What is happening to the Child Rights Act? The CRA was adopted in Nigeria for domestication of rights of the child in 2003, and has since come to embarrass the North by the name of the almajirism – the albatross that we all must stand up for, now.
Or put truly, we in the North have come to embarrass ourselves by abandoning the system to cater for itself and become the way it is. And because of that scar, the CRA has come to stay as a permanent, legal instrument that opts as the only workable thing. So face it.
There were child laws before. But Nigeria saw the efficacy of the CRA and adopted it in 2003. On its passage and eventual signing, we feared that it will be a document on the shelves, will not be used.
President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan accented to the CRA in 2013? so that states could also adopt. As at my last count, only three states in the North, one of them Jigawa, domesticated it.
For many other states, the CRA seems to have come to lye-in-state on the shelve of our libraries like the sad story of the Freedom of Information Act and few others. This is the unfortunate issue that we opt to sweep this week.
Lots of resources and energy were spent in the process of billing campaigns for passages, with lots of lobby, noise and even name calling. Once granted, we forget the need for it and take another issue. Many acts were signed since 1999 but almost all are silent at the moment. We can’t continue to pass laws that we can’t use.
We are reminded by this, again, in quick terms, that the legal problem with Nigeria is not lack of law. No. It is the opposite. It is the availability of laws, good laws. It is going to be, soon, that too many laws are confusing Nigeria’s child issue litigation.
It is just that we lack personal, social and political will to use the available law or the enforcement of same to drive change. We never meant the statements we make about the problems and the legal needs to address them, then. Did we? Our actions are all in opposite to our lips
The CRA came out of a long process and road of turmoil, not to talk of the bypass to its passage. It is a huge challenge to the north, obvious to the reality of its women and children. Men of genuine passion for the child worked day and nights, in odd hours
Yes back, someone once said that if you want to know the level of development of a people, look at their women and children. He was right. By that the North is the huge burden holding Nigeria to ransom. Let’s face it. We have used excuses in religions to frustrate a system that was so easy to sustain, with little efforts of families alone.
In the stead of facing the problems of children under the coveted concept of the almajiri, and women abuse in the covert of purdah, we did everything to cover-up the shameful denial of women rights and their abuse under the auspices of religion by condemning the almajiri system.
It appears that abuse of both groups which have been subjected to the excesses of the cruel patriarchy in the North was taking a devastating dimension. Some of us will never mention the conspiracy theory behind the actual problem, even though yours faithfully, mindful of the theory am also informed and directly associated with the issues concerning the almajiris.
My conviction implanted in my heart first time I saw a couple of the poor, halfnaked, dirty, shabby, hungry and thirsty boys tapping from the flow of fanta on the tar, coming from a lorry full of drinks which just fell on the roadside in the centre of Maiduguri.
Already, I was disturbed by the degree of negligence of the almajiri. Sleeping on roadside under the cold winter, hungry, or walking barefooted in the sand, or beaten by the rain such that the text of dirt on the cloth oozes terrible smell for no soap to wash them off, because no cloth to change to rinse this one.
We have repeatedly asked that anyone who wants to be fair to the system of the almajiri must first see it through the lens of its history in order to arrive the conviction that it is a simple case of negligence and abuse, and all of us are involved, all of us. We all carry the current identity of the almajiri any where we go, for almajiri is synonymous with the North. We are all almajiris.
No matter your socioeconomic status or your level of knowledge, exposure and orientation, if you are of the north, face it. Look at the almajiri eyes and say it. It is negligence and abuse. Face it.
Growing up as child, I schooled with the almajiris. We stand and sit together. We collect firewood and fetch water together. The only difference was that we lived with our parents. They buy our clothes and we go home to eat as they receive their donation of food from the neighbourhood or go to find more in rich houses if they wanted to eat’ beta’.
I want to say that the current state of almajiri roaming the streets and areas in hunger and on barefoot, is a creation of society itself, never the wilful engagement of the almajiri. Back then, almost all houses in the villages or the neighbourhoods in the urbans cooked food with the almajiri share, and was given in almost similar dishes.
At the fall of the sun, you would see troops of heads carrying meal dishes as dinner, finding their way to the tsangayas or the learning centres where the malams and the almajiri dwell. Community members buy clothes with the almajiri or those they adopted like sons, in mind. We shared clothes of same colour.
Our parents bought clothes for the almajiris where we studied. When anyone thought of something to give out, the tsangaya and the almajiri were the only calling points. This is to understand that the idea was based on goodwill, support of the communities.
Where is all that today? What happened thereafter? Thy said it was the structural adjustment and its consequences that changed all that, trying to blame it on the system. We argue it is not the system. It is those who managed the system to this point and those among subjects who wanted a reason for change from this ‘nonsense of a burden’.
I keep asking. When the system changed did you stop eating? They say not like before. We say who said you must give food to others when you don’t eat yourself? No body. The truth was that as some of us suffered from the offshoots of the system, many others benefitted much more. What have they done for the almajiri?
Issue is, all of us, poor and rich, decided to stop giving, to deny, to stop doing good, to denounce, to discriminate, to connive, to contempt, to hate, to threaten to chase away, the almajiri. When we stopped taking food to them, they come begging for food to eat.
We have not cooked enough or the food flask culture of self-centredness, stops us from cooking three square meals. No, we don’t have time to cook three times a day. We are working family. Mum and dad at work. Children at school.
Good reasons. It is either no one to cook or no one to cook for. No, we can’t afford to. Alhamdulillah. But, again, no. It is just a new culture of denied giving food. You will find some of the almajiris roaming the whole area and after finding nothing, they laze their hungry bodies on the walls of our houses like the sick that they are.
