Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Why Almajiri Schools Built By Goodluck Jonathan Was Abandoned



A twitter user by name Mohammed Ahmed Gorko; @I_Am_marwa took to twitter to speak on the Almajiri schools build by ex president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan  and wondered why Buhari administration abandoned the project.

 Interestingly,   his northern friends were not in agreement with him as they attacked his post even though other users saw it as solution post as the writer took time to marshal out solutions to the Almajiri problem in the north.

 One of the individuals in disagreement  insinuated that the project was an insult to the north and other Nigerians wondered why. His position  didn't come as a shock to me because a high profile individual from the north has said this to me in the heat of 2014 election campaigns, so this didn't surprise me at all.

However, Could this be the real reason why Almajiri school program was abandoned, Is it possible that they all share this sentiment?  or  the northern elites prefer that the larger chunk of Northern youths were uneducated?

Read the tweet and the comments.


Former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan built the integrated almajiri model schools across the north.

The schools has deteriorated and the project abandoned.

Why?

Thread
First and foremost, The project was launched on April 10, 2012. These integrated schools where built in zamfara, kano, kaduna, sokoto, bauchi, and kebbi state.
The schools were built in order to tackle the high rate of illiteracy in the northern region."

Daily trust Nov 27, 2017.
"The aim of the project is to build an integrated model schools in a bid to modernize almajiri education system in the north."

Daily trust Nov 27, 2017.
Now to the point, why was this project abandoned?

1: Political reasons

The govt in power suspected that the figures of the project may have been highly overblown.
From the look of things, The present govt conceive that the past administration politically initiated the project in other to secure more votes from the north during the 2015 elections.
Be that as it may, even if the intention of the project was to amass more votes from the north, the importance of continuing the project is far greater than that of abandoning it.
I am sorry to express that most of these northern elites don't really care about the children because they utilize these boys negatively for their cheap political benefits.

I assume that is why they didn't really embrace and promote the project.
2: Religious and cultural reasons

Most atimes, the parents of these children presuppose that by sending them to these so-called mallams, they're educating the children in Islamic doctrines.
They quote the word of God out of context to suit their ignorant lifestyle and weaknesses. They often neglect the fact that in Islam...

It is the sole responsibility of a parent to take care of welfare, educational needs, and general well-being of their child.
Which means Clothing, feeding, education, and shelter of the child are questions of first priority.

Which means a parent is not supposed to send his child far to another place to acquire knowledge without providing the basic resources that the child needs for survival.
3: Poor feasibility studies

I believe Gej foot soldiers had very little knowledgebase of the problem. In curbing a crisis like the Almajiri case, one needs to understand that integrating these children back to school is 30% problem solved.
The project coordinators didn't even consider the fact that govt on it's own dosen't have the capacity and resources to feed over 7 million of these children.
These mallams consider the children as the only means of survival because these children beg and bring back food to their mallams, so it will be very hard for these mallams to sacrifice their means of livelihood.
A brief summary on how this project can be modified?

1: Awareness to the parents and mallams of these children.
2: Enrollment of these children into skill acquisition program to give them a means of survival beyond govt money.
3: Engaging the mallams in the process of reform.
4: passing a bill to ban children from begging in the street if possible.

5: creating an Almajiri trust fund which shall be funded by all northern state governors.

6: limiting birth rate for does who lack the means to carter for the children (going to be hard in the north )
We will soon be working with volunteers to come up with an excellent proposal so government and various donors can capitalise on to help curb the cancer that if not treated can consume the north, Nigeria, and Africa at large.






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