Out-of-school children, security threat to Nigeria, says Lawan

Should the nation fail to curb the increase in the number of about 14 million out -of -school children, the current security challenges being experienced by the country may be aggravated.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, who raised this alarm yesterday, said the out-of-school children, is a big challenge facing the nation.

Lawan, who stated this in his concluding remarks on a motion on “the need to integrate almajiri education into modern system of education in Nigeria,” said the problem constitutes not only social, but security challenges to the country.
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“We all know that the out-of-school-children are at the moment a big problem to us as a country. They constitute not only social problems, but also security problems to some extent.

“Therefore, it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to ensure that they are enrolled in primary and secondary schools,” the Senate President said.

Sponsor of the motion, Senator Adamu Aliero (Kebbi Central), noted that over the years the federal government had made efforts to reduce the menace of street begging by introducing the Universal Primary Education (UPE) Scheme in 1976 and re-introduced the Universal Basic Education (UBE) in September, 1999.

The senator stated that the ‘almajiri’ happens to be one of the persons covered by the UBE Act 2004, for the purpose of provision of basic education.

Citing findings by the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Sen. Aliero said that “we have more than 14 million out-of-school children, most of them being ‘almajiri’ roaming the streets of our major cities in Nigeria begging for alms and food.”

The senator added that the Jonathan administration embarked on a laudable project by building ‘almajiri’ integrated model schools in which the children are enrolled and given both Islamic and Western education.

He lamented that currently, “some of the structures are either lying fallow or put into uses other than what they were originally intended for and some of the facilities in the ‘almajiri’ model schools are already decaying as they have never been put to use.”

Sen. Aliero recalled that two weeks ago, the Governor of Kano state, Abdullah Ganduje, announced the ban on street begging and launched the Basic Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA), a policy which penalizes parents or guardians of children caught begging on the streets.

He added that other states such as Nasarawa and Niger have since followed suit with the introduction of the Child Rights Protection Executive Order by the former and the setting up of a committee to fine -tune the modalities for the policy’s implementation by the latter.

Contributing to the debate, Senator Sabi Aliyu Abdullahi (APC/ Niger North) said the quest to address the problem of out-of-school children is one of the legislative agenda of the ninth Senate.

The lawmaker while x-raying the problems associated with out-of-school children said: “Within the context of the north, most of the out-of-school children are the ‘almajiris’ and I think that the fact that some states in the north are finally rising up to the occasion shows that this issue requires our attention and is long overdue.

“It is an abuse of the rights of these children, and of course, many of these children, when you have any engagement with them do not even know why they are brought to where you see them. These parents just take them and dump them on some of these malams, who in turn are also exploiting the children.”

Accordingly, the Senate in a three-point resolution called on the federal government to upgrade the existing ‘almajiri’ model schools and build more of such schools to increase the number of school enrolment, thereby reducing the number of out-of-school children on the streets.

It further urged the federal government to mandate its committee on basic and secondary education to come up with ways and means of collaborating with state governments on how to enrol the 14 million out- of- school children.

Similarly, it also charged the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to initiate a sensitization program specifically, on the issue of the ‘almajiri’ and its negative impacts on children in the society, especially in the northern part of Nigeria.