Luckily, there is a system or way through which knowledge can best be acquired by young and/or old. Meanwhile, there are formal and informal setting; and under the informal setting is where Almajiranci could be categorized.
Almajiranci is a system of Islamic education practiced in northern Nigeria where young boys and girls (in some cases) are basically taught Islamic knowledge.
The male who is seeking the knowledge of Islam through this system is called Almajiri, while a female is called Almajira – plurally, Almajirai.
According to an estimated report by United Nations Information Cultural and Educational Fund (UNICEF) in 2014, there are about 9.5 million Almajiri children in Nigeria, representing 72 percent of the out-of-school children across the country. A total of 13.2 million and 15 million out-of-school children (most in northern Nigeria) were estimated. About six years later, Nigeria should be estimating about ten million out-of-school children mostly in northern Nigeria who are invariably nuisance to the society.
The challenges being faced by these children who are abandoned by their parents and families and left to decide their own fate at a very tender age is worrisome.
At a very starting point and critical age of human life when the parental care is mostly required, these children are being exposed to open society where they have to fend for themselves.
We can picture some major challenges being face by Almajirai to include; illiterate teachers (Mallams) involve in teaching the children, lack of basic infrastructural facilities for learning, lack of planned curriculum, and poor professional handling of the children for effective learning.
There are other unjustifiable activities that these children are pushed into. In rural areas for instance, the children are subjected to hard labour, where they had to till a farmland to cultivate food and cash crops for their Mallam (teacher). Surprisingly, they have no single entitlement to these crops when harvested. And the ample part of their time is channeled into labour (with a quarter filled stomach) at the expense of their study time.
Most at times, these Mallams have no business with where these little children lay their head and acquire the means to conquer their insatiable hunger or taste for everything that could pass through the body gate into the stomach.
Unfortunately, the unthinkable parents who are ever ready to ‘create’ and ‘sidestep’ their responsibilities keep pushing their harvest-of-children to these kinds of distress. They never thought that; sending a child to be an almajiri is like chasing him out of the house from the comfort of his mother’s care into a wander land.
Better still, it is high time that the government and the society rise to fight this cruelty and bring this deliberate ordeal melted on innocent children to an abrupt end. Because these children are like time bandits working prospectively to turn into time bomb that could destroy the societal piece and set everywhere ablaze like northeast Nigeria, which could consume anyone on sight. Every Nigerian child should have access to formal and proper education, and not just a canonical and one sided system of Almajirai education that is working against the mainstreaming without an iota of productivity. Hence, this must be frowned upon and stopped.
