Bussing almajirai during lockdowns

By Barometer

Not too long after northern governors described the lockdown response to COVID-19 as impracticable in their states, they have followed up with the counterintuitive measure of bussing (or trucking) beggars and almajirai back to their states of origin.

The new measure, they argue, should make the fight against the pandemic less complicated and perhaps more rewarding. On the surface, they are right. The almajiri system, which involves millions of northern youths apprenticed to Quranic schools under strangulating conditions, has been allowed to fester for too long to the detriment of the socio-economic and political advancement and sophistication of the North. Now, they are so used to it that they are reluctant to end it.

The northern governors are right to conclude that the almajiri system enables a criminally negligent system that frees parents of nurturing their children while at the same time not empowering Quranic schools to adequately cater to the needs of these youths, many of them just emerging from infancy. Whether they like it or not, the states must find a way to deal with this long-standing malaise, and deal with it in a self-sustaining and transformative way.

It is not certain how bussing the almajirai to their home states would conduce to ending the practice without making parents liable for abandoning their children, for abandonment is what it really is. The shock, however, is how the governors came up with the decision to bus these children at a time of lockdowns and when many of them were suspected to be infected with the virus.

Not only does it violate the interstate lockdown declared by the federal government, there is also the more pressing danger of helping to spread the virus to the far reaches of the country, thus compounding or even defeating the purpose of the so-called deportation.

It is constitutionally impossible to bar states from proceeding with the almajiri bussing measure. But they must be told that it makes little sense, despite their lean resources, and it is definitely not the solution to defeating the virus. It is a temporary measure of doubtful utility, not to say reasonableness.