Education in Northern Nigeria

RAG-CLAD boys, proffering plastic bowls and calling out for cash, line the streets of most big cities in Nigeria’s Muslim north. But they are not street kids. These are almajiri children, students of Islamic schools who have been sent from their homes to learn their religion. Almajiri means “immigrant”, signifying that the children come from far and wide to imbibe Islamic values.

In Yola, capital of the north-eastern state of Adamawa, a 12-year-old called Abdul says he was sent by his parents to one such school two years ago and has not seen them since. Early in the morning and at night, he joins more than 100 other students in a shabby hut to recite verses of the Koran. The rest of the day he spends on the street begging for scraps, which he takes back to his mallam, the teacher now responsible for him

Religious education has a long history in northern Nigeria and in the neighbouring Muslim countries of Niger and Chad. The children of the elite used to pass through almajiri schools, which were once supervised by Nigeria’s northern emirates. But the system which functioned well before colonialism is now broken.

Today these institutions are unregulated and only the poorest enroll in them. Too often, mallams are untrained and incapable of providing a decent level of religious, let alone secular, education. Instead, they milk their pupils for cash. The government estimates that there are 9m almajiri children like Abdul in Nigeria. Some are as young as four when they are sent away from home.