The almajiri child education has become one of the basic phenomena in Northern Nigeria. Parents send their children to Islamic boarding school which is almajiranci without knowing the menace they will face and not knowing how the children survive in their daily activities.
The issue of almajiri child education is critical because some parents just send their children to school without any parental of up-bringing which is the root cause of the problems of Northern Nigeria.
I am not against almajiri child education but looking at the current situation in the North and the way life has deteriorated. Many children have lost their lives and lots of are engaged in vicious activities that lead to destruction of the country
What baffles me the most is that you’ll see them running the street begging for food to eat and by looking at this aspect one may decide to give them work to do even if it’s illegal. But as long as they can get what to eat they’ll endeavour to do the work, and this can lead them to do anything they like in the society.
The first agent of socialisation is the family. The family is the first stage where children come to understand good or bad, right or wrong in the society. But reverse is the case because parents send their children to almajiri child education at their early age without considering the circumstances the children may face. This exposes the children to be influence by their peer groups because they lack parental up bringing at their first stage of life.
Also, looking at the menace of almajiri child education, the children have no one to feed or shelter them; they only depend on what the street can offer to them to survive. So this will lead them to doing anything illegal in the society for them to survive and cause mayhem in our country.
I so much love and revere children and I want them to become role models in our society but their parents failed in training them to be role models in the society because they abandoned them and they don’t care about the activities the children engage themselves in be it good or bad.
I always caution our parents to shun vices in dealing with their children because they’re the leaders of tomorrow and we have hope in them and believe that they are going to make this country great by the grace of the omnipresence. But we can only achieve this by giving the children proper parental of up-bringing right from the first agent of socialisation, which is the family.
Lastly, I am not saying almajiri child education is bad but looking at the way it is being handled in Northern Nigeria, one will go against it because it’s one of the greatest problems of Northern Nigeria today.
Rakiyatu Muhammad Yusuf, Department of Mass Communication, Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic,Bauchi, Bauchi state.
