Abandoned Street Boys Of Northern Nigeria

 

I want to tell you the story of the abandoned, homeless, and hungry urchins (Almajiri System) of Northern Nigeria. It is no longer news that poverty, hunger, diseases, maladministration, bribery and corruption, insurgency, unemployment, underdevelopment and high mortality rates are synonymous with Nigeria. As a failed-State, she has virtually nothing on ground to chart a course of survival for her citizens. One may not exactly know how, when, and why the Almajiri System came into existence. It is possible that it came into existence when a religion or culture which indoctrinated its followers and adherents to have many wives but without any definite recipe for firm and attested sources of income for the sustenance of fhe large families, began. Considering the reasons adduced to the proliferation of the Almajiri System (homeless and hungry street roaming male children), there is a school of thought which said that the Almajiri System is not a mere accident. Rather, it is a calculated strategy of having a plenitude of ready-to-die boys who can voluntarily go to war for their people without the least hesitation, to subjugate other ethnic groups of Nigeria. It is believed that an urchin who has no home, education, clothes, food, and parental care, will immediately accept the option of military enlistment with alacrity. He has nothing to lose, after all. He is sure of food and shelter, at least. A male child of 2-3 years old whose parents or guardian or caregivers mercilessly drove away from their house to a very far place does not see any danger in war and death. He is more sure of survival by becoming a child soldier for his ethnic group or a salary-earning terrorist than roaming the endless streets daily in hunger and diseases. His foremost need is food and shelter. He does not bathe always! He bathes probably once in a forthnight. His teeth are dirty and brittle-brown in colour. Who will teach him how to brush it? His hair is utterly disheveled and unkempt. His head is a paradise for pestiferous lice. Lack of hygiene makes him to have skin diseases such as excema and ringworm, just to mention a few. He does not go to the barbing saloon regularly like other children living with their parents. His clothes are torn into shreds as if he had a combat with a lion; and they are most times stitched, over-sized or under-sized since they were given to him by people who had worn them before. An urchin's pair of shoes, whether covered or uncovered, are usually regularly mended by roadside cobblers. In many cases, one leg of the shoe is entirely different from the other both in size and colour. Yet, their parents are living somewhere in the same region or country breeding other children to join those ones already roaming on the streets under extreme cold harmattan and semi-sahel Sahara hot weather conditions. The street urchins always have their plastic plates in their hands wherever they go. They move in groups of three, four, five and above. They do not speak English Language because they mock and spurn Western Education. Neither do they understand the popular pidgeon or adulterated English Language spoken widely in many African countries. They speak Hausa Language only. An urchin studies Arabic Language only. How on Earth can a child survive in this competitive life without acquiring Western education? How useful and profitable is the knowledge of Arabic Language to a modern boy and girl? How many industries and offices in the whole world will employ a boy or girl with Arabic Language certificate? How does the knowledge of Arabic Language accelerate the technological advancement and wellbeing of the world? In the Almajiri setting, the brainwashed parents always ensure that the abandoned children do not live in the same neighbourhoods, communities, towns, or States with them. That is why parents living in State A send their abandoned little sons to State Z, and abandon them there under the custodian of an Arabic teacher. Parents who live in States B and C will send their own little sons to States Y and X respectively. The parents usually give their home addresses and biodata to the custodians or so-callled guardians of the boys in case of any emergency, or even death. The reason for sending those little boys to very far places is that it is deemed extremely abnormal or morally wrong for parents to see their naked or rag-taged sons begging for food on the streets close to their abodes. The hungry urchins are typical examples of abandoned male children whom their parents and families do not care a hoot about their upkeep, sustenance and training. While their biological parents are still alive and producing more children, their male children are scattered everywhere begging for food from house to house to survive. The African tradition places much importance on male babies for the continuity of their family names. In sharp contrast, more than 90% of parents in Northern Nigeria, exclusive of the elite class, see the development of male children as an up-the-hill-task which should be avoided at all cost. Majority of parents in Northern Nigeria (exclusive of the elite class) feel very uncomfortable and encumbered seeing their biological sons around them. Every morning, the hungry urchins of Northern Nigeria, like an innumerable army of locusts on rampage in a lush-green corn field, will flood the streets of all towns and cities of Northern Nigeria with plastic plates in their hands. They move to targeted road-side restaurants where the not-too-rich people come to have their breakfasts. Upon reaching the designated eating points, they form a straight line and draw very closer to the people who are eating their food so that they could be seen and given some food to eat. They boldly stand in front of them; less than 36 inches distance away from those who are eating, and begin to look straight into their eyes, hands, mouths and plates of food. They yawn ceaselessly with their mouths wide opened at 360 degrees to send signals to those eating food that they should remember them. Those travellers who are new to the North do not like these children to stand very close to them looking straight into their mouths when they are eating their food. Some new travellers usually get pissed off when the abandoned children surround them so closely when they are eating! Some customers are considerate and kind, whereas others are not. Many customers neglect the hungry urchins because they know too well that their parents are alive somewhere producing other siblings who