The Almajiri Child Rights Initiative (ACRI) has called for the need to reform the Almajiri schools to include Literacy, Numeracy, Basic Science and Skills acquisition in addition to the Quranic Education being taught to the Children.
The Program Officer of ACRI Khadija Shuaibu while speaking at a community engagement at Deidei market, Abuja revealed that the initiative is focused on social inclusion and education of 10million Almajiris in the Northern part of the country.
She maintained that their aims and objectives is to see how the Almajiri system of education can be reformed such that the children have right to quality education, welfare, health social inclusion among others.
While mentioning that an Almajiri is someone who leaves is domain to seek for knowledge outside to seek for Islamic knowledge she said back in those days such children are well taken care of by the community but unfortunately, currently the children are neglected as they go on the streets begging .
She called on the government to reform the Almajiri school system such that there will be a time line for the children to be in the school and ensure that the Mallams don’t accept children below the age of 4years.
Shuaibu mentioned that there are Almajiri schools that are well structured where the children are thought other subjects aside Quranic education while there are others are not well structured wherein the Mallam gathers the Almajiris and teach them only quran. She regretted that it’s unfortunate that the the schools that are not well structured are more than the structured ones.
She also lamented ” You will see some Almajiri school with about 600-750 students and then you wonder how the Mallam takes care of them as most of the children are sent to the schools by their parents and abandoned”.
ACRI Program Manager noted that to tackle the challenge there was need to bring in all the key stakeholders including government, parents and the Mallams to reform the Almajiri system to be more formal wherein there will the time line for a child to be enrolled in the school.
She further said “we need a system where the Mallam don’t accept children that are less than 3-4years. We need the government to reform the system to make it more formal “.
Also speaking during the community engagement, A teacher at an Almajiri school Dr Mohammed Jaffa revealed that one of his major challenge inculcating western education into the Almajiri school system is that while it’s easy for a child of 3-5years to catch up with what they are being thought but unfortunately in the school there are children of 15-17years who islamic education has been inculcated into, so learning western education becomes difficult.
Jaffa appealed for the need for learning materials like textbooks, exercise book adding that they also need a structured school with a table, chair and a blackboard to teach the children.
He lamented that despite being the only teacher, teaching over 700 children, he is not being paid any allowance as he is doing it voluntarily. Jaffa who is a retired teacher appealed to government to be paying him monthly stipends to cater for his family.
