Almajiri: The Boko Haram in the Northern Elite

By

Mustapha Shehu

almustash@yahoo.com

 

Reading the Leadership newspaper of Sunday August 9, I came across a picture of Boko Haram classrooms in Maiduguri. The classrooms were destroyed by the military bombardment of the enclave of the group’s slain leader, Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf. The picture was captioned: “Two of the classes in a school discovered in the Boko Haram enclave. Mathematics and English were last taught on 2/7/2009 as reflected on the Blackboard.” I juxtaposed this picture on the video of the debate I watched between the Boko Haram leader and an erudite Islamic scholar of the Izala sect, Ustaz Idris Abdulaziz and then began to wonder whether we, the northern elite, particularly our leaders, are not more ‘Boko Haram’ than the so called Boko Haram.

 

The translation of first part of the debate, on Boko (western education), is as follows:

 

Ustaz Idris: Is western education as taught in our modern schools Haram (forbidden) or Halal (not forbidden)?

 

Ustaz Yusuf: Islam looks at any form of knowledge in three ways. Any form of knowledge that conforms 100 percent to Islam is Halal and can even be Wajib (compulsory), any form that clashes with Islam is Haram and can even lead to Shirk (disbelief), any form that neither conforms with nor clashes with Islam, cannot be declared Haram or Halal.

 

Ustaz Idris: I want you to give me a categorical answer. Is Boko Haram or Halal?

 

Ustaz Yusuf: Western education as taught in the kinds of schools we have in Nigeria is Haram.

 

Ustaz Idris: Now give reasons from the Qur’an or Hadith that support your assertion.”

 

Ustaz Yusuf: (Reciting some verses of the Qur’an) There are aspects of western education as taught in our schools that make it Haram. Mixing of opposite sexes make it Haram, the importance of some non-Muslim days in the schools’ calendar also makes it Haram, Allah in the Qur’an said He created man from clay but its disputation by evolutionary theory makes it Haram, even bordering on Shirk and the claim in western education that there are nine planets also disputes what Allah says, thereby making it Haram.

 

From the debate, I concluded that when it comes to western education, Ustaz Yusuf was not as ‘Boko Haram’ as he was painted to be. In fact, I further concluded that all the opprobrium on Boko Haram was probably because they were getting recruits at a lightening speed and were challenging the status quo. Our political leaders, traditional rulers and other leeches among the clerics must have felt threatened. There is basically nothing new in saying Boko is Haram in the north. The perception that Boko is Haram has been with us since Boko came to the north through Christian missionaries. Northern Muslims then and some even now, feared the Christianization of their children if they enrolled them in Boko schools, hence the predominance of Almajiri schools. The products of these schools have often preached that Boko is Haram and in spite of this, decade after decade; the northern elite have allowed this system to flourish.

 

Driving through cities like Kano, Zaria, Maiduguri, Bauchi etc, given the millions of Almajirai I see, I feel that the northern elite, for denying these children the western education they need in the pursuit of their worldly affairs, are not only more ‘Boko Haram’ than Ustaz Yusuf, but are crassly wicked, selfish and criminal. We see these tattered and hungry Almajirai begging on our streets everyday and we don’t care. We pillage the treasury, marry beautiful and spoilt wives, and over pamper our children by sending them to expensive schools abroad and buying them expensive exotic cars, all at the expense of these Almajirai we invariably have made western education ‘Haram’ to. Yet we have the audacity to vilify Ustaz Yusuf and his so-called Boko Haram and to wipe them off the face of the earth in a genocidal manner, for just saying “western education is Haram.”

 

What even pissed me more with the northern elite and made me reach an incontrovertible conclusion that Ustaz Yusuf was some sort of a saint compared to us, particularly our leaders, was when along with about 2,000 Nigerian youths, I started a Facebook group called SUPPORT FOR SENATE BILL AGAINST CHILD DESTITUTION. The group aims at pushing for the passage of a senate bill that seeks to introduce primary education to younger Almajirai, train the older ones in some skills and curb begging among them with the aim of making them better members of society. The bill, sponsored by Senator Umaru Tafidan Argungu and thirty nine other senators, had passed second reading early last year, but is laying fallow in the senate.

 

In trying to re-awaken the bill, our group identified our traditional rulers, clerics and political or opinion leaders, as stakeholders in this bill. We thought they can bring pressure to bear in passing it. We taxed ourselves to fund our activities and started making contacts with these stakeholders to sensitize them on the pending bill. Of all the former Heads of State and Vice President from the north, only Alhaji Shehu Shagari and General Yakubu Gowon are yet to be contacted. None of the contacted leaders however, has shown any interest. We have contacted a score of emirs including the Sultan, but equally, none of them showed any interest. Of the clerics we have contacted, only Mallam Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, Ustaz Idris Abdulaziz and Mallam Bello Doma in Gombe showed any interest. We have contacted the northern governors’ forum through its chairman but in their last meeting, the only thing that bothered them was how to regulate preaching. Nothing about the Almajiri seemed important to them. Of the well known northern columnists, only Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, Sam Nda Isiah, Mohammed Al-Gazali and Mahmood Jega were not contacted, and of all those contacted, only Mallam Adamu Adamu wrote on the bill, albeit negatively. All banks with northern interests we have approached to erect billboards as part of their social responsibilities, urging support for the bill, did not want their brands associated with the Almajiri.

 

I then lost hope.

 

With this experience, there is hardly anything to convince me that we are better than the Ustaz Yusuf we so much love to vilify. I have also come to realize that we don’t need a soothsayer to predict to us that so long as we continue in keeping the Almajirai in despair, misery, neglect and without Boko education, so long shall we have the likes of Ustaz Yusuf. From my understanding of the creed of the Boko Haram, they do not seek to establish the Shari’ah system of governance in the whole country but only where they reside and this is the north. This is why they do not have cells in the south. By the time another Ustaz Yusuf, having learned from the mistakes and failures of the present Boko Haram comes to the scene, there probably wouldn’t be any Royal Highness or Honourable or Distinguished or Excellency or power broker or oil money to plunder. He would have been made to create what the Boko Haram terms “an egalitarian society free of sin” in the Muslim dominated areas of northern Nigeria, at the unbeknownst behest of the present northern elite. This is what we should know.