I was born and brought up in a predominantly Muslim community, but the best schools around were fee-paying Christian missionary schools. Our parents were ambitious enough for us that they had no hesitation about paying (government schools were free) to get us into these schools. They were strong enough in their faith to trust that we were there ‘for their knowledge, not their God’. And so it was. I can only recall one incident of a Muslim pupil being converted to Christianity through all the years that the school was run by the Baptist Missionaries. By the time we left primary school, the school had a majority of Muslims and had been taken over by the State government (now Shehu Primary School).

In those days there was a clear distinction between kids exclusively going to Quranic schools (Almajirai) and those of us either going only to ‘western’ schools or a combination of both. The Almajirai were often children living far away from their homes - given up to seek Islamic knowledge and upbringing by their faithful parents (fathers usually decide this). Those of us ‘Yan boko’ (pupils in state or missionary schools) would generally be living with our parents/guardians, going to school during the day and returning to the warmth and security of our homes in the afternoon. Quranic schools would be in the afternoon on school days and in the morning and evening at weekends.

The Quranic schools were private initiatives designed to ensure that you learn the entire 114 chapters of the Quran by heart first and then spend further years learning the translation and going deeper into the religion as a knowledge system, including learning the Arabic language. Unfortunately for many of us yan makarantan boko, the higher you climbed up the western educational ladder the less likely you were to return to Quranic schools. So you got the incongruous situation of knowing the Quran or parts of it by heart without actually knowing the Arabic language. Your knowledge was thus short-circuited through received interpretations of Mallams and Sheiks (teachers and learned scholars).

There is also a bifurcated expectation about both schools. While Quranic education may prepare pupils for a spiritual lifestyle and possibly better prospects in heaven (when and if you get there), western education offered better prospects for the here and now in terms of career and often, exaggerated expectations of material wellbeing.

Consciously and unconsciously two classes of kids began to emerge. Almajirai generally live off menial jobs in between classes, obligatory labour on their teachers’ farms and begging. The western pupils live as all children are entitled to: cared for both physically and emotionally by their parents and guardians. The Almajirai live on the whim of their spiritual masters and the goodwill of the community.

If you look at these two groups of children on the streets of any Muslim area of northern Nigeria, you can easily distinguish who is who from their appearance. Generally the ones going to western schools will be better dressed, neater, wearing at least slippers and looking well fed. The Almajirai will be wearing what were once white kaftans that have become so dirty that neither Jik nor other stain removers can return them to the original colour; their feet may be full of blisters or even jiggers from running around without shoes or slippers, in rain or sunshine.

In the oil boom days, the communities were generally better off and able to share. When they cooked in most homes, they cooked more than was necessary for their household. The rationale was not just that visitors may come, but also that ‘akwai Almajirai’ (the Almajirai will come). This kind of culture enabled the Almajirai to eke out a living and get decent meals on most days. Also spiritual minded people with disposable income, or the elite wishing to spiritually launder their ill-gotten wealth, were more than generous in contributing to the welfare of the Almajirai and their minders.

However as the oil boom gave way to the oil bust and disposable incomes became smaller and smaller, people began to tighten their belts and the welfare of the Almajirai (being the marginalised among the marginalised, or to use a phrase not used often these days, periphery of the periphery!) went crashing. The system was too dependent on a perpetual ‘trickle down’ voluntarism of the better off. The hours the Almajirai spent on learning the Quran became shorter as the exigencies of survival in this world, rather than preparing for heaven, took precedence. SAP hit everyone in the 80s and 90s as the rich got richer and meaner, the poor became even poorer and life more brutish, and the elite became wantonly rapacious.

For many ordinary working and peasant families there was not enough to go around inside the home and thinking about the wondering children on the streets became a luxury they could not afford. The very rich, who could afford it, generally became more distant from the community. Even if they did not move away from their local communities, they lived behind garrisoned perimeter fences with all kinds of ‘security’ surrounding them so that the poor could not see them. They were out of sight of the masses, and the masses were definitely out of their minds.

The impact on the children was and remains devastating. As the economic situation became harder, the old distinctions between the Almajirai and Dan Boko of my childhood days have become very blurred. The Almajirai did not become Dan Boko but the Yan Boko became Almajirai.

A few days ago I was in the neighbourhood where I grew up, Tsohuwar Tasha, now called Goya road, in Funtua, Katsina state. The same building has been our family home since 1965. I looked at the children milling around the very same trees my peers and I did over four decades ago and it was difficult to say who is Almajiri and who is Dan Boko. They have all become Almajirai, whether at home or on the street. In fact they have all become street children: the Almajiri at home does not have enough to eat, who therefore can think of the Almajiri on the street? Sadder still those in Quranic schools are not learning the Quran properly and most in Western schools cannot be said to be receiving education. So we are neither preparing our children for this world, nor the hereafter; either or both. What kind of country and leadership dooms the future of its own children this way? Of what benefit is the accumulating foreign reserves of Nigeria if most of the children are surrendered to a hard fate like this, robbed of dreams, forced to grow up in neglect and denied their innocence? Is our conscience dead?

“Forward ever, backward never”… Kwame Nkrumah (1909 - 1972)

………………DON’T AGONISE!…………………ORGANISE!!……………

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.