•Ahmad Isa’s story is also about an Edo man who rescued him
It was news as an epiphany. When the northern youth are under scrutiny as the neglected segment of our youth population and as the flotsams that have coarsened into the bandits and murderers of our peace, Ahmad Isa breaks the mould.
He used to be an almajiri. Today he is the proud possessor of a second-class upper degree in Criminology and Security Studies from the Federal University at Dutse, Jigawa State. Isa hails from Kano.
“Years ago, as a Hausa/Fulani by origin, I arrived in Dutse with nothing but hope and a desire to learn the Qur’an,” Isa recalled. “To survive, I ran errands for people around my neighbourhood and worked in people’s homes rather than beg for what to eat before and after my Islamiyya school lessons,” he added.
Isa belonged to a familiar sight in the North. Boys who bear pans and rely on the beneficence of society for the next meal. They have no jobs, and they do not have any hopes of any form of career. They beg, bowls in hand with their tongues blaring out a medicant register as chants. They move from house to house, from lowly homes to mansions and even palaces.
They have no homes properly so called. They are brought up under the tutelage of their Islamic teachers or mallams. The mallams also have no resources and sometimes rely on these children for daily returns.
This practice that began in the Northeast as a worthy idea to indoctrinate children, especially boys, in the ways of the holy book, has been appropriated, as humans often do to sacred things, for personal profit. The consequence is that we have had generations of wasted youth in that part of the country.
“I was once a barefoot almajiri boy who roamed the streets of Dutse in search of Quranic education, now a proud university graduate serving my nation,” Isa said proudly.
This young man was rescued from a potential rut of a future not by a government policy, or a social and cultural organisation, or the Jigawa State’s warmth, or a federal agency. It was the kind heart of one man. Not a wealthy man but a regular Nigerian distinguished by his humanity.
“One day, when I was running errands, I ran into Mr. Alan Maiyaki, a civil servant, just transferred to Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, from Benin, the capital of Edo State,” the fresh graduate narrated.
“My benefactor (Maiyaki) enrolled me into a public primary school, then secondary school, paid for me to sit for JAMB, secured my admission into the Federal University Dutse, and paid all my fees from the beginning to end – up till now that I’m a graduate.”
This is an extraordinary act, rare in a nation being torn apart by ethno-regional prejudices. Maiyaki is a civil servant and his type is not what anyone would describe as the sort that would sponsor another man’s child through the university for at least four years. But then, he hails from Edo State, and might have thought it worthy to pay for a kindred poor from his home village in the Niger Delta.
Rather, he saw beyond tribe and tongue. He was living in Jigawa State when he met Isa, and he did not dismiss him as a hopeless urchin of the North. He saw a human like himself. He knew as a civil servant that he was a beneficiary of education. He was paying back. He did not pay back in Edo State. He paid back in Nigeria, anywhere even if that place was Jigawa State.
Maiyaki bucks the trend in the country where we want things for our tribes, be they appointment or facility, even though we may not even live in the place of birth. A man from Anambra State, for instance, who has thrived in Ondo all his life may want a facility or an appointment for his kinsman against the state where he has prospered, and vice versa. It is the tyranny of prejudice.
“What makes my story even more remarkable is not just my rise from the streets to academia, but the bond that made it possible – a Hausa/Fulani almajiri boy and my Niger Delta benefactor united by compassion and patriotism,” he said for emphasis.
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Maiyaki was not an offhand helper. He was involved in the success of his beneficiary. Hear Isa: “While at 100 level, my sponsor encouraged me to take my studies seriously as he assured me the sky would be my limit.”
Isa as an almajiri was at the beck and call of recruiters. Many like him are bandits today because they did not have any mentor or role model or helper like Maiyaki. We might muse on what trajectory lay ahead for Isa if he did not meet his benefactor. Many of them are cut off from their parents and home, and they have become mere followers of the cruel tide of time and society.
A few years ago, the almajiri formed a grim spectacle in the North as they were loaded onto trucks with no state willing to welcome them. They became pariahs in the land of their birth.
“Today, I wear the khaki uniform of the National Youth Service Corps in Zaria, Kaduna State, symbolising my transformation and triumph. I had my passing out parade from NYSC on Thursday, 18th December 2025, where I was given a certificate of national service,” he says with pride. His triumph is not Maiyaki’s or Isa’s alone. It is of kind hearts everywhere in the country, triumphs not beholden to biases.
We also note that Isa was a determined beneficiary. “Meanwhile, I learnt tailoring as a skill while schooling during my secondary school and undergraduate days—today, I’m a tailor with a shop in Hakimi Street in Dutse, with five apprentices learning under me.”
This is the spirit of a good Nigerian. He was not just a receptacle. Isa’s story makes it clear that the so-called northern rabble can be saved. If one man can save a boy, government policy can save millions. It begins with a will. The resources are not lacking to help them.
The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) holds meetings year after year, but it keeps up obsessions about the place of the North in the polity. It is high time it looked at the place of the poor in their midst.
