[size=14pt]Jonathan: Basic Education for Almajiri ’ll Improve Devt[/size]
From Ahamefula Ogbu in Abuja, 12.29.2010

President Goodluck  Jonathan has said the curriculum of the Almajiri educational system would be made to include basic education to empower them to play the needed roles in the development of the country.

He said the addition of basic western education to the curriculum of the Almajiri school would better assist in the skills development and enhancement of the competences of children who pass through the system. Jonathan said this while receiving in audience the 20,000-member strong Almajiri Education Association in State House, Abuja, that he was impressed by their ability to recite the Koran in 20 different ways, which implies they were imbued with extraordinary abilities.

He therefore assured them that he would be present at the foundation laying ceremony of their education system in the third week of January 2011 in Sokoto, Sokoto State and charged them to always embrace peace in all their dealings.
According to him, “Our country is like the human body, you cannot develop one part and leave the other, that is why I believe the nation's resources should be spread to develop the entire country.”

We must train our young people if our nation must develop. Your presence here and your prayers encourages us to do more especially when we know that you are appreciative of our efforts to improve the Almajiri education system".
Speaking at the occasion, leader of the delegation, Sheik Gwani Lawi said they had been operation in the past 50 years though informally. He also stressed the need to correct the impression that the system was about using children for street begging, pointing out that it was about teaching and preaching core Islamic religious values usually from place to place.

http://www.thisdayonline.info/nview.php?id=190973

Thank God they have caught govt attention at last!

I hope this relationship is the beginning of measures to pull the almajiri system into the mainstream. It needs to be regulated and standardised, and as the President suggested, it must contain some Western education so its beneficiaries can be of use to society and do not end up without skills, destined to be beggars and robotic mass murderers.

Beaf:

Thank God they have caught govt attention at last!

I hope this relationship is the beginning of measures to pull the almajiri system into the mainstream. It needs to be regulated and standardised, and as the President suggested, it must contain some Western education so its beneficiaries can be of use to society and do not end up without skills, destined to be beggars and robotic mass murderers.

Is it the lack of education or the religion that makes them this?