How almajiri rights advocate won hearts in Germany

A Nigerian almajiri rights advocates, Mohammed Sabo Keana recently in Bonn, Germany gave up his award to a physically challenged Russian boy in a gesture that has since created extraordinary bonds between the two and their families. In Bonn, Germany, young Nigerian, Mohammed Sabo Keana of the Almajiri Child Rights Initiative was honoured among 21 […]

A Nigerian almajiri rights advocates, Mohammed Sabo Keana recently in Bonn, Germany gave up his award to a physically challenged Russian boy in a gesture that has since created extraordinary bonds between the two and their families.

In Bonn, Germany, young Nigerian, Mohammed Sabo Keana of the Almajiri Child Rights Initiative was honoured among 21 others by the United Nations.

However, Keana did something that surprised everyone in the audience when he passed on his award to a physically challenged Russian boy, Anton, who got no plaque even though he could sing the anthems of 22 countries. That action has created a ripple effect and tied the life of the Russian and the Nigerian in ways neither of them had expected.

“He came with his family as an SDG advocate and a very brilliant 11-year-old with cerebral palsy,” Keana said.

Keana is the team lead of ACRI, which has over the last four years been championing the cause of almajiri children who roam the streets begging in Nigeria, most of them in the northern part.

Almajiri refers largely to children who have been sent by their parents to acquire Qur’anic education in far and near communities. Over the years, the practice has been abused, leaving young and impressionable children to roam the streets in search of food to survive.

In a 2018 report, UNICEF estimates that 13 million children are out of school in Nigeria, the highest anywhere in the world. Most of this number is in the northern part of the country where the almajiri system thrives.

“We have been persistently advocating and demanding for government’s action and the society to take responsibility on the issue of the Almajiri,” Keana told Daily Trust in an interview.

It was for this work that on May 4th, Almajiri Child Right Initiative was recognised with an award in Germany. The United Nations SDGs action award selected ACRI’s entry for the work they do in amplifying the issues related to child begging in northern Nigeria. It was during this award ceremony that Keana met 11 year-old Anton.

Apart from being able to recite the anthems of nearly two-dozen countires, he could speak 15 languages and had translated the SDGs to those languages, the work he entered for the award.

He even sang a beautiful song as a key highlight of the programme. However, he was not among the 21 selected for recognition. For all this effort, the officials of the event invited him to join the ranks of awardees but with no plaque.

Realising what was happening, Keana did what pleasantly shocked everyone.

“I pulled out of the line-up and passed my award plaque to him because he was just standing there without an award. Being a little boy, standing there, as a physically challenged person, struggling to walk and the condition he was in, I just felt that he wished he had an award so it just moved me to give him mine,” Keana said.

Keana asked him to keep the plaque to encourage him and his parents. “We became friends instantly,” he said.

Keana didn’t return to Nigeria empty handed though. The organisers provided another award plague for him making him twice a winner for his kindness and humane disposition.

Young Anton has now returned to his home country Russia with incredible plans to immortalise the award. He is donating it to the Russian SDG Museum, an idea that sprang from the annual SDG festivals in the country.

Every year, a festival of SDG is held and people come to display a lot of beautiful things and stories that would be kept in the museum in Russia.

In an address to the SDG festival in Russia detailing the sequence of events at the UN awards in Germany, Anton’s family described Keana’s kindness as “beautiful act of a handsome young man” adding that he had “raised the bar to an even higher level and deserves even greater fame and respect for society.”

Keana told Daily Trust that the story of sacrifice and selflessness is something to be remembered in the annals of SDG “for me to give an unknown person such a prestigious award.”

But this is not the first time Keana has been giving to unknown persons. He has been actively trying to advocate a better life for the almajiri child and is committed to continuing the fight.

“The Almajiri child crisis is very critical to Nigeria’s attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),”Keana explained.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

These 17 Goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, while including new areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities.

There are eight related goals to the almajiri crisis and without addressing the child rights issues, “we cannot achieve the SDGs as a country,” Keana said.

Almajiri Child Right Day

Keana funded his campaigns alone for a long time before he recently got a grant. He wants May 25 to be instituted in Nigeria as an annual national day of the almajiri. The day would be dedicated to highlighting the perilous state of street children who wander the length and breadth of most towns and cities in the country with no education but a bleak future.

Presidential ban

Recently, the federal government of Nigeria made a pronouncement to the effect that the almajiri system would ultimately be banned to pave way for every child in the country to have basic education. There is no time scale set to achieve this neither is there a pragmatic move yet by the government to achieve what Keana says “will be beautiful for us” all.

“We lack the capacity to impose the ban” because “the real issue is failure of government to provide access to education.”

“If the children even decide that they want to go back to formal education you will know that there are no schools,” he said.

Credible alternatives including access to quality education is a precondition to have a successful phase out of the almajiri system, he pointed out.

For now, his act of kindness in Germany is reverberating in Nigeria and Russia and who knows what this new friendship will lead to.