Niger, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — In January 2018, Malam Na’ibi, a 47-year-old Gbagyi man from Niger State in northern Nigeria, started travelling with a plan. Malam Na’ibi, who owns an Almajiri school in Minna, the capital city of the state, decided to travel to the hometowns of each of the parents of his Almajirai to ask permission to enroll them in other schools providing Western education. Armed with nothing but an analogy, he tried to convince the parents. “I told them: we all have two hands. Your child is holding the knowledge of the Qur’an in his right hand. He’s meant to hold western knowledge in the left hand,” he says. “We, as Muslims, eat with only our right hand. Shall we then say because of that, we will cut off the left hand? No. Your child’s future prospects will be made bigger if both his hands are equipped.” His tour was mildly successful, as ten out of the parents granted their permission and let him enrol the students at nursery and primary schools, even though they were all a bit overgrown for their classes. They sent him the fees periodically. “It’s due to poverty. They did not have the means,” he tells Minority Africa. “But I knew that if somehow, they began to see it as a priority, as a necessity, they would make sacrifices in order to see them through school, that’s why I took the pains of visiting them all.” However, Malam Na’ibi was still left with 30 students whose parents were unable to enrol them in schools. As a man of modest means himself, he could not sponsor their education. So he started to teach them himself. On Thursdays and Fridays, which are the weekends of their Islamic schooling calendar, he gathers them around in front of a whiteboard and teaches them basic subjects like Maths and English. When Friday lessons became too hectic because of the Jummu’at prayers, he shifted it to Saturday. On the days he’s unable to teach them, his 16-year-old daughter, Maryam Na’ibi teaches them herself. She is a secondary school student, and is passionate about education, just like her father. She extended the schooling sessions to Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and twice a day: at dawn, and dusk, choosing times when they were not taking Qur’anic lessons. “Me, I just want to be able to speak the English language. I have never missed a class since we started. I always attend. I am from Rijau, and I hardly go home. But I want to speak English whenever I go home next. So I’m really taking this thing seriously,” Ibrahim (not real name), 16, says. He beckons to his friend who looks the same age as him. The friend approaches us. “I attend the classes too,” the friend says. “But I am more interested in money. So I am learning embroidery and cap weaving from inside town. At the end of the day, I have little time, that’s why I am not consistent with the classes.” When asked if he would take an opportunity to be enrolled in a school, Ibrahim’s friend nods without hesitation. Before colonisation, an orderly system of education existed in northern Nigeria, where parents sent their children to teachers in faraway cities to acquire Islamic knowledge. It was known as Almajiranci, and the student, Almajiri. The practice is done across the Muslim majority in West African communities. The state and emirs adequately funded it, alongside parents of the children, and other organised platforms, and this covered shelter, clothing, and feeding for the students. The system has since deteriorated after the British invasion and is not recognized as a regular schooling system. In 2018, a survey jointly conducted by the Nigerian government and UNICEF uncovered daunting figures of out-of-school children. The survey says over 69% of the figure comes from northern Nigeria; this amounts to around nine million children. It also says most of the constituents of this figure are Almajirai. A major criticism against the Almajiranci system – amongst others such as the absence of feeding, clothing, and security – is that although the students become well versed in Islamic matters, they are deprived of Western education and a grasp of basic English language. The system and how poorly it is being run has been criticized for serious issues such as being centers where children are vulnerable and sometimes subjected to physical torture and even sexual abuse. Malam Na’ibi’s home which houses over fifty Almajirai cyclically for 14 years is one of the many Almajiri schools struggling to find relevance in contemporary times. For all its criticism, Dr. Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman, an expert in the field of Almajiranci, who researched the system for six years, believes that a total abolishment of the system will only escalate the problem, not solve it.