By Abba Dukawa
Street begging in Nigeria cuts across gender, tribes and age groups, with young children and babies in this ignoble trade. Street Begging is seen as a new form of slavery, as stories abound of organized gangs sometimes forcing vulnerable children and women into begging. Even though some people relate street begging to Muslims or a certain tribe. There is no other religion or moral system which teach humans the ways to preserve their integrity, morality and honour as much as Islam does.
In Islam, the future of the community and its honour and integrity are important; similarly, the honour of one’s self is important and must absolutely be preserved. In Islam, each Muslim is responsible to preserve that valuable trust. So, in order to preserve that trust, people are shown all the ways of virtue and are commanded to abstain from evil. Islam commands and encourages working and views it as a high virtue; it forbids and disapproves laziness and begging. Thus street begging and other forms of begging have serious implications and consequences for big towns and cities. Considered to be economically unproductive they are also believed to constitute a threat to national security.
The increasing population of beggars in most Nigerian cities and towns is becoming alarming with different categories of beggars at road junctions, markets places, motor parks, religious worship centres and so on. In fact, religiously, begging in whatever form Is wrong. However, begging, which impairs human honour and virtue, shatters personality and leads to the exploitation of benevolent people’s pure feelings, is regarded as an ugly act.
Now, the Kano state government has outlawed street begging in the state which is a welcome development but some people with cynical interest strongly criticised the Ganduje administration’s policy despite knowing each day where hundreds of thousands of school-age children roam about the streets begging.
Even those criticising the ban knowing its right time for the government to avert an impending catastrophe. After all, some of us are aware that there is nothing Islamic about the Almajiri system; it’s a mere product of the tradition of the sort in the north.
Even before it outlawed street begging, Ganduje’s administration has shown its political will by integrating the Almajiri system into its education policy. With this integration, the Almajiri schools are expected to include English and Arithmetic in their curriculum to enable the children to acquire the knowledge of the Holy Qur’an and other types of education, to be able to continue their education to secondary schools and beyond.
As it is, Ganduje government’s new policy seems to be a win-win for everyone as the children will have access to both Islamic and western education. This is good policy and there is a need for him to use all the executive power at his disposal to end this crime against children.
Similarly, to end this child abuse any Almajiri teacher that thinks he cannot cope with the new system has been asked to leave the state whereas the parents and guardians of such children will be taken to court to face the wrath of the law. In accordance with the UBEC act, every child by law is entitled to compulsory education of six years in primary school and three years of junior secondary education. But in another way, Ganduje makes it up to senior secondary school level with a promise to subsidised tertiary education. As the future of any society can only be guaranteed if it takes adequate care of its youthful population or future generations
To even those that seeing the outlawed in other ways knowing It is unfathomable that in this age and time when kids who should be in school or doing something positive with their lives are left to roam about the streets, all in the name of whatever social/cultural/religious or political nuances. The outlawed Almajiri begging toward this untoward social behaviour, on the need to put a stop to this practice.
An Islamic scholar and Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, faulted the position taken by some Islamic scholars as they rejected the position,
“We all have children. My children are with me. I feed them myself. You know the feeding of children is the responsibility or their parents. If there are orphans we know how our society is concerned and considerate to them and their condition of living. I was raised in my father’s home. I saw how orphans were also fed and being taken care of by our parents. First and foremost we all know that begging is not a religious activity or obligation. It is just something of a necessity, for somebody to say he doesn’t have anything to feed himself. And as I know how concerned the governor is, he will not come up with a policy that will harm or destroy the life of beggars. I am sure there is a plan in place on how to assist such kind of people.”
Calling on the scholars to understand that, if there is anything new or strange, then create a way of sitting to discuss it and see how to clear away the problem. “It is just an advice,” argued that, “Because there is no doubt that taking those children back to school is the right thing to do. And is beneficial to the Almajiris, their parents and the society at large. From the part of the government, as a leader, he has the responsibility of seeing how to make his people live well.”
People aware that unconfirmed reports have it that an average of 65 per cent of beggars from the northern part of the country flock into Lagos to beg every year, with the Federal Capital Territory battling similar statistics.
For long, every concerned Nigerian expresses worry that street begging is a worrisome socio-economic challenge, in addition to being a serious menace and liability on the Nigerian populace, as it takes a heavy toll on the lives of teenagers who either act as guide to beggars or even engage in the act themselves and therefore were out of school. Where these out of school children are prone to all kind of insecurity and also joint any criminals gangs as sort of fitted of survival as we have seen.
Whichever school of thought one belongs to, it is pertinent to support the recent action of the Kano state government of outlawed street begging. it is commonly known that street begging affects not only the geographical and social structure of urban areas, it also portrays the region in a bad light because some of the women who engage in street begging also reportedly practice prostitution on the side, thereby leading to unwanted pregnancies and the bearing of even more child street beggars, while some hoodlums even hide under the guise of begging to carry out evil/criminal deeds. These Almajiris are engaging in substance abuse.
With this outlawed street begging in Kano there is need for the Kano state government to strengthen extant laws on Quranic Schools registration and movement edit 1988. Even though the street begging prohibition law exists, it is not being enforced. At this juncture, laws that regulate the Almajiri school system must be enforced as required either.
Dukawa can be reached through: abbahydukawa@gmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
