Promotes 10,000 teachers
By Bode Olagoke
Kano
More than three million Almajiris currently live in Kano state with the larger percentage of them migrating from Niger, Chad, North-east, North-west and other states of the federation, Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has revealed.
Ganduje, who made the disclosure during an interactive session with journalists recently in Kano, called on his colleagues across the country to do everything possible to prevent the migration of children of school age into the state.
He said his administration had introduced some core subjects like Mathematics, English and Social Studies into the Almajiri schools “so as to prepare the students for Common Entrance.”
He said, “We undertook a survey of the Almaijiri issue and we discovered that we have more than three million Almajiris in Kano state. But from our investigations, most of the Almajiris are not indigenes of Kano state; some are from Niger, some from Chad, some from other states, especially from the North-west and North-east.
“So, we have taken two steps, one to introduce an element of integration, since we don’t have enough money to take care of them by providing infrastructures. We don’t also have money to employ teachers because the out-of-school children are not equal to those in the classroom.
“What we have done is that we introduced some core subjects into the Almajiri schools, the Qur’anic schools because the Almajiri schools are in the Qur’anic schools. We introduced subjects like Mathematics, English and Social Studies for which after sometimes, they can be able to take Common Entrance Examination. That is one part.
“Another part is to convince our counterparts, our governors to prevent the migration of school children because we don’t have a law that will prevent any child from coming into Kano.
“Any child that comes as an Almajiri, we have an outfit that is taking them back to where they come from, though that is not a permanent solution. The permanent solution is for the state to have a law preventing the migration of school children.”
On what his administration had done to better the lives of teachers in the state, Ganduje said apart from the promotion of 10, 000 teachers who had been stagnant for 10 years, his leadership had also taken as priority, education infrastructure and training and re-training of teachers in the state.
“We have so many measures we have taken in education. On the promotion of teachers, we are very serious because for more than 10 years there was no promotion for teachers in the state.
“But recently, we promoted thousands of teachers and that is our great motivation for them and we constructed additional classrooms, teaching materials and training of teachers. But as I told you, that this is a very wide area that when the economy is bad, the first thing that will suffer is education, but with the community participation we are moving ahead.”
