A society which eats, debases and abuses its younger is a coven run through witches. The almajiri kids are innocents socialised into a lifestyle and machine they did no longer create. They are simply unfortunate to be born in an unlucky axis of the sector. They did now not make their circumstances or their world; they were thrust into it. They live however are not given a lifestyles. They are programmed like hunter-robots to steer a lifestyles of the hunt – hunt for alms.
I witnessed the almajiri agony in the course of my stay in Kaduna and visits to Kano and Katsina years ago. This turned into lengthy before the threat of banditry and kidnapping in the north. These avenue children are cultured to hunt-beg. They demand, and that they seem confident that it's far the proper element to do. They could intrude on your privacy to demand alms with out flinching. They are made bold of their quest by way of a society that has normalised such an life.
I became constantly trepidated seeing them around; life has been made a trifle for them, so they cared now not about something. It is the cause they might easily be deployed with the aid of politicians to motive riots and unrest. I knew an afternoon of reckoning might come. When I got a job in Abuja, I exhaled. I was glad to leave the ‘’crime scene’’.
Alas! The nation’s capital is now grappling with its personal almajiri trouble. It is apparent we cannot wish away the almajiri infection. It is a northern Nigeria trouble, however additionally a Nigeria mission.
Really, these almajiri youngsters are the victims of the state of affairs!
‘The northern elite created these bandits’, I alluded the contemporary wave of banditry and kidnapping to the failures of the northern elite in fundamentally addressing the almajiri trouble.
For the sake perspicuity, I will reproduce a section here.
A study by using the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) put the range of out-of-school children in Nigeria at 13.5 million – as of 2018. An unimpressive mass of this variety comes from Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, and different northern states.
In December 2019, Jigawa State Government announced it'd open a bidding method for the construction of 95 mosques throughout the kingdom. This is a nation with over 800,000 out-of-school children,
According to a survey by the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN), there are more than 800,000 out-of-faculty youngsters between the age of 3 and 18 in Jigawa.
In Kano, there are about 1,000,000 out-of-faculty kids in the kingdom. This is in step with Peter Hawkins, the UNICEF consultant to Nigeria, who disclosed this at a 4-day workshop organised for commissioners and everlasting secretaries from the nineteen Northern states in August 2019.
In Katsina, there are approximately one million out-of-school children. Though, Aminu Masari, the governor of the kingdom, placed the number at 996,000. Ditto Zamfara.
In addition, reviews by means of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) reveal that the North-West region has the highest variety of drug-associated arrests in years, with 2,205 arrests in 2015 by myself. A motion on drug abuse in the north adopted via the senate in 2017 disclosed that three million bottles of codeine have been ate up by means of drug abusers each day in Kano and Jigawa.
Also, Mojisola Adeyeye, director-fashionable of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), discovered that 70 percent of the young people essentially, the young boys, abuse illicit capsules in Kano.
When you put most of these numbers together what you have is almajiris, chaos, banditry and kidnapping.
Owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, governors of the north are returning almajiri children to their home states as though this measure will resolve the trouble. Besides this motion constituting a violation of the rights of these youngsters, it is also inhuman and tortuous. These youngsters are frequently exploited for their ‘’political price’’, but there is calamity inside the land now, so that they can be expended like garbage.
After COVID-19 disaster what takes place to those youngsters, and the various being churned out by means of the atrocious almajiri device? What occurs to the almajiri system? You cannot expel kids out of your state, but preserve the machine that produces destitutes.
As a depend of reality, it seems the northern hegemony desires to hold the repute quo, however tilts the size while it will become inconvenient.
Nigeria followed the Child Rights Act (CRA) in 2003, a pleasant print which protects the rights of the kid. But 11 states within the north are but to adopt it — Bauchi, Yobe, Sokoto, Adamawa, Borno, Zamfara, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa and Kano. Even the ones different eight states within the north which followed the Act aren't residing by way of its requirements. But adopting the CRA is a step – no doubt.
The almajiri mission is one the northern established order ought to discover a way to – adopting the Child Rights Act and enforcing its provisions is a step in that path. Any interference from the south or southern management will evidently elicit suspicion and a pushback. Northern leaders ought to run the gauntlet on this one.
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