NEARLY 3 MILLION CHILDREN ROAM THE STREETS OF KANO – GOV. GANDUJE
Kano
State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, on Thursday observed that there are
about three million out of school children, roaming the streets of the
state, as Almajirai - pupils of Quranic schools converted to beggars.
He
noted however that most of such kids were found out to be from
neighboring states and some countries in West Africa. “What we
discovered from our survey is that many of these Almajiris come from the
Niger Republic, some from Chad, Northern Cameroon and some from other
states of the north-west”, he pointed out.
Speaking during the
Kaduna state Economic and Investment Summit, Governor Ganduje said a
recent survey carried out in the state established the number of the
Almajirai, saying this has now become a social and economic problem.
“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”, he emphasized.
Stressing that
the Almajiri syndrome is one of the serious problems worrying the
North-west geopolitical zone, he said 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”, Dr. Ganduje asserted.
“It will
be very important to have an integration commission which looks into the
development capacity of our institutions, because whatever we want to
do, if our institutions are not developed, then whatever we do may not
be actualized”, he maintained, highlighting the need to have a data bank
that would contain demographic and economic facts from all the Northern
states, for ease of planning and investment.
According to him,
“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”, the governor
hinted.
Salihu Tanko Yakasai
DG Media & Communications
Government House Kano
April 6, 2017.
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