Munguno and the ban on “street urchins”

Some days ago, a friend forwarded to me the summary of a law said to be signed by the Katsina state Governor, His Excellency Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari on the regulation of almajirci in Katsina state. The law tagged “RESPONSIBLE PARENTING/ALMAJIRI RIGHT PROTECTION EDIT” seeks to protect the child from abuse, at least according to its authors.

After the definitions, the Katsina edict provides for a commission or a department to be headed by a director to run as an independent department. The law prohibits any parent from sending their child to a Qur’anic school if he is less than 12 years old. The parent shall make provision for decent clothing and feeding for the child while the Qur’anic teacher shall provide accommodation. The child must not come from outside Katsina state unless the teacher undertakes to take his full responsibility. In addition, no child should be taken to a Qur’anic school outside the state unless he is at least 12 years of age. 

The Government on its part shall provide medical facilities to all children in registered Qur’anic schools and make sure that they are registered under the NHIS scheme. Assistance of unspecified amounts shall be provided to all registered Qur’anic schools by the Government from time to time, according to the document.

The move by the Katsina state Government, I would like to believe, was done in good faith. Governor Masari deserves our commendation for it. He has abandoned the futile waiting for Northern Governors Forum or the Central Government to take a decision. I, however, had my humble observations which I didn’t want to make public immediately for two reasons. One, to avoid the wrong notion that I m against everything coming from Government, especially Katsina state Government. Only days ago I criticized the Governor for his approach to security. Two, and more importantly, to wait and see the details of what the Government has in mind.

But just as I was waiting, I saw the National Security adviser on my TV screen making comments about what he called ‘street urchins’. Hear him, ‘The group I spoke about on illiteracy is the almajiri. Ultimately, government will have to proscribe the almajiri phenomena, because we cannot continue to have street urchins, children roaming around, only for them in a couple of years or decades to become a problem to society.’

I was dumbfounded. First, the Federal Government has a big ministry and a litany of agencies in charge of education. It is their responsibility to define what illiteracy is and who is an illiterate. There has been a lot of work, in the past, done by the Federal Ministry of Education and universities like Bayero University and states like Kano on the interfacing of Qur’anic schools with formal schools. But instead of the retired General to refer to the right quarters for the right definition, he decided to opine that anybody who has not gone through the western-style school is an illiterate. The unfortunate thing is that he is in the office he is.

But that may not even be a major problem. Many people understand illiteracy the way the General does. What ordinary Nigerians like me want to hear from the National security advisor and see on the ground are the actions they are taking on the spate of kidnappings, killings and animal rustling bedevilling the North. What are his office and the larger ministry of defence doing about these and about herders moving their cattle into farmlands and destroying farmers’ crops? Even their worst enemy knows that almajirai are not responsible for these crimes. Why will the security team of this administration like to go for soft targets instead of addressing the major security challenges facing the country?

By the way, if these children who are mainly of poor background abandon almajirci where does the NSA want them to go and get the right western education? Certainly since their parents cannot afford private schools the only place they can go are Government schools. Does the NSA know the condition of Government basic schools? Does he know how crowded they are and that majority of children who go to Government schools cannot write a correct paragraph after completing their secondary schools in twelve years? 

The products of Qur’anic schools that many of us deride are better than the product of Government basic schools. At least at the end of the day the former can recite the Qur’an the way it is taught in those schools.

Please do not misquote me. I m not saying all is well with Qur’anic schools. There are big problems with our Qur’anic schools, but most of them are part of our greater problem. Northern Muslims have not been able to change our ways in most of the things we inherited from the past. Our method of farming, for example, is as done precolonially. This applies to both crop and animal farming. Our emirs still spend most of their days sitting in the palace as done five hundred years ago and have not changed their approach to cope with new challenges facing their people. The teaching methods in our traditional Qur’anic schools have not undergone any change for over a hundred years.

The problem of begging associated with children in Qur’anic schools is only one of such problems. The last time Bishop Matthew Kukah wanted to establish almajiri centres all of us rose to condemn it. But it ended there. Can’t we even do what he wanted to do, even if we cannot modify it? What is the matter with us that we can only condemn and praise but cannot go a step further to take any positive action to solve a common problem?

The major concern of majority of Northern Muslim elites about Qur’anic schools is the begging aspect but not the promotion of Qur’anic education. I would thus like to call on Governors like Masari who have concern for Qur’anic education to go further and make policies that will improve the contents of our Qur’anic schools and look into more ways they can prevent our children from abuse.

