We must revolutionise the Almajiri system– Prof Sule Kano

Abdullahi Sule Kano is a professor of Political Science at the Bayero University, Kano (BUK). In this interview, he spoke on why the traditional Qur’anic system of education in Nigeria is resisting transformation and what mallams, government and the society can do to improve the system.   Why  have we not be able to improve […]

Abdullahi Sule Kano is a professor of Political Science at the Bayero University, Kano (BUK). In this interview, he spoke on why the traditional Qur’anic system of education in Nigeria is resisting transformation and what mallams, government and the society can do to improve the system.

 

Why  have we not be able to improve the almajiri system?

It is because the political economy in the region has collapsed. And it collapsed with the political economy of the entire caliphate. The political leadership was massacred and political authority destroyed. We don’t have any caliphate. There is nothing like the Sokoto Caliphate; there is no remnant of it at all, it is just its historical culture that hangs around that history. The sultan has no power. By the Nigerian state, the sultan is under the local government chairman. So, that one has gone.

The most unfortunate thing is that in Nigeria, local, state and federal governments do not even understand the concept of the almajiri system of education, yet they want to provide solutions to the problems affecting the schools. How can they give what they don’t have? There is no knowledge research on how to understand the system and provide solutions to the problems associated with it. And where a pocket of researches have been done, they can hardly be taken seriously.

Remarkable solutions are there from those investigations that you can learn from history, modernity and so on. So, within the powers of the state, they can create a new state policy for these schools, but our rulers are not interested in that. They don’t understand the history; and of course, they are self-centered. None of their kids will attend these schools. They don’t send their kids to the almajiri schools, which means that they are not relevant to them; they don’t care about them. And where there is semblance of care, it is not done on the basis of knowledge. So, they created Tsangaya schools and treat them as separate schools in which their sons or daughters will not attend. That’s apathy. It is a separate education for a particular section of people as is being done in South Africa. But there are a lot of contributions by scholars. So, let’s revolutionise this system, let’s take it to the level in which the modern education we are operating can go far with it. After all, at the early stage, this system is superior to most of those modern schools they were talking about because it produced scholars and produced all kinds of contributions that helped the society to develop.

So what is the problem? Our rulers are not interested to have that kind of focus. They think they can do something separately, which will not provide the solutions.

So, until we go back and make a holistic system that does not separate the son of the president with the son of the bureaucrat, the son of a politician with the son of a governor, and what have you, the system will not improve. If that discrimination is not there, the system will survive. But unfortunately, the hangover of that integration has disappeared.

When I went to secondary school, that level of discrimination was limited. We went to the school where you would find the son of the emir, the son of the governor and everybody. We were living in the same class. Are we having the same thing now? They are increasingly going far away from the solutions. We went to the school where you find that there are sons of the emirs, sons of the president and sons of everybody. And they are increasingly going far away from the solutions while they say they are looking for the solutions.

In the First Republic, the Sardauna attempted to resolve it through the Nizamiyya system, a modern Islamic education system, but he met resistance from the sole of the ancient scholars. For example, in Zamfara, one of the oldest schools there – Maharazu School – which actually provided the caliphate with the first chief justice, Qadu Qulati – actually resisted that new system of education of the Sardauna. The scholar gave a fatwa that no graduate of his school should serve under the government of the caliphate; and that’s why they could not have the Nizamiyya in Talata Mafara. They took it to Kaura Namoda. So there is a hangover of that history to learn from. 

 

How was the system before the conquest?

The traditional school system in the caliphate before the colonial conquest was purely a community-based education system. And, as a community-based education system, it was articulated by a foremost state policy of the caliphate. In fact, as part of the policy of the caliphate during Sultan Bello, a statement is there that he directed that in every community there should be a scholar who would teach the people knowledge, and an imam who would lead the people in the community in prayers.

That originated from the basics of the education system. The community that hosted the imam and scholar was the same community that owned the school and the mosque. The policy was implemented and all Islamic scholars or imams were moving, and if they arrived at any community within the caliphate, they would go to the head of that community – the ward head, village head, district head or even the emir. It was the responsibility of the leader, whoever he was, to feed him and give him accommodation. In fact, in the context of that policy, if the scholar or imam was going with his family, he should be hosted for at least three months to allow him, his family and the pupils to settle. They would be fed by the community. After that time, he got a place for his house and started engaging in an economic activity while the pupils would continue learning. And those who grew up would learn skills as a source of income. That’s how the school system was.

Under this policy, any child in that community was qualified to be sent to school; and they would take him in because there was nothing paying for education. The parent would just introduce himself and the child and handover him to the scholar as one of his pupils. From that family also, for every meal cooked in the household, there would be a dish that would be taken to the school every day. That is why community schools have never given birth to a condition where you would find out that their children are malnourished.

