THE ORIGIN
The word
Almajiri is derived from the Arabic “Almuhajirun”, meaning an emigrant. It
usually refers to a person who migrates from the luxury of his home to other
places or to a popular teacher in the quest for Islamic knowledge. It is hinged
on the Islamic concept of migration which is widely practised especially when
acquisition of knowledge at home is either inconvenient or insufficient.
During the pre-colonial era, the
Almajiri education system, originally called the Tsangaya was established under
the Kanem-Borno Empire, one of the oldest ruling empires in the world extending
from the frontiers of northern Nigeria across the Chadian region up to the
borders of Libya. It was established as an organized and comprehensive system
of education for learning Islamic principles, values, jurisprudence and
theology. It was a replica of Islamic learning centres in many Muslim countries
such as the madrasah in Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt and Indonesia etc.
The system also produced the judges,
clerks, teachers etc. and layed an elaborate system of administration in
Northern Nigeria. They provided the colonial administration with the needed
staff. The first set of colonial staff in Northern Nigeria was provided by the
Almajiri schools and this went on for years. In fact, the Almajiri system was a
civilizing agent second to none. Before they were gradually replaced, phased
out & indeed abandoned.
Almajiri teachers and their pupils
also freely provided their community with Islamic Education, in addition to the
development of Ajami i.e. reading and writing in Arabic alphabets. Prof Fafunwa
mentions that there were 6000 Almajiri schools in Northern Nigeria through
which writing came to the North first before any other region. Based on this
system, which is founded upon the teachings of Qur’an and Hadith, the then
Northern Nigeria was largely educated with a complete way of life, governance,
customs, traditional craft, trade and even the mode of dressing. The chronicles
of the travellers said that the northern part of the territory was well
organised, people were in walled cities, were literate and devout, the southern
part was characterized by wars, savagery, superstitious butchery akin to
Conrad’s observations in his ‘Heart of Darkness‘.
Apart from being responsible for the
literacy of hundreds of millions of our children over a span of ten centuries,
More importantly, the almajiri system is the only one today known in the Muslim
World that has retained the reproduction of the Qur’an in writing direct from
memory. Without looking at any copy, an alaramma studiously writes the entire
Qur’an portion by portion, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, beginning with
all its consonants, then he returns to add all its vowels, then its fullstops
and commas, dilations and nunnation, and so many little things that vary from
page to page. He does all these without a single mistake and despite the
abundant minute differences in many verses or portions that appear similar. The
counterparts of our alarammas in the Middle and the Far East, people like
famous calligrapher Usman Taha of Syria who reproduced the most widely
circulated Qur’an today, do so amidst luxury accorded by petrodollars. Yet,
they can only place a copy of the Qur’an and copy from it one word after
another, not from their memory. Nigerian alaramma who reproduces it direct from
memory may not even be sure of his next meal but he is never bothered since he
is already used to such hardship from his early days as a balla, kolo,
tittibiri or gardi. That is how every indigenous Qur’an we come across in
Kasuwar Kurmi or elsewhere in Nigeria is written.
THE FALL OF THE ALMAJIRI EDUCATION
SYSTEM
In 1904, the British invaded and
colonized the northern Nigeria territories and took control of the state
treasury. They killed and disposed those emirs who resisted the foreign rule,
while those who were subjugated lost control of their territories and accepted
their new roles as mere traditional rulers used only for the indirect rule. The
British also refused to recognize the Almajiri education system as an important
education system and deliberately abolished its state funding arguing that,
they were mere religious schools. Boko, meaning western education was
introduced and funded instead.
Circumstantially all the learned
people who were at the helm of affairs in pre colonial north fell in one swoop
and were considered illiterate or uneducated, (at least to the government), in
the new status quo, making them not only unemployed but unqualified to be
employed despite being able to read and write. Islamic scholars who were
revered professionally for controlling the moral fibers of the society
gradually became neglected. An imam who may be the source of arbitration to the
people of his community was relegated only to delivering sermon once a week at
the local Friday mosque. The same imam is considered not qualified enough to
have a say in government or sit in the chambers of state House of Assembly to
deliberate on the laws and constitution of the state because he was considered
uneducated and illiterate.
With loss of support from the
government and the helpless Emirs, the Almajiri system thus collapsed like a
pile of cards. The responsibility of the Almajiri was then taken over by the
local scholars who deemed it a moral and religious duty to educate these pupils
for the sake of Allah. Although there was scarcity of funds and overwhelming
number of pupils to cater for, the system continued to flourish with the
support of the immediate community and begging was still not a norm instead
they resorted to odd menial jobs to make ends meet.
Disregard for the Almajiri system in
preference for western education ignited animosity and antagonism from the
Mallams, the pupils and the society at large. The case scenario is aworsen by
the belief that the western education (BOKO) was of Christian-European origin
and therefore anti-Islamic. It bred the fear that a child with western belief
will eventually lose his Islamic identity and embrace vices that negates the
values and principles of Islam such as alcoholism, fornication, semi naked
dressing, partying, abandoning the prayer, fasting, zakka etc. This predicament
is often reflected in the grievances vented out at those attending the western
schools as echoed in a popular Almajiri song “Dan makaranta bokoko, ba
karatu, ba sallah, sai yawan zagin mallam” meaning “oh students of
western education, you do not learn the Quran and you do not pray, except to be
mocking the mallam.”
Though this system has produced
prominent Islamic scholars of northern extraction like Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi,
Late Abubakar Gumi, Jaa`far Adam and Kala Rawi, Goni Habib, an octogenarian,
who has produced over 300 Qur`an memorisers and run schools across various
states in northern Nigeria, says the Tsangaya system as it is presently run is
a corruption of the original. Hear him;
“Almajiris, during our time about 60 years ago did not beg
and were held in high esteem in northern Nigeria, houses in the neighbourhood
bring food in calabash every day, we help our teacher on the farm, gather
firewood from the bush which we use to read at night, assist his wife with
domestic chores for food in return and no pupil is taxed as the teacher gets
his reward from Allah.”
He laments that at his age of 86, he
sometimes feels like weeping because the present crop of Tsangaya students
lacks the spirit of scholarship like endurance, morals, discipline and their
intellectual capacity is low.
The National Council for the Welfare
of Destitute (NCWD) puts the current population of the Almajirai at about 7
million and research shows that 6 out of 10 of them never find the way back
home. Many are lost through street violence, ritual murder, while others
through disease and hunger. With these, 7 million potential Scholars, judges,
accountants, engineers, doctors etc. waste away.
