Nigeria: Kano - Beggars On Rampage

Jaafar Jaafar, 26 July 2008, Kano

Source

According to census carried out by the Kano State Government in 2003, there are 1,486,000 beggars in Kano. This figure does not include the multitude of able -bodied men, women and their scrawny-looking children standing at junctions. Some are spotted with pathetic ailments like compound fracture that is deliberately left untreated to attract sympathy. The figure does not also include Down's syndrome patients in wheelbarrows, or others showing off their disfigured visages, or Alzheimer's disease patients being guided around town as tools for begging.

Those included in the 1.5million figure are the battalions of young almajirai (beggars) of kindergarten age who sleep openly in residential areas, roaming around the ancient city barefooted. They are often seen around cafeterias waiting for leftovers. Most of these children are students of the over 26,000 Qur'anic schools-cum-hostels doted around all the nooks and crannies of the state.

Despite the state government's healthcare programmes, in almost every hospital one visits in Kano, the same footage of downright poverty in the street is played out. The sight of people who can ill afford to buy what to eat or what to buy drugs to treat themselves is what greets a visitor. According to reports, under-5 mortality rate in Kano is still higher and maternal mortality is among the highest in the world.

In every neighbourhood and in every street within and outside the metropolis, these children, all of school age, get food by chanting shrill poems at the doorstep of every house, or in every busy market, traffic and bus station, or sometimes in front of private schools for the leftovers of children of the rich.

The menace of begging has become one of the most intractable problems successive administrations in the state have tried in vain to arrest. The sight of beggars everywhere in the street is the yardstick many people use to measure the intensity of poverty in the state.

The Shekarau administration in the state tried to address the problem by attempting to formalise the system through the building of hostels, feeding and giving the vulnerable children vocational training. But the question is how far reaching has this attempt been?

From official documents made available to Weekly Trust from the office of the special adviser on education, there are over 26,000 Tsangaya schools (beggar's schools) in the state, but so far, findings reveal, only 24 hostels have been built for them in the whole state.

Given the fact that development analysts identify illiteracy as the primary cause of poverty in the north, the Kano State government evolved a number of policies to improve the educational standard in the state. The already wide gap in student-teacher ratio is further widening just as the population increases by the day. The state government recently revealed that it had constructed about 150 new schools and employed more than 10,000 teachers but critics nevertheless pick holes in the state government's education policies, saying they are elitist in nature as it spends hundreds of millions to award overseas scholarships, the beneficiaries of which, critics say, come from rich families, or children of those in power.

The commissioner of Education, Alhaji Musa Salihu, recently told newsmen that Kano leads in schools congestion. And recently, the Coordinator, State Education Sector Project, Alhaji Danlami Garba, said that over seventy percent of teachers under basic education level are unqualified.

Findings further reveal that in many of the primary and secondary schools in the state, the student-teacher ratio is 120 to 1 and many schools are converted to hold two sessions in a day due to lack of classrooms.

Another factor that fuels the embers of poverty in Kano is failure by the state government to adopt the programmes and packages of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP). According to the Kano State coordinator of NAPEP, Barrister Zakari Wali, the state government does not cooperate in realizing the objectives of their poverty eradication policies.

He told Weekly Trust recently that NAPEP has refocused all its intervention programmes by placing more emphasis on partnership and support for state and Local Governments poverty eradication programmes. He noted that their programmes reflect the federal government's commitment to the fight against poverty, adding that their programmes act as incentives in developing both the public and private sector in the state.

Barrister Wali also stated that they have programmes that will help in curbing poverty in the state if they are given full cooperation by the tiers of government. "We have Multi Partner Matching Funds, Farmers Empowerment Programme, Capacity Acquisition Programme, Promise Keeper Programme, Keke-NAPEP, among others," he said.

The coordinator further explained that people do not benefit from almost all these programmes due to either lack of awareness or lack of government cooperation.

slumdog, the naija version

i had good memories of almajiris when i was growing up. their famous song is still ringing in my head
my mom used to pity them and give them left over food or anything else.
back then they were nice, just give them anything and they'd gladly accept and go away. i heard they are mean nowadays oh well maybe some new breed.

goodness me, why can't the govt do something to help this people.