And not just that the food would come from a household, there were traditions linked to the schools. For example, any progress a child made, there were certain traditions attached to it. If you had done a certain stage in the recitation or memorisation of the Holy Qur’an, there would be some Sadaqah that would come from the family. Up till the point that you already qualified and read through the Holy Qur’an, a ram would be slaughtered at the school, and so on. There were all sorts of supplementation for the pupils and teachers of the school, so, there was no begging at all. There was no phenomenon of lack of food or shelter for both the teachers and pupils. That’s what the school was before the colonial era.

The transformation that began after the colonial conquest has continued to degenerate the system of Qur’anic education. And it is gradually dying. They undermine the economy of the country, the community and the family. Everything crumbles with it.

If a family cannot feed itself, how can it take a dish to the school? So, the school cannot survive in this kind of situation; and therefore, the malam decided to migrate to another place without any guarantee of support etc. These are crisis situations.

 

What is the way out?

Well, there are pockets of studies. Virtually, a blueprint of solutions has been established, but I don’t think there is political will to execute it. In Sokoto, for example, a research was done that was supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), supported by the institution that is in charge of the traditional school system and supported also by the commission handling hajj and the elite of the traditional system that are in modern positions. Together we came around to say that can we design a policy; which we did.

A policy document was developed and taken to the government; and the government actually passed and acted on that policy trying to modernise it. They started implanting the policy, but with the kind of politics that is going on, I don’t know how many leaders would come with the political will to implement that policy properly.

The most fundamental thing is that if we are trying to equate the Qur’anic system of education with the modern system, we must develop them to that level. We must eliminate the separation that a child who, due to his upbringing, has been disadvantaged to this certain stage, can be taken up to meet the levels of his own peers in the modern schools. In fact, there is a framework in that policy in which some of those people from the traditional institution can promote their learning system through accelerated programmes because they are already grown up and they have the background of understanding the basics. So, if you promote them, they can catch up, and we saw that they were catching up.

So, if you promote them, they can catch up and go straight to the universities like any other person. But of course, they require money. And because of the challenge of money, we also add a component in that policy that you must build the economy of the schools so that the school can fend for itself.

You need to provide a farmland for the school so that they can grow food. And if you provide the school with a workshop, they can train the kids to produce certain items that can be sold and generate revenue for the school. If they can do this, none of the kids would go and beg, none of them will sleep in hunger; and they can easily be integrated into the modern school system.

There are still elements of those schools in Sokoto State. In short, there is a good model on ground, but the political will is what we are lacking. The northern governors, for example, should come together, pick that model, adopt it and start implementing holistically because you cannot solve the problem of almajiri in Sokoto State without doing so in Zamfara or Kebbi states; you have to do it holistically. These are the challenges.

 

What is the community expected to do to make the system work effectively?

The communities are undermined. The solidarity that keeps our communities together is no longer there. How many communities are doing aikin gayya to support a weak family now? Very few, of course. It is a new form that is manifesting; I mean fundraising to support one another. That’s not good enough. The spirit has changed.

We need to reorient the parents and develop the capacity to make it possible for all the citizens at different locations to work together to achieve this fundamental objective in educating the children. More fundamentally, the state itself has cornered the funds and the economy of the community has been destroyed. The state controls the economy and the money never comes down to the community, so they have become incapacitated.

So, until those that are now in control of the money – from the local level to the state and the federal level – are ready to allocate adequate resources for that development – nothing will happen. We will be dancing within a circle. We are facing the cost of ignorance.

 

What do you have to say about the Mallams?

Well, for the mallams it is actually about survival of the system. Many of them are struggling to upgrade themselves. And some of the modern institutions are also part of the struggle. For example, in Bayero University, Kano, there are efforts to upgrade some of the graduates (qualified Mallams) so that they would be recognised in the society. But that process itself is extremely slow.

If you link it up with the burden of the schools, the weight will be too much that what is achieved will not be significant. But like I said, with adequate funding, it will take less than three years to liberate the entire system into a new modern type because the education system we have in Nigeria is cake and we have to revolutionise it.

 

Countries like Sudan and Morocco are practising this local system of Qur’anic education and it is working perfectly. Why is it not working in Nigeria?

Because those countries understand it, they own it and promote it. They ensure that it works. But in our own case, the leadership does not understand it, they don’t own it, they don’t promote it and they don’t care whether it works or not because their children don’t go to those schools. Now, where are our traditional primary schools? They have collapsed. Where are our traditional secondary schools? They have collapsed. When we visited the school, my colleague who is a professor shed tears when he saw his classroom.  Those are the crises.