Parents and the life of their almajiri children

Some beggars are found at their younger age. Some have not reached ten years because in some places you can see children of not more than five years and the place they live is very far from their parents. Some parents take their children to almajiranci for the simple reason that the child is troublesome […]

Some beggars are found at their younger age. Some have not reached ten years because in some places you can see children of not more than five years and the place they live is very far from their parents. Some parents take their children to almajiranci for the simple reason that the child is troublesome and they expect that their child will be well trained and disciplined better than when they are together.
Unknown to the parents, their expectations may not be achieved.
 This is because the person responsible for teaching the child cannot afford to feed him. The number of beggars (almajirai) under the control of one Mallam (teacher) ranges from two to hundred and sometimes even more than one hundred that is why the Mallam cannot provide them with the necessary care that is expected of him. And this gives room for the children to be roaming along the streets or going from house to house begging for food.
The body of these beggars (almajirai) can easilyaccommodate any kind of disease because of the dirty clothes they wear and the place they sleep. So also, the food they eat in most cases is a contaminated one while the water they drink is mostly polluted. They are also exposed to all sorts of punishment and hardships by the Mallams.
During rainy season, some of these almajirai are used by their Mallams to cultivate a gigantic area of land. The produce at the end will be sold by the Mallam and the beggars will not earn anything from it mostly.
On the process of their interaction with other people, the almajirai may eventually meet bad people in the society and that will mark the beginning of their anti-social behaviour.
In fact, some can be easily co-opted into notorious gangs and become miscreants in the society, since their parents are not there to guide and check their conduct.
However, apart from the almajirai  phenomenon, why is it that it is only the Hausa leper, an amputee, a cripple and poor person that roams the streets of this country from north to south  begging, unlike other Nigerians with similar liabilities from the southern part of the country?
No wonder, beggars are mostly found in the northern part of Nigeria.
Begging is illegal under the Vagrancy Act of 1804. However, it does not carry a jail sentence and is not well enforced in many cities although since the Act applies in all public places, it is enforced more frequently on public transport.
Parents should please save their children’s lives, stay with them, guide them on their health, send them to the Islamic schools  which are available everywhere in states and villages instead of taking them somewhere else so that they perform better and for better society.
With the intervention of the federal government on establishing almajiri boarding schools, it is hoped to reduce the number of these children from the conventional almajirai.
But the traditional rulers, village heads, religious leaders need to come together to enlighten the parents  that they should send their children to Islamic or Qur’anic schools in their villages instead of sending them to other places, to face danger, diseases and hunger among other things.
 Parents should be enlightened and educated that the disadvantages of taking a child to almajiranci are  more than the advantages. It should be all our responsibility to do so.
Aisha Abubakar writes from
Department of Mass Communication,
University of Maiduguri.