As for the NSA, I would advise him to concentrate on consolidating the gains so far made on security and liaise with Education ministry, state Governors and religious leaders on matters of Quranic schools.

How Buhari and Masari allowed Katsina to become a killing field

If you judge me as an opposition writer you are not being fair to me. I supported Buhari when he needed support. As a non-political person I never joined his party or any other political party. But since the time he joined politics in 2003 I made sure I voted for him and mobilized those I could mobilize to vote for him. My hopes, like majority of Nigerians, were thus high when he won the 2015 election. My prayer along with others who went on hajj the previous year was answered. Jonathan was defeated. The killing of innocent Muslim Northerners was thus over. 

However, just before the inauguration of Buhari administration in 2015 something happened. I had a discussion with a more experienced colleague which like you may be dismissing this write-up, I dismissed as a hate observation from a PDP supporter. Of course I knew that colleague was not a PDP member and in fact, like yours sincerely he was never in politics. However, my love for Buhari beclouded my sense of reasoning. The person asked how Buhari could provide security for Nigerians while it was the same person who, as a military leader was toppled and arrested from his house with no iota of resistance. The point here is that if Buhari could not deal with saboteurs as a military leader with full autocratic powers how could he possibly do so as a civilian president? Whether my colleague’s observation made sense or not is left for you to say now that my choice president has spent four full years in office.

But I m not here to discuss sabotage. Sabotage or not, Buhari as the president of this country is responsible for the protection of lives and property of all Nigerians. He is answerable before God and then before Nigerians for any innocent blood dropped on the Nigerian territory. This is even more so because Nigerians voted for him for his promise that their security will be his top priority.

But Buhari is not alone in it. Along with him are 36 state Governors each of whom is roughly called the Chief security officer of his state. Let me not take you far. My state of origin is Katsina and I m talking about His Excellency Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari, the executive governor of the state. Both Masari and Buhari are citizens of Katsina who took over power when there was relative peace in their state compared to its immediate neighbour, Zamfara. There were however rampant cases of cattle rustling and banditry especially in local government areas neighbouring Zamfara. That those cases will be over in a matter of a very short time was the belief of people like me who had confidence that APC shall be better than PDP notwithstanding that Masari himself was a full blown PDP member who only joined the Buhari political train after falling out with his best friend, the late President Yaradua. 

Not long after the inauguration of Masari administration, he set up a security committee under the SSG, Alhaji Mustapha Inuwa. Mustapha Inuwa was a Commissioner of Education and later SSG when Yaradua was the state Governor. His committee was what could be described as a colossal failure. Inuwa’s committee did not prevent cattle rustling from taking place in any parts of Katsina state. A good number of villages were sacked and Inuwa’s security teams only arrived the scenes, when they did, many hours after the incidents took place. Perhaps they realized that the Government itself was not serious and they decided to stay in the cities and enjoyed their allowances, after all many of them had no families in the state. It was in this period, for example, that I lost an uncle of mine to the rifles of bandits. If you expect me to stop talking about my dear who was the religious leader of his people and the patriarch of my mother’s family so as to cover the failure of Katsina and Federal Governments you are in for a disappointment. 

Somehow, sometime in 2016 Governor Yari of Zamfara state decided to grant amnesty to bandits and cattle rustlers in Zamfara state. That came as a relief to Katsina State Governor who was said to be spending a lot of money to pay security people ‘on patrol’. Thus, like a copycat, Katsina state Government also announced an amnesty for criminals. A 15-man amnesty committee was set up under our Mustapha Inuwa which was mandated by the state Governor to “meet with various gangs of cattle rustlers operating in the state with a view to identifying their grievances, and advice the government, accordingly”. Yes, those were the words of Governor Masari on the 12^th of November, 2016, unfortunately. The implication was that the Government had identified ‘gangs’ of cattle rustlers who had been responsible for the murder of innocent Nigerians and it did know their locations. But instead of applying the might of Government to bring them to justice, it was going to meet them and even listen to their reasons for murdering Nigerians. 

That was not all. The governor continued, “The government decides to employ dialogue after it had used force by about 80 per cent and yielded no much positive results”. In other words, the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with all its Police, Army, Navy, Air force, DSS, NIA, etc. had no strength to subdue bunches of criminals terrorizing villagers in one part of the country. Haba! This was said when the challenges were by far less serious than what we have now. Do we have any hope now?

