By PAUL ORUDE, Bauchi

The Federal government has expressed its willingness to partner with northern governors to ensure that children are given a smooth transition from the Almajiri system to formal education.

This was disclosed by the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Hajiya Mariam Uwais on Sunday in Gombe, during a meeting with traditional rulers, community leaders and stakeholders on Tsangaya education and out of School Children in Gombe.

Uwais said the initial plan was to ensure that proper data was generated so that the children would be kept in a school environment for about six to nine months.

She said the children will be given intense basic education and skills to enable them fit into the new perspective, which will prepare them for the classroom and formal school system.

The Special Adviser said the children will learn literacy ,numeracy and entrepreneurship and vocational education.

Uwais said that those who are a bit older and may want to go into trade and other vocations will also be trained to do that.

She said taking care of such Schools is the responsibility of the State Governments but the Federal Government is willing to assist in order to give these children a brighter future.

Uwais urged traditional and community leaders to assist towards the success of the programme for the development of the country

The State Programme Coordinator of Better Education and Service Delivery for All, BESDA, Dr Abdullahi Bappah Ahmed Garkuwa explained that not all children on the streets begging are almajiri.

Garkuwa said research has shown that over 70 percent of people begging are not almajiri or pupils learning, recitating and memorising of Quran.

The BESDA Coordinator said Tsangaya Education is an institution of itself that only needs genuine support to succeed.

He said with the support of Gombe State Governor over 200,000 out of School children have returned to classrooms under BESDA programme.

Garkuwa stressed the importance of the programme which will improve the living standard of young one.

He advised all stakeholders to support governmenton its laudable programmes.

Some of the stakeholders that spoke at the occasion include Dr Muhammad Mujitaba Abdulkadir Secretary of Council of tsangaya schools in Nigeria and Islamic Scholar Sheikh Sheriff Ibrahim of Saleh tsangaya schools.

Dr Ahmed Awwal Adam Assudaniy said government can give little support to Tsangaya schools and make it a model so that the schools can produce well learned pupils.

He said tsangaya Schools need toilets, feeding and accommodation.

“We have wrote over 15 articles to the Federal Government on almajiri Education,” Dr Ahmad said, saying the team they established visited different tsangaya schools across the world and saw the kinds of support given to tsangaya schools in Morocco,Sudan, Pakistan, Bangaladeshi, Malaysia and many others.

He explained that presently they have established a model tsangaya schools with Hospital and vocational centers.

The scholars then urged Government to support tsangaya Quranic education for the development of the country. (Daily Sun)

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