Three Million Children Roam Streets Of Kano – Ganduje

AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano state has declared that there are about three million out of school children, roaming the streets of the state, as Almajirai – pupils of Qur’anic schools converted to beggars.
Ganduje, however, said that majority of the kids are from neighboring states and some West African countries.
According to him, “What we discovered from our survey is that many of these Almajirai come from Niger Republic, Chad, Northern Cameroon and some from other states of the north-west.”
Speaking during the Kaduna State Economic and Investment Summit, Ganduje said a recent survey carried out in the state established the number of the Almajirai, stressing that the development has become a social and economic problem.

He further said; “So, if we can come together and have a common synergy to introduce a common legislation, preventing the movement of school age children from one place to another, I think the states will find it very easy to address the problem of Almajiri syndrome.”
Ganduje said the Almajiri syndrome is one of the serious problems worrying the North-west geopolitical zone, adding that it was imperative for the seven states of the sub-region to identify the economic advantages they can use to move forward and tackle their common social problems.

He said: “These seven states should try, identify the economic advantages that we can lay our hands on as to move this region forward. And what are the social problems that we are having?

“This is the first time, since the inception of this democracy in 1999, where the seven governors (of the north-west zone) decided to come together to form a forum. We even went to the extent of employing a consultant who is giving us the green light on various issues on economic development.

“Let me start with the position of the North-west in Nigeria. We are the most populous geopolitical zone, constituting 25 percent of the population of Nigeria. With regards to land mass, we have 23 percent of the land mass in Nigeria. What we require now is the political will to come together and be fully integrated – socio-economic integration beyond paper integration, an integration that will bring development in terms of institutions and in terms of programmes that will improve the quality of lives of our people.
“Another issue is that we are individually conducting our educational programmes, if we come together to see how we can have different programmes in our university curriculum, it will help us specialized and we can even build universities that will specialize in the various programmes, thereby saving energy and resources for the development of our region.
“The potentials of the north-west are very obvious. The north-west has the highest water density in the whole of West Africa. The amount of water is such that they can feed the whole of West Africa and this is something that needs to be tapped,” Ganduje said.