After the inauguration of that committee, the lies began. Two months after the inauguration of the committee, the SSG announced that 28,000 cattle were surrendered by the cattle rustlers who had now repented. Out of that number, according to him, 24,567 had been returned to their rightful owners and 3513 died before they could be surrendered with some 99 still available. Here, one would be tempted to ask questions. Where is the list of those who repented and where are they now? Had the cattle rustlers been keeping the animals they rustled somewhere safely in expectation of this amnesty programme? This is only possible if there is complicity by some people close to Government. Who are ‘the rightful owners’ who reclaimed their cattle and which method did the committee use to ascertain ownership? I am yet to see their list. The villager victims of cattle rustling could not ask these questions for fear of being with-hunt by Government. After all, they saw some of the suspected cattle rustlers moving with Government protection after the amnesty declaration. 

The meaning of all these is that the security of lives and property of the people of Katsina state was allowed to deteriorate by the Government (this Government) by not solving the problem when it was still at the infancy stage. Now that it has become much worse the Governor is running up and down and is sometimes seen shading tears. A friend of mine called them crocodile tears and many people may have reasons to agree with him. For example, on visiting the Jibia flood site last year the Governor openly shed those tears and promised to tackle the root cause of the flood. One year after, the problem has not been solved and if there is another rain similar to last year’s only the special grace of God will prevent another flood. Somehow, my darling President Buhari has shed tears on a number of occasions and his people in his home state are still being killed on a daily basis. 

Did you say I am insulting Buhari and Masari? That may be your opinion. It is, however, the kind of opinion that has made Nigerians in leadership position to see every constructive criticism as an insult. But like the famous Caliph Umar b. Alkhattab said, “There is no good in you if you do not tell us the truth, and there is no good in us if we do not accept”.

Buhari is a human being; please let’s see him as one

In the year 2003 during the registration exercise for the National identity card in one of the villages of my local government, a man came for registration. The NIMC official asked for his name, age, occupation and other personal details and he gave. He was then asked to put his fingers, one after another on the biometric scanner and he did. Finally he was asked to pose for a photograph after which the officer said, “that is all, you can go”. The man reluctantly stood up, walked a few meters away and came back. He looked into the eyes of the ID card officer and said, “Mallam, nifa Buhari na zaba” meaning, “Mallam, I voted for Buhari”. The officer and other people around responded, “Baba, this is not an election. But when the election comes we too shall vote for Buhari”. They then explained to him what a National ID card was meant for and the difference between what was being done there and an election. The man left satisfied.

Fast forward to 23rd February 2019. When villagers in the far North came to the polling unit, if they were not previously guided on the Buhari’s broom by an enlightened APC man in their village they asked to be shown Buhari’s party. They will vote for him even if their village was sacked by bandits. But Buhari did not help them. No, they believe it is not the fault of Buhari. It is people around him who are collecting money from him but they are not doing the work. But since he gave out money to fight banditry, is he not supposed to check and make sure that the work is being done? “I think Buhari should remove those bad eggs around him”. Thus, heads or tails Buhari is innocent and blameless. Drag farther you are an enemy of Buhari. You know what that means.

But those are villages who are distance away from Islamic and western education. So their behaviour is not totally unexpected. Ironically, even many educated people think that way. Buhari does not make mistake. If you mention his mistake you must be a PDP man, only that you don’t want to say it. There is a friend (a real known friend in and out of Facebook) who always responds to almost any post I make either by way of reaction or comment. However, when I started making posts on the banditry taking place in my local government he boycotted me. He only came back the day I said my family and I will vote for Buhari and Shekarau.

Two days ago when I faulted the power sharing formula of APC another friend sent a private  observation  that the PDP power sharing I mentioned was for looting not for National unity. But, we must always separate the wheat from the chaff. Looting is bad but power sharing that will give each of the two main religious groups a sense of belonging is noble. So if someone is doing it to make stealing easier for him why can’t we do it for the noble purpose?

This type of approach may make Buhari himself to believe that he is always right. Afterall power corrupts and when advisors are not helping matters it corrupts dangerously. I know of Islamic scholars who are close to the President but I don’t know the kind of truth they tell him, if they tell him any truth at all. Otherwise, how can anyone imagine that the killings we witness on daily basis in Katsina and Zamfara will continue for so long without any new strategy to address it from the Federal Government? Does Buhari know that Allah will ask him about every drop of innocent blood spilled while he is in charge? Don’t the scholars continuously remind him of the relevant Qur’anic verses and traditions of the Holy Prophet? Or do they behave like the scholars we saw paying a visit to Kwankwaso who simply mentioned his contributions to Islam without preaching to him on his blunders? But I respect the leader of that delegation, I believe he later met him and discussed the mistakes in private. Similarly, I believe those well known scholars who are close to Buhari are telling him the truth. Please let them continue and insist. We have lost a lot of innocent people who love Buhari more than they love themselves.

