Almajiri rights and learning crisis in Nigeria: Beyond the Katsina Edict

The Katsina State Government recently recorded an epochal advance in governance when it issued official proclamation under the tag, “Responsible Parenting and Almajiri Right Protection Edict”. In the last few days, following the official order, there have been plaudits and encomiums for the State Government from various quarters across the nation. This also coincided with […]

The Katsina State Government recently recorded an epochal advance in governance when it issued official proclamation under the tag, “Responsible Parenting and Almajiri Right Protection Edict”. In the last few days, following the official order, there have been plaudits and encomiums for the State Government from various quarters across the nation. This also coincided with the Federal Government’s threat to ultimately proscribe the Makarantar Allo system, In view of the national concerns already generated by the edict, this article seeks to engage critically with it, to articulate its implication for human capital development for Nigeria. Situated in the context of the four core principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) of 1989, namely, non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child, this intervention targets five issues concerning the edict, namely its context, strengths, deficiencies, policy direction, and curricular concerns.

The edict which is contextualized into Katsina State indigeneship by residency, birth or both, provides for a better parenthood for the Katsina State child. Offering a virtually all-embracing description of its scope, the edict defines such central concepts as Child, Malam, Makarantar Allo, Almajiri Rights Protection Commission, Parents and their responsibilities especially with regard to the training of their children. The most salient provisions of the edict comprise the distance of the Makarantar Allo and the conditions for its proximity and remoteness, as well as for its operations, responsibilities of the malam, the Commission and State Government. All these elements are well captured, in an unequivocal fashion, and therefore constitute its strengths and merits. It is noteworthy that the edict covers only Principles 2 and a part of Principle 3, of the UNCROC core principles. The evidence of this is that devotion to the best interests of the child as well as his right to life, survival, and arguably, development, are covered in the edict while non-discrimination and respect for the views of the child, are eluded. Yet, these cannot be characterised as omissions since the edict was not formulated for the purpose of implementing the UNCROC articles, even though the indebtedness of the edict to the Convention is unmistakable.

However, there are obvious omissions concerning several elements that are supposed to be the core of such an edict. For instance, wherever two parties are involved, the rights of each must be well articulated. The edict does not suggest that the parents, too, have some rights. This writer grounds this concern in the Standpoint Theory which identifies a power differential between a group in power and an oppressed group. The relevance of Child Standpoint Theory to this edict lies in its provision of a theoretical framework to explore how presumably oppressed groups experience their position, and helps identify a way to challenge the group in power.

The edict contains some of what may pass for certain aspects of children’s rights in the context of the Convention and that triggers the questions: Are children’s rights universal? Is childhood constructed the same way at different times and places? For the wheel of responsible parenting and Almajiri rights protection to come full circle, should there not be a just and fair balancing of the rights of the Almajiri child with the rights of his parents? How can we balance power or rights protection between the Almajiri and his parents, between him and his malam, between him and the Government, between his malam and his parents, between his parents and the Government, between his malam and the Government? This edict, like the Convention, seems to have demonstrated some level of insensitivity to this power balancing concern, through its silence on rights of Almajiri parents whom the Convention even requires to uphold   “respect for the views of the child”.

Not providing for the parents’ rights is as culturally disastrous, Islamically speaking, as directing the parents to “respect the views of the child”. Tagged Pedagogy of Listening in the field of Curriculum and Pedagogy, the danger in this practice lies in Sarah One’s recent  interpretation  that respecting the child’s views means “listening to the child’s voice and includes not only the child being heard, and being listened to, but also the right to express an opinion, and the right to contest, challenge, debate and question”. When a child is accorded the rights to “contest” and “challenge” in the absence of clearly stipulated and expressly articulated, corresponding parents’ rights, it follows logically that the objective of the much desired responsible parenting, is defeated from the onset.

Similarly, the central component of Almajiri system which is learning in the form of Qur’anic education, is another missing element. It is silent on what is required to teach in the system and the closest to this among its provisions concerns not the intellectual capacity but the financial capability of the malam to provide for the welfare of the learner, as well as well as the capacity of the Makatantar Allo to accommodate the number of students enrolled. Even the Almajiri rights captured in the edict fall within the domain of right to provision and extend a little to the domain of right to protection, but certainly fall short of any coverage of right to empowerment for participation which is closely related to the teaching-learning territory.  Yet, of greater importance is the question, what is the implication of parents’ rights in the context of  the edict.

