Begging as a Failure of Leadership

Recently, His eminence the Sultan of Sokoto was quoted saying that almajirci has nothing to do with Islam and that it is people who are too poor to send their children to school that resort to sending them for begging. He said it while chairing a meeting on the girl child education in Kaduna.

Let me start by saying that I respect the office of Sultan and that my intention here is not to malign his person or the traditional institution that by the circumstances of our history provides the leadership of the Ummah in this part of the world. 

The notion given by the traditional ruler that almajirci and begging are the same is the kind misconception that has impeded the solution to the problem of child begging in Northern Nigeria. Begging is the act of seeking assistance from someone often in form of money, food or clothing. Begging is not Islamic and the Holy prophet (peace be upon him) spoke against begging with such a frequency and emphasis that most of his companions stopped from making even ordinary requests for the rest of their lives. The very few exceptions to this rule are detailed in relevant Islamic books.

Almajiri on the other hand is the distortion of the Arabic word almuhajir, meaning someone who has left his home in search of security, food, knowledge, etc. Commenting on the first Hadith of his popular collection of 40 traditions, Imam Alnawawiy listed many reasons for which Hijra is recommended in Islam. One of them is search of knowledge. The Qur’an (Q9:122) has made it an obligation for each community to sponsor people from among themselves who will engage in such movements in search of Islamic knowledge. As a matter of fact, the founders of Sokoto Caliphate belong to this group.

It is therefore necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. While almajiranci is Islamic, begging, whether it is done by children or adults is unislamic. A collective, thorough and sustained effort must be made to see to the end of this menace without affecting Islamic scholarship. As the spiritual leader of the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria, the Sultan is supposed to lead the way.

And when His eminence spoke about sending children to school, which school is he referring to? Is it the western education type popularly called makarantar boko by his people? If so, he doesn’t have to worry. There is currently a big Federal ministry of Education, 36 state ministries of Education, 774 local Education departments with thousands of teachers, curriculum experts and other employees aimed at promoting those schools. What is missing, which is what everybody expects to be the Sultan’s business, is a comprehensive guideline on the establishment, running and content of Islamic schools. Because of the absence of such guidelines, every community operates their Islamic schools the way they like. At the grassroot level where Islamiyya schools are established and run, the NSCIA and JNI are vividly absent. In many cases, even the Headmasters do not have a blueprint of what is supposed to be taught in their schools.

When referring to the conventional western-style schools, what I thought should be the worry of the Sultan is the Islamic studies content in those schools. Apart from IRK (or IS as it is now called), there is no other subject or program aimed at teaching our children about their religion, especially in public schools. The IRK is deficient in many ways. For example, it does not make the child to be able to recite Qur’an. Again, a child may pass IRK in flying colours without knowing how to write their names in Arabic, which is the language of Islam. The JNI/NSCIA is supposed to come out with a realistic framework to correct this anomaly for adoption by state governments especially in Shari’ah states. One of the best models I have seen is that of a private girls’ school in Kano. The school has a comprehensive program by which a child will complete Qur’anic recitation in the second or third year of their senior secondary school. In addition, whether a girl is in Science or Arts option, she must take Arabic. Thus, by the time they finish the school, all pupils are able to recite Qur’an correctly and know basic Arabic that will help them learn their religion from the source. My reader will be interested to know that the percentage pass in both WAEC and NECO is always 100.

My advice to the Sultan and indeed the JNI/NSCIA is to first and foremost realize that it is their inaction that has made begging to persist among Nigerian Muslims. The more they cry aloud about this problem, the more ridiculous they appear. They should therefore stop living in the past and live up to their responsibility. That is the only panacea for integrity and well being of their people.

Published in Blueprint Newspaper of 16th March, 2016