November 23, 2024
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By Haruna Usman,  Birnin Kebbi
The term “Almajiri” means a person in search of knowledge, not the ones misunderstood as one who is dingy, unlettered and a nuisance in the soceity.
Almajiri system, dates back to stone age period where children of myraid ages sits under the three to receive knowledge from a scholar, then a group of “Almajiris” are not seen on the streets begging for alms, they are clean shaved, well kept and disciplined, soceital dynamics changed them to alms beggers on the streets due to their high number and lack of care.
The system is now abhorred, as it constitutes nuisance to day to day activities in Nigeria, they are on the roads, markets, ATM gallaries and constantly on the doorsteps of households, some of them with permanent deformities, deafs, dumps and leapers are all categories of Almajiri littering streets mostly in norther Nigeria.
As the present system defied all measures to curb almajiri system of begging,  an NGO in Kebbi State named almajiri support organisation took up the challenge,  Comrade Shehu Umar, the chief executive of the organisation, said his NGO is 20 years old,  since its inception, adding within  such period due to aggressive training of willing almajiris, no fewer than 7000 of them were reformed and gave up street begging, to add colour to what the NGO is doing, an adult and none formal literacy classes were established to complement the islamic knowledge being pursued by them, where no fewer than 200 streets begging almajiris acquired basic education, with some furthering to universities according to him.
In the skills acquisition unit of the organisation, Umar said that, almajiris receives training on shoe making, tailoring, welding works and driving as self sustaining jobs, he lamentated that, lack of funds for empowerments after giving them training is a factor militating against their drive to fully take off almajiris on the streets, even as they endured to continue it has not been easy all the way he said.
He explained further, that they have reached out to people and corporate bodies for funds or materials but the responses are low and discouraging but said that, some have assisted,  governmental organisations like Kebbi health contributory scheme (KECHEMA) under Jaafar Augie gave them some cash donations and enrolled some almajiris into the health insurance scheme to enable them access healthcare services.
Umar noted that, in the entire country no NGO operate on daily basis like his, hence the reason he is finding it very difficult to cope with the burden of catering for almajiris, but NLC, medical and health workers union, Nannm, emir of Argungu, the Wazirin Gwandu and many others have been on their side “we intend to educate and train the almajiris of all categories in order to bring out the human side of them and to define their lives to live beyong the filthy almijiris they are seen”.

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