will join the present ones in the nearest future. Some male parents have two, three, four, and five little male children from different wives that are sent out of their houses to face harsh standard of living in consonance to stupid tradition handed down to them by their illusioned parents. The homeless little urchins are vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. They are helplessly exposed to malaria disease transmitting vectors and waterborne diseases. They are vulnerable to infections too. In the places where they live and study Arabic Language, over 140 boys use one bathtoom and one rest room. Cholera and other epidemics are common occurrences which characterize the Almajiri System of living. They have no accesss to healthcare delivery services. They are easily lured into terrorist, insurgent and banditry activities. In many cases, they die! They go to the restaurants every morning, afternoon, and night. Any food given to anyone of them is shared amongst all. They love one another so much. They usually eat with their dirty bare hands without washing them. They hardly eat with spoons, table knives and folks. They lick up the plates with their tongues if the plate has a flat shape. Every delicacy is sweet and acceptable to them. They do not ever reject any food. In many cases, the food in the plate or cooking pot falls to the ground when they are scrambling for it. Yet, they will still pick it up and barely remove the sand and eat the food mixed with sand. If they see an empty bottle or plastic container of Coca Cola, Fanta, or Malt etc, they will carefully empty it out by putting the mouth of the bottle or plastic container into a plate, and begin to hit the bottom of the bottle or plastic container with their palms so as to force the last drop of the liquid content to come out. After that, they will begin to dip their fingers into the plate turn by turn to lick the liquid content. On rare occasions, people buy full bottles of soft drinks for them, especially during religious or independence day festivities. When they come across a dustbin, they will carefully ransack the contents. Any left-over of food thrown into the dustbin or waste basket shall be picked up and happily eaten even if such food left-over has been there for many days. When they find pineapples and water melons peels (the peels are called "bawo" in Hausa Language), in the dustbin, they will pick them up and begin to eat the remaining tiny parts of the fruits' peels almost to their outermost coverings. This is very real! It is not a metaphor, hyperbole or false exaggeration. Not only that, when the Almajiris find a piece of bread, biscuits, cooked yam, cooked potatoes etc fallen to the ground and marched by feet of people, they will still pick it up and eat. Inspite of all these afflictions, the urchins feel happy about their conditions. Neither can anybody convince them that the Almajiri System is a big shame to humanity. They ignorantly see their gory experiences as a necessary humiliating lifestyle occasioned by tradition and welcomed and imbibed by their forefathers in the centuries gone by. Their fathers were homeless street boys. So, they also are homeless street boys too like their fathers. By extension of that faceless tradition, their own children and great grand children will be like them too. The religions and traditions which people accept and embrace and practise make or mar them! They form their thoughts, actions and lifestyles. Their thoughts and actions and lifestyles in turn cause their advancement or retrogression. According to infallible records, about 251 million children are out of school globally. Out of this number, 163 million are from Africa. Nigeria is ranked second to Pakistan with 18.3 million out of school children. The Nasarawa Mirror said that Nigeria has over 30 million Almajiris (abandoned little boys) roaming the streets of Northern Nigeria daily. During the Inaugural Regional Conference On Population Dynamics organized by the Nigerian Population Commission (NPC) in Lafia, Niger State, Dr. Mohammed Sani Idris reiterated that over 30 million children (boys of less than 10 years old) are roaming the streets of Northern Nigeria. This evil trend has been in existence for centuries without any hope of eradication in sight. Parents and guardians always seem to forget that an uneducated child will become a liability and thorn in the flesh of their parents and the nation in future. Male child abandonment is the highway to terrorism, insurgency, banditry, armed robbery, arsonry, kidnappings, arbitrary killings, vandalism, hooliganism, incendiarism, restiveness and hard drug trafficking etc. The Almajiri System of living did not start by accident. It has its clandestine aims and objectives well known to all and sundry in the Northern Nigeria. It is a calculated way of having a large number of young boys ready to be enlisted in their ethnic army to fight jihad wars and other wars for the selfish interests of the Northern Nigerian emirates and oligarchies and their descendants who use the vast majority of the illiterate parents and their young boys as stooges and cannon fodders. The Almajiri System is, therefore, an unwholesome established strategy adopted by the Northern Nigerian emirates and oligarchies to maintain their hegemony, dominance, subjugation and forceful control over other federating units of Nigeria through warfare! In a desperate bid to achieve that goal, over 100,000,000 lttle boys have wasted their entire lives without formal Western education and died in illiteracy, abject poverty and diseases. They prefer Arabic Language studies to Western education and child development whereas the families of the emirs, oligarchies and politicians studied and are all studying in the best European and North American universities. Can you imagine that? The families of the elite class in Northern Nigeria do not, and cannot be a part and parcel of the abandoned little homeless and hungry urchins. So, Socrates was right when he said that the world hates truth and that the vast population of mankind lives and dies in ignorance and illusion. The United Kingdom's Coat of Arm reads,"Honi soit qui mail y pense." It means,"Shame to him who evil thinks." Shame to the tradition and human agents who callously made several millions of little young boys uneducated slaves because they intend to use them as child soldiers to fight and keep other ethnic nationalities of Nigeria under perpetual control. Shame to the modern slave masters of Nigeria. Share this with your friends and loved ones.