How many of us can take time to sit by their side, ask them, talk to them, and if there is gari in the house or you can afford, please help. Why is this difficult for a Muslim? But how many can do this. There are.
But what is the percentage of such persons in the house, the family, the neighbourhood or the community? What this means is that it is the majority culture that is dominant and it is the dominant culture that is predominant. Those who oppose us and the CRA for reasons of child rebellion are actually overruled by their children already.
They fear those kids who are almost criminals to the core. They are their children’s replica even as parents, criminals to the core. It is such criminals that take in the excuse that if the CRA is passed, Islamic values they live nothing of, will be in trouble and there will be breakdown of order in Muslim homes. It is all lies.
Their motive is to get lobbied to be a head of the programmes. when they know they can’t get anything to do with the almajiri, they will do anything to destroy any efforts. They live on exploiting every opportunity and by cheating even grave dwellers
Our dominant culture stopped/stops many from doing human good and on many occasions on purpose. Many of us can’t even think of doing anything good like giving someone food, even on their own. They must do what the dominant bastard culture does or refuses.
You cannot behave differently. You must not be a rebel to the satans that be. You risk much. They are not leaders in the community but they own it to do what they want even if the devil will be involved.
They get punished, intimidated, harass and sanctioned for their good efforts. It is ok. Pleasing God is a number of millions better than pleasing an evil.
So if you can’t give almajiri garri to ease their hunger, be sure you cant even speak for them. And writing for them is a taboo that can be as dangerous as fighting ISIS. What more of suggesting, making, supporting, enforcing laws that can help arrest some offenders or abusers of minors and the weak.
If these threats stop us, what happens to us in the mid of the spoil that we think is only about others and can only consume them. Sad. Even those who counter this by their notable phrase that the negligence is dangerous and, ‘it is a time sitting bomb’ only do so on the lips. They hardly do something not even in the minutest way.
And it seems this dominant agenda also works to ensuring our laws don’t serve their purposes and remain in name only. This is, perhaps, reason the eventual passage was allowed. It is like allow them to get away with it. It will not serve any purpose. And this is not only with the elite and those in government. It is topdown and horizontal. I meet many of them, all over.
Long time we understood their fear. They feared the law was set to give too much power to set kids in disobedience and delinquency against their own parents. Or punish parents before their parents and that will make them rude and arrogant. They are right.
That was why the law allows for domestication. Each state was to review it in comparison with its existing laws, values and norms and see what it can allow or remove. This was to be by appointees of the state by the state and I see why this is an issue still yet.
But then, of course, parents who shirk their responsibilities to their kids, refusing to cater for their needs, holding them from formal school, or refusing to pay school fees must be held to the court, especially after the process-checks and they are found wanting. This one of the ways we hope the law will enforce parenting duties and obligations.
The CRA has already informed many changes even in states where it is not passed. The attempt at integrating the tsangaya system into formal education, the different initiatives taken in that regards by individuals and organisations, the renewed orientation of the tsangaya malams about the problems.
Or the media actions like the documentary yours faithfully was opportune to spear for the Action Aids and Fahimta Women, are some of the many actions and efforts that responded to the issues the CRA raised.
Even the almajiris must have fees and feeding allowances that can take care of the kids who must be of age and their registered and certified Malam. I don’t see any problem with those redresses. Yours faithfully was a member of a Committee of Citizens Concerned for the CRA in Borno State.
We were passionate about that because as locals we were directly involved or affected by the problem-milite against women and children, not just in Borno but across the North. The trends were disturbing. And as we cry to curb Boko Haram, we must do this to get the kids intact.
Thanks to the FGN/GTZ Multi-Sectoral Women Economic, Political and Legal Development. For the four years of involvement in different programmes and in different roles of consultancy, it was like we were actually trained in the areas seeking a better life for our kids and their mothers.
The enemies of the CRA and the solutions of northern problems are many, in impossible places, surprising sometimes they are even among you. The logs in the wheel of progress of society cannot even be imagined. It is even true that some of us were actually working against the tide for change. It is still true and will ever be the sad reality of Nigeria’s development story. Sad.
I don’t know exactly what is happening Borno now with regards to the CRA? But I know that the challenges still remain. Its enemies are living and haven’t changed in attitudes and in hearts.
Back then, just at the level of campaign for public support and different media appearances for the Act, our faces were marked and later a fatwa was passed against us that we were trying to incite and set wives against their husbands and children against their parents.
Shortly after, yours faithfully left town. The news that followed was not good. Colleagues in the project we left behind were subjected to lots of monitoring and checks. The whole project died and the ideas of the CRA campaign plan died with the project. Thank God, members are around, and that’s big time hope.
For so much remains. A lot has not been done, not even been thought yet. The enemies of the CRA are many and are not known. It is difficult to fight an enemy you don’t know. They are all over. But we hope that with little time, they will be outnumbered, out-voiced and outdone to get the entire North doing something for the almajiri.
I am not sure if the CRA is under process and at what stage in Borno and other states. But our brothers and sisters of likeminds must stand up to take the challenge to push for more stages to get the law home. With the progressive government in, and will be, in place, there will be a lot of compliments and support.
Meanwhile God will continue to bedevil the lives of those among us who eat NGO and Government money ordained for the almajiri projects and programmes and are full of hatred for the almajiri and the system.
They must stop working on projects they don’t believe in. Resign and quit. Be principled. This is the new trend now. The North has come of age. No more silent shortchanging the people.
You and I must point their type out but move do something more for these kids. Now. Please.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
