Almajiri system poses socio-economic challenges to govt- Gombe gov
Chima Azubuike, Gombe
Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya, has said the Almajiri system portrays the level of child neglect which is induced by poverty.
Yahaya made this disclosure on Monday, during the commencement of Gombe State At Risk Children Project (ARC-P), alongside Maryam Uwais, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment and the launch of Gombe Security Traffic Environmental Personnel (G-STEP), at the Government House.
He bemoaned the challenges of Covid-19, owing to deportation, adding that it has also contributed to the growing number of Almajiri children without safety measures.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the issue with the deportation of thousands of Almajiri children from different states without any protective safeguards despite their multiple vulnerabilities.
“To add to this, our girl-child population are mostly exposed to street hawking, child labour and often end up in commercial domestic services rather than pursuit of formal education in a bit to provide livelihood to their families. This exposes them to sexual exploitation and various degrees of gender-based violence.
“Other categories of vulnerable children whose plight still remain of great concern to governments include drug and substance users, child hawkers and labourer’s and a growing population of unemployed young adults. These young people often become easy targets for recruitment into armed groups including violent religious extremism and insurgency.”
While enumerating the effort of his administration in mopping out of school children, the governor stressed that out of 700,000 over 300,000 have been returned to school.
“So far, we have mopped up over 300,000 out-of-school children and returned them back to classrooms.
“Similarly, we have established 290 girl-child non-formal learning centres across all the LGAs and enrolled about 47,126 girl-child. Our girl-child skills acquisition programme has seen us training over 3,000 girls on beads making, bakery and cosmetology and provided them with starter packs to enable them engage in decent means of livelihood,” Yahaya added
