably it is the success of the college that had informed the governor to appoint him to this particular office. In that case, he came well kitted for the daunting assignment.

In the course of the programme, Sani Adam explained that Yobe and Borno had historically been the centres of Islamic learning in the West African region.

Students have been coming from far and near to imbibe Islamic education from many of the schools spread in every nook and cranny of the state.

The state had decided that it was now time to nurture and build on that heritage and age-old relationship, not to jettison it, despite the obvious deficiencies.

He asserted that the state was ready with its current level of infrastructure to accommodate as many students as possible.

Many of the destroyed schools by Boko Haram insurgents have been rebuilt and the government had even gone ahead to build seven ultra-model schools spread around the state within a short period in anticipation for these assignments.

Additionally, mega schools in the mould of those built by Governor Kashim Shettima in Borno State will be put up across the state to cater for the almajirai and other children with backgrounds of deprivation.

Infrastructure aside, committees are now working round the clock to make a census of the traditional almajirai schools with a view to register them and suggest ways that both parents and government would contribute to their upkeep.

Laws will be enacted to effectively regulate them.

These are certainly lofty ambitions but going by the passion manifestly shown by Sani Adam in that BBC Hausa programme, I guess Yobe State could be on the route to showcase that their almajirai sanctuary is sustainable. We on this page will keenly follow developments because if the experiment succeeds, it would be a beacon for other states to follow.