Former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has disclosed why he built the Almajiri schools in the northern part of Nigeria when he was still in power.
During the ex-president’s recent speech at the maiden Bayelsa State Education Summit in Bayelsa state, Jonathan started by saying when he was the Vice-president under Yaradua he was discussing with his technical assistant about the crisis in the north and they decided on how to tackle it.
He added that they went around the North and discussed with some clerics teaching some young girls and boys under a tree who was able to memorize the Quran as voluminous as it is which gave him the impression that they are intelligent and he then decided to help them attach western education to their knowledge to create better opportunities for them in the future.
According to the Janathan’s words, he said;
“When I was the Vice President I was discussing with one of my Technical Assistant from Anambra State about the crisis in the North and said we must frame how we will tackle it. Some group of young boys appears not to have future and we cannot allow the system to remain like that so that we don’t have crisis tomorrow.
“We went around the North, discussed with the clerics who teach the boys under trees and makeshift buildings, we also discussed with the emirs and so on. We identified a group of boys and they are Muslims, and most Muslims when you understand the Koran is like you are more than a professor of law and through the Almajiri programme, they understand the Koran and you cannot underrate them.
“Some of them can even memorize the Koran as voluminous as the Koran is, and for someone to memorize the Koran and you say that person is not educated, you are not telling the truth.
“They (Almajiris) felt that they were educated but the society still reject them that even their local government council cannot employ them even as messengers because they don’t have any element of Western education attached to the Koranic education.
“That is why the federal government said we must assist the states, that these young people must be encouraged to study Islamic education but in addition to the Islamic education we are not going to remove anything from it, they should also take some parts of Western education so that when they finished at that level they can go on to study other things like Engineering, Medicine, etc, because you cannot convince an educated person to do certain things and without education, you cannot manage the security of this country. That was what motivated us to go into Almajiri education.”