That question stimulates a historical flashback that idea of the typology of children’s rights protection as enunciated in the edict under review is somewhat indebted to the idea of the Children’s Rights Movement introduced in the USA in the 19th century. The underpinning was that when a child’s parents died or were very poor, the child had to work to support himself and his family. The outcome of this was that most boys became factory or coal workers while girls became prostitutes, saloon girls or sweet shop workers where they received only starvation wages. What this has in common with the Almajiri model includes the absence of parental support, the need to fend for one’s self, and working for meager wages. It is obvious from the literature that the term almajirai which is the plural form of Almajiri is also applicable to “children who engage in some form of labour to earn a living”. This invariably exposes the child labour dimension of the Almajiri system and therefore matches the American experience of the 19th century.

It is axiomatic that an African or a Muslim child must be disciplined whereas discipline over children is no longer emphasised in most advanced industrial societies of the West which arguably lack strong beliefs to instil in children and therefore prescribe unto them minimal socio-cultural responsibilities. Childhood as cultivated as well as children’s rights, as formulated in those countries and societies that allowed their family discipline to soften as values get eroded, is certainly not a commendable model for replication. The Almajiri child is a Muslim and his rights and those of his parents should be grounded in the Islamic principles.

Why is the Almajiri question so salient today? One, originally known as the Tsangaya system, it was, before British colonization, a means of cultural and social reproductions whose excellent outcomes were relied upon by the citizenry.  Two, the system currently accounts for the largest number of the out-of-school children, which is the greatest education related threat to national development. Nigeria has the largest number of such children in the world, ranking above Pakistan but inexplicably far above India, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Indonesia all of whose out-of-school children, put together, are less than what is recorded against Nigeria alone. Three, the Tsangaya system of the pre-colonial era, unlike that of the colonial and the pre-colonial era (when it became known as Almajiri system), was characterized by efficacy. The fact that the system functioned differently at that time calls for more rigorous research thereinto.

With such a large number of Nigerian children being out of school, the national economy of the future is at risk. While this represents those who are out of school, there is another large percentage of Nigerian children who are in school but not learning. For instance, while the dominant thinking about the Almajiri schools is that they are restricted to the 19 northern states, this writer is familiar with schools of the same orientation in some South-western cities like Ibadan, Iwo and Osogbo as  well as a North-central cities like Ilorin, Ganma, Kabba and Okenne. Similarly, the writer is well familiar with many government-owned or public schools even in Lagos State, unarguably the most developed and cosmopolitan in Nigeria, that are worse than Almajiri Makarantar Allo. Sadly, this  is the current state of schooling in Nigeria!

It was probably in a bid to mitigate the risks involved in the growing number of the Almajirai that the Federal Government, in April 2012 launched an education intervention called Almajiri Integrated Model School (AIMS). The initiative was aimed at integrating Qur’anic schools with modern curricula, increasing access to education, and closing regional school enrolment gap between the North and the South. Consequently, Idris Abubakar notes that the initiative has not made any difference as the enrolment and attendance remain low in the Almajiri model schools “because the children and their families were uncomfortable with the initiative and its mode of operation”.  Begging apart, this system is central to socio-cultural reproductions of the North and had flourished excellently for several decades preceding colonialism. Having declined abysmally owing to financial handicap, lack of political support, deficient administrative structure, and incapacity for reform, any ameliorative intervention for it must be technically sound and systematically formulated beyond the superficial construction or reconstruction of few schools.

What the Almajiri system needs are modern competencies and outcome-based ingredients that will make it function well in the face of SDG 4. Unfortunately, this once highly functional system has now become a victim of skewed analysis and erroneous diagnosis which confuse the Federal Government to threatening a ban. The Federal Government may want to kindly note the African proverb that, decapitation is never a cure to headache. If Almajiri system must be proscribed, the National Curriculum Conference of 1969 would have been the appropriate occasion for such a decision. I venture to state that the system could be fixed to a world-class status, based on technically sound formulations. I hasten to add that this is a serious case of reform that should not be handled like one of those petty political image-making inundations calculated at merely creating an untrue impression that the Government is really working!

Home of Hospitality, Katsina State, has just taken a laudable step towards reform for others to follow. What is needed may not really be just those special schools for Almajirai, but Almajiri schools with regional foci generated from the national curriculum framework. That will reduce exclusion of the Almajirai in education for such are schools that will be attended by them in their neighbourhood regularly and at appropriate ages. It is an inclusive education system that we advocate for Nigeria, that each region may have its own customized curriculum as formulated from the national framework. Conscious of the possible unintelligibility of the idea of regional curricula for Nigerian schools, I hereby undertake to formulate one in another piece to be published soon.  I shall demonstrate extensively that SDG 4 with its numerous indicators and targets, are only achievable through the formulation of a formal and neither informal nor non-formal, Almajiri curriculum from the national framework and certainly not by a rather simplistic, separable combination of two different educational blue-prints, which currently make the Federal Government think the system cannot work again.

 

Rufai, immediate past Dean of Education, Sokoto State University, is a Jeddah-based Education Strategist working on Central Asia