•The children intercepted in Abuja show we have to review the almajiri system
The exploitation of children and teen boys has been a scourge of Nigerian society. It has been even more so in the last decade. The interception on January 6 of a vehicle conveying 59 children across the north only pays credence to this fact.
According to the report, the 59 children ranged between four and 12 years old. The officer who led the interception at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, said they were being ferried from the city of Kano to Nasarawa State. The driver of the van with vehicle number KMC 2832 CJ was Ali Ibrahim, and his assistant was Alhassan Ibrahim. But the kingpin was Idris Usman who resides in Nasarawa. They have been arrested.
This is not the first time that arrests of this sort have been made. And not just in travels across the north. In the south, vehicles have been intercepted coming all the way from the north, and they were well into either the southwest or the southeast. The arrests have not thwarted such ambitions.
The report did not disclose why Usman had arranged moving 59 children from the core north city of Kano all the way to Nasarawa in the north central. It was quite a journey, but the police, we expect, will investigate the motives and make them known to the public. All we know so far is that the 59 did not belong to one family but different families in Kano.
We still need some questions addressed. One, how did he, Usman, spot and gather the children? What was the purpose of taking them away from their roots and carrying them faraway to a place they probably had never been and where they probably had no blood ties? Did the parents know about this mission, and if they did, what was the evidence of consent if, that is, there was any?
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It is intriguing that the vehicle had moved many miles and through quite a few states without either detection or interception. Abuja is just next door to Nasarawa, and Usman and his plot was a hair’s breadth away from success. It is therefore kudos to Deputy Superintendent Sarki Umar and his team for saving scores of apparently impressionable and, we daresay, helpless children.
Ordinarily, such children between four and 12 should be in school. They should be learning how to improve their minds and build their characters in a formal institution. But apparently, they were not. They draw attention to the failings of the almajiri system that has created two social problems. One, they have separated children, especially boys, from their parents, and handed them as wards to teachers, who are at the mercy of their whims and the wards at the mallams’ own mercy. Two, they are cut off from a society of social responsibility and meaningful engagement.
What this means is that the teachers, known as mallams, can exploit their positions for selfish purposes. Hence the investigations are necessary.
Children of that age bracket were exploited to protest hunger last year, even though they were not engaged in the economic life of the country, and their stake for decades had been as beggars who lived on the speculative generosity of their providers.
In this era of banditry, kidnapping and killings, such impressionable young serve as recruiting boom for the hoodlums. This is a dangerous trend that is providing ready fuel for cynical men who see banditry as a path to prosperity while many families mourn, fear and run from ruin.