Please tell the President that he is not infallible. He is just another human being answerable before Allah on his stewardship as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia

Power sharing: Mistakes APC must not repeat

Nigeria is a great country with a complex history. Our unique history has left us with a very large population, the largest in Africa and one of the largest in the world. To say that we are heterogeneous will be an understatement. We have at least 250 tribes with two main religious groups. Despite being multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious we have been able to live relatively peacefully. This is not by accident. We have carefully managed what makes people in many other African countries fight – power. This, we were able to do by adopting federalism in which each federating unit is carried along in running the affairs of the nation. Our constitution is clear on the appointment of ministers. Each state must produce at least one.

When our colonizers decided to bring us together in what is known as the 1914 amalgamation, little did they know that what they hitherto called Northern and southern protectorates were going to be a blessing for us in disguise. Today we have established the culture of power division between North and south to such a level that if the President is coming from the North the vice President will be produced by the south and vice versa. The same rule applies with respect to the religious affiliations of the President and the vice president. Although these rules are not written in our constitution, any political party that breaks them is not likely going to make it at the polls.

But the office of the President and vice president are not the only important offices in Government. The Government as we have it in Nigeria is made up of three arms, viz. the executive, the legislature and the Judiciary. I will talk about the executive and the legislature; appointments into the judiciary are only for the learned who have gone through formal law institutions and party politics play very little role in them.

Three pairs of offices can be identified in both the executive and the legislature for which, if power is to be truly divided in such a way that Muslims and Christians, Northerners and Southerners will have a sense of belonging then regional and religious factors must be considered. These are President/VP, SGF/Head of Service and Senate President/Speaker. The first two pairs are in the executive while the last is in the legislature.

As bad as the PDP may be, it has been able to share these offices among the two parts of the country and the two religions over the 16 years it was in power. Thus in 1999-2007 we had Obasanjo/Atiku, Ekaete/Yayale and Igbo (a good number of them)/Buhari- Naabba- Masari.  When ‘Yaradua took over we had Yaradua/Jonathan, Kingibe -Yayale/Okeke and Mark/Bankole. The same formula was maintained after Yaradua except for 2011 – 2015 when there was no acceptable Muslim candidate for the office of the speaker from the South and Tambuwal was supported to become the speaker. Many saw it as a compensation for the North West after Buhari was rigged out at the polls.

Of important note in PDP’s power sharing is the rotation of the offices of the President, SP and SGF with power shift. Thus when Obasanjo was in power these offices went to the south and when power shifted to the North, Northerners occupied them. We can also remember that the six offices mentioned above were distributed among the six geopolitical zones.

It is noteworthy that PDP has never announced or debated their sharing formula in public but Nigerians including people like me who are not in partisan politics could see what was happening and were largely satisfied.

What we saw over the last four years was President/VP (N/S, M/C), SGF/HOS (N/S, C/C) and SP/Speaker (N/N, M/C). This is vividly a wrong arrangement for a number of reasons. One, there are three Christians in the four most important offices in the executive. That is why when the President was away for medical treatment, there was visibly no Muslim in the executive corridor. But Nigerian Muslims are easy going; they did not make noise. The question here is, would the Christians ever accept that? Of course it would not happen in the first place. No Christian president will appoint Muslims to occupy the offices of the SGF and HOS at the same time. Secondly, both the speaker and the SGF are Christians from the North East where Christians constitute a minority.

Yes, the Chief of Staff is a Muslim from the North East. But he is only an aide to the president. That he is allowed to become prominent is not good for the personality of the President. Not many of us can remember the names of Chiefs of staff of past presidents even though they were always there.

If APC wants to retain power beyond President Buhari, and many of us will be happy it does, it has to put its house in order and take care of our diversity at the highest level of power play. There is no better time than now that the incoming Federal legislators were supposedly carefully selected to be loyal to the party.

I do not derive any pleasure in pointing at these mistakes and wish the APC had taken care of them and saved Nigerians from public discussions on things that divide them. 

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.

