After years of dedicated learning, graduates of traditional Qur’anic schools in Nigeria step into a world they are not quite prepared for.
Babagana Muhammad spent 14 years seeking religious knowledge. He started when he was five, around the same age children get enrolled in primary schools. Four years later, he transferred from the tsangaya (Qur’anic learning centre) in Gamboru Ngala to another one in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state. He finally graduated in 2009, having memorised the Qur’an.
Fourteen years. That’s roughly the same amount of time it takes to get a secondary-level education in the country when you start from scratch. Sometimes, he thinks of how different he may have turned out if he had attended a conventional school. He thinks of his childhood friends who did. Many of them are gainfully employed in the civil service. One has travelled to Egypt to further his education. One is a medical doctor. Another is an expatriate in Saudi Arabia.
Life has been tougher for Babagana, 30, because of the fewer job opportunities available to people in his shoes. He explained why when we met last September in the Tandari Custom area of Maiduguri at an uncompleted building close to his alma mater. The location serves as his office and provides shelter for some of his unmarried friends from the same school.
According to one estimate, about four of five out-of-school children in Nigeria are almajiris. Together, their population may be close to 10 million. But many of these children are technically not out of school. They only attend a different kind of school.
Almajiranci is an educational system that dates back to the 11th-century Kanem-Bornu Empire. The name is derived from the Arabic word “muhajirun,” which refers to a migrant. In essence, the almajiri is someone who leaves their house and travels to distant places in search of Islamic knowledge. The students learnt to read and write in ajami (a script derived from Arabic that is used to write Hausa and other African languages). They were highly respected. Originally, the almajiri system was funded by the state in addition to receiving support from common people. Almajiris gained vocational skills in between their classes and engaged in all sorts of trades and livelihoods. They were also engaged as teachers, judges, administrators, and clerks.
However, the support the schools attract, the relevance of the training, and the opportunities available to products of this system have shrunk over the years — a downhill journey beginning with the changes introduced by the British colonists.
The almajiri system still clings to life. Today, you would find the pupils gathered under trees, by a mosque, or in a classroom, holding wooden pens and slates, learning to read the Qur’an and committing it to memory. When they are not learning, many of the children roam the streets — usually clothed in dresses that have seen far too much sunlight, sometimes barefooted. You may have seen them up close, colourful bowls in hand. Sometimes, they bang on gates to ask for spare food and beg for alms wherever they might find it. “Allaro, allaro,” they cry as they knock, imploring kind-hearted neighbours to donate in the name of God.
Children end up in tsangayas for different reasons. Some are orphaned or raised by single parents who cannot afford to raise them properly. Some parents truly believe the almajiri system to be an excellent way to inculcate religious values and knowledge in their children. Likewise, to some extent, many believe the formal education system has a corrupting influence. But the most common motivation is poverty.
“When some people get better financially, they withdraw their children from the school,” observed Babagana. Well-to-do families often enrol their children in Islamiyyahs alongside Western schools, or they invite scholars to train them at home.
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