Almajirai: Where PMB got it wrong

On Wednesday the 16^th of January at exactly 9 o clock in the evening I tuned to the NTA to watch the network news. Watching the NTA news is a practice I developed over the past 30 years. Instead of the news, however, I was confronted with a programme called ‘The Candidates’ anchored by one Kadaria Ahmed, a fellow undergraduate in the late 1980s in Bayero University Kano. The interviewees were the Presidential candidate of the APC who doubles as the incumbent President and his running mate, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. 

Like most Nigerians, I respect and love Muhammadu Buhari not only for his character but more for his integrity, his frankness and the no-nonsense approach with which he handled Nigeria as a military leader. The poor Nigerians who continuously voted for Buhari since he joined politics many years ago actually expected that kind of approach when he got to the presidency. Most of them have since been disappointed. The reasons he has always given are understandable. The platforms are different. As a military leader he could dictate a statement and ask his legal aides to turn it into a law and it was done. That is not possible in democracy. In addition, age is not on his side. We can recall how he promised not to contest any election after 2011 but came back to do it in 2015 obviously due to the many politicians prodding him to do so.  Most of the elected officers under APC today couldn’t have made it if not for Buhari’s popularity. That if Buhari is subtracted from APC it would be reduced to AD or at best another PDP is also not in doubt. But this is not my topic of discussion today, so please don’t be annoyed.

I began to watch the interview from the point I met it to the end. The Kano-trained journalist was bold and the duo of PMB and his deputy courageously responded to her questions. As I usually do, I later shared my observations with the 5000 friends I have on Facebook. My first observation was to ask my followers to understand why Osinbajo was more eloquent than his boss. Osinbajo is a lecturer who had to spend a number of years talking to students and at seminars and conferences before qualifying to become a Professor. Later the Vice President himself added his experience as a practicing Lawyer to the reasons why he was more articulate than Mr. President.

Another point of attraction in that interview was the President’s response on the Ganduje saga. Politicians opposed to Buhari want him to punish Ganduje or at best disown him for allegedly being caught on camera receiving bribe. Ganduje is a serving Governor who enjoys constitutional immunity from prosecution. The allegation was already being investigated by the Kano state house of assembly the only body vested with the power of removing Ganduje from office. The case is also before the court. These are the reasons PMB gave for not being in position to punish Ganduje and they are genuine. The insincerity of PMB’s opposition becomes more glaring if we note that they do not ask the President to distance himself from some governors in the North West who allowed security situation in their states to deteriorate through their amnesty programme for thieves.

In sum, the response of PMB and his vice were satisfactory for the part of that interview I watched that night. I celebrated that with my friends in the social media even before I went to bed. Many of them call me Pro-Buhari when I mention the positives of the President and his party and anti-Buhari when I mention the negatives. The truth is that I belong to neither group. I am not a politician and I am yet to get sufficient reasons to make me become one.

I was wrong to have celebrated that interview so early. I only realized that this weekend when I logged onto YouTube and watched the interview from the beginning. A particular question was asked by a young man on the problem of almajirai and the response of the President is enough to spoil his chances at the polls if the Nigerian voters were adequately enlightened. It is also enough to be used against PMB by his opponents if we had a serious issues-based democracy. 

“Your Excellency, I believe this is a major challenge for us in the Northern part of this country. Now, I am sure many don’t believe that it something we should continue to do. So what’s your opinion on that? I strongly think that it is important if you can do something about it. This is because you are one of those who can make difficult decisions and it can be accepted in Nigeria.” Said Usman Sulaiman Jahun, a lawyer from Jigawa state.

Hear the response of the President. “I think we have to look at the three tiers of Government responsibilities, the Federal, the state and the local government and the allocation of resources, revenue allocation formula, and so on, relative to the resources available to the country... so the question of almajiri makes up the basic education and are all local government problem. So even if the centre has extra money it wouldn’t take it and build classrooms, equip them, employ qualified teachers from the Federal revenue while it is the duty of the local government... “

First, the issue of child begging is a National crisis involving millions of underaged children across the majority of the 36 states of Nigeria. I do not know of any country in the world with a crisis of such magnitude. It is thus an issue that must be addressed at the centre by the Federal government. That the President would reduce it to the question of building classrooms by Local governments and get applauded by an audience comprising of ministers and other top echelons of his party smacks of our level of irresponsibility as a nation. 

Most of the boys roaming the streets begging for food are sent to the cities by their parents in the name of attending Qur’anic schools. To stop the menace of child begging, therefore, this critical factor has to be looked into and comprehensively addressed by the central Government. At present there is no comprehensive Government policy on Quranic schools. Formulating such a policy would integrate Qur’anic schools into the mainstream educational system and it does not imply in any way that the central government would use Federal government allocation to build such schools. Afterall, like the anchor of that programme pointed to the president we currently have a Federal agency overseeing basic education even though the central government does not build primary schools.

But why is the President avoiding this responsibility? Is it because the children involved are mainly Muslim children and he does not want to be accused of Islamizing Nigeria? Let me remind the president that currently Federal allocation is used to run the National Hajj Commission and the National Christian Pilgrimage Commission even though there are Nigerians who do not belong to either of the two main religions. Federal allocation is also used to pay salaries of religious teachers in Federal Government colleges and run religious studies departments in our tertiary institutions. In all these cases no one has accused the Government of religionizing the country. Why then would a popular government like that of President Buhari be shy to come up with a policy that will remove millions of Nigerian children from street begging for fear of being accused of Islamizing the country? Is the president expecting each local government to come up with its policy on Qur’anic schools? I do not expect that kind of thinking from a person of the calibre of PMB. 

Further, the President may wish to note that his predecessor built schools for the almajirai in which both Qur’anic and western education are taught together and no one accused the devout Christian of Islamizing Nigeria. And the Jonathan initiative was in order unless the Buhari Government is saying that Qur’anic education is not a form of education. 

Or is PMB hesitant to address the problem of child begging (aka almajirci) because it is only in the Northern states and southerners will be against it? Here I would like the president to note that many policies of the central government in Nigeria only favour a few sections of the country because of their peculiarities. A handy example is the National commission for Nomadic education which oversees the education of nomads even though they constitute a very tiny segment of the Nigerian population. Other example Federal agencies include Border Communities Development Commission, Niger Delta Development Commission, etc. What then prevents Buhari’s Government from initiating a policy on Qur’anic schools to be implemented by an agency or at least a department in the Federal Ministry of Education? That this eludes his Minister of Education who has written several articles on Qur’anic education in his days as a Newspaper columnist is one of the wonders of this government.

On a final note, I would like to remind Mr. President that Nigerians voted for a bold and courageous person who rose through the ranks to the highest level of his calling as a soldier. We never voted for a timid person who is afraid of confronting National issues regardless of whose ox is gored.