Why we should thank Mathew Kukah

Muslims of Northern Nigeria are a wonderful people. For long we have been singing Islam and using it whenever it is to our advantage. Our Islamic scholars use their positions to get close to people in power. It pays handsomely. They are made members of Islamic related committees, be they committees on Hajj, Shariah, Zakkah, hisbah, Da’wah, etc. Opportunities became even greater with the coming of this fourth republic when every Northern Governor began to launch and relaunch one kind of Shariah-related programme or another to help improve his popularity. Scholars who were hitherto fighting in the name of aqeedah differences came together as Shariah champions to work for the "progress of Islam".

Our emirs who are the officially-recognized leaders of the Muslim Ummah have been getting their allocation from the budgets of local Governments in their domain and serve as umbrella for retired civil and military officials who pay to get crowned with one traditional title or another. They go with every Government and their relations and cronies are favoured in Government contracts and appointments.

Our politicians use Islam as an opportunity to get to power. If you doubt this ask Yakubu Dogara, for example, to contest the Governorship of Bauchi state or any Christian to try contesting such an office in any of the predominantly Muslim Northern states. Buhari is only popular because he is a Muslim. Should he renounce Islam before February 16, we don’t pray for that, he will lose the presidential election. At a point in time, every politician who wanted to win an election in the North had to lie that he will enforce Shariah law if elected.

The rest of us are either working or doing one legitimate business or another. Yet, despite what Allah Has done to us and our use of His religion to get what we want, I don’t know of any formidable initiative to solve the problem of almajirci in the North. Even our leaders only condemn as the rest of us do.  

All of a sudden, the Christians came up with an idea. That since we don’t seem to care about these our underaged children roaming the streets with plastics begging for food, the Church will create a centre for them, in which they will feed, clothe and shelter them. In addition, they will teach them vocation alongside the Qur’an with whose teaching they will not interfere. To kick-start this project is no other than Reverend Mathew Hassan-Kukah. Mathew Kukah is a Northern Christian intellectual who has lived in the North and interacted with all manners of Northern Muslims from the most ordinary commoner to the Sultan who is his close friend. In fact, if you say Mathew Hassan-Kukah was posted to Sokoto diocese because of his relationship with the Sultan you would be right.

As a Northerner, an intelligent one for that matter, Mathew Kukah understands the sensibilities of Muslims and would thus do his best to hide any proselytization agenda at the initial stage.

Now, with the announcement of the Christian intent, everybody remembered that the almajirai are Muslims and that they will end up becoming Christians if such centres are established. Great, we now remember that we should not allow these innocent children to be converted to Christianity. What should we do? 

What one would expect of a responsible people faced with this type of challenge is to thank the Church for reminding them of their responsibility and come up with a more comprehensive programme than that of Mathew Kukah. Unfortunately, the kind of sentiments being expressed and the fact that more than a year after Kukah mooted this idea nothing has come up from our religious leaders and our “Shariah compliant” politicians portray us as a people not serious.

 “The almajiri system has outlived its usefulness and should be banned” says one commentator. “Jabir, Sudais, Husary and other world renown Quranic reciters did not attend tsangaya, so we should do away with it” says another. Others say after banning the system, Government should be advised to improve schools in the rural areas so that the would-be almajirai will now have sound education. Plus many such funny ideas. Perhaps the most responsible comment I read on the Kukah initiative is the one by Prof. Ishaq Akintola in which he requested Northern Muslims to empower Islamic NGOs to cater for the almajiri.

For those calling for the total banning of the almajiri system, let’s weigh the options.

Leaving the tsangaya system will maintain the almajirai on the streets. As it is now, very few of them will end up being scholars but many of them would end up being petty traders, business tycoons, bus conductors and drivers, motorpark touts, Hausa musicians, etc. Others will be in Kukah centres (He promised to train 10 million almajirai to acquire skills) and there will be many of them. Some of the products of the Mathew centres will be sponsored to study abroad and come back to integrate with their communities. They will be Christians and since they will have money with them they will attract villagers who are their blood to Christianity. With this, Sokoto state may have a Christian governor in future.

Banning the tsangaya system will return the almajirai to their parents in the villages. The most lucrative business in the rural areas now is banditry and kidnapping. They can kill anyone to get money. Those who think politicians will establish good schools to cater for these children are probably not aware of the conditions of the existing Government schools.

Like the Hausa man will put it, “gaba kura baya sayaki”. Neither option is sweet. The only thing left for us is to come up with another alternative. The best option as far as yours sincerely is concerned is for the Muslim Ummah  to come up with a comprehensive programme to cater for the almajiri child. 

Meanwhile, many thanks to Rev. Hassan-Kukah for the wake-up.