The ‘Oliver Twist’ pupils at risk of Islamist recruiters
At the Goni Habib madrassa in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the hardest lesson takes place not in the classroom, but out in the streets. Every morning, lunchtime and evening, between gruelling hours of Koranic rote-learning, each pupil puts down his ancient quill pen, grabs a plastic bowl, and puts on a pleading expression.
Then they head out to beg for their keep – for an hour between lessons after dawn, three hours late morning, and two hours in the evening.
“The families who send their children here are very poor and there are too many for the school to feed them,” said Ousman Habib, who has more than 300 pupils aged five to 15 in his care. “Begging is the only way.”
Part boarding school, part Dickensian poor house, there are thousands of madrassas like Mr Habib’s all over northern Nigeria, offering a rudimentary Islamic education to millions of children who would otherwise get no schooling at all. Conditions, though, are as hard as anything in Oliver Twist. The children in Mr Habib’s care wear rags, not uniforms, and sleep dozens to a room in cell-like, earth-floored shacks.
The hours they spend begging for their keep also put them within the clutches of local Fagins – and in northern Nigeria, that means more than just pickpockets or robbers.
The madrassa beggars – known as almajiri – have also become prime recruitment targets for Boko Haram, whose terror campaign has claimed 20,000 lives in the last decade.
Many of the group’s original followers are thought to have been almajiri students, including Abubakr Shekau, the senior commander whose kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 brought Boko Haram to world attention. Mr Habib, 50, says his own madrassa has never been targeted, but others in the city have fallen under radical control. “My own children I keep a close eye on, but in some other madrassas, it’s a different story”, he said. “I have heard stories about Boko Haram taking over madrassas completely.”
Nigeria’s madrassas began as a means of educating the Muslim poor, for whom mainstream schooling was either unaffordable or unwanted. As with many madrassas in the Middle East and Asia, they focused almost entirely on Koranic Arabic and religious study, often with a hard-line, anti-western interpretation of Islam.
The practice of begging is part of a tradition of alms-giving, designed to foster public generosity to the pious. But in modern times, the sheer number of almajiri on the streets has become unsustainable. According to Nigerian government estimates, there are anything up to nine million almajiri in northern Nigeria, their numbers growing as the insurgency rages through the country. In many cities, they are viewed as just another tribe of troublesome street urchins.
Mr Habib, whose pupils include 20 children orphaned by the conflict, says they face open hostility as they tour Maiduguri with their begging bowls.
“People will shout at them or beat them,” he said. “I have lost count of the times my pupils have come home with arms or legs badly hurt – they’ve even been knocked unconscious.”
Street Child, a British charity working with youngsters in north-east Nigeria, said the number of child beggars had reached crisis point.
‘I have lost count of the times my pupils have come home with arms or legs badly hurt – they’ve even been knocked unconscious’
‘I teach my children that if anyone gives them money to do something bad, they should be suspicious’
Megan Lees-mccowan, programme head, said: “The risks are extremely grave for these children; insurgent groups in the conflict have resorted to using children as young as six or seven to carry out so-called ‘suicide’ attacks; others are recruited into armed groups or are sexually exploited.
“We’re working to support as many of these children as possible to get off the streets and into school.”
Supporters of the madrassa system claim their link to Boko Haram is overstated, pointing out that many of the movement’s senior figures – including the late Mohammed Yusuf, who founded the sect in Maiduguri in 2002 – had a secular education.
But Mr Habib believes the potential risks are obvious. For as little as 1,000 Naira (£2), he says, a Boko Haram agent can bribe a child into acting as a lookout or into planting a bomb.
“I teach my children that if anyone gives them money to do something bad, they should be suspicious,” he said. “But it would be better if these children weren’t on the streets at all. If the government gave them accommodation, I’d be much happier.” ♦ Two suicide bombers killed four Muslim worshippers in a mosque in Bama, 40 miles south-east of Maiduguri, on Saturday. The town is still being rebuilt after its virtual destruction by Boko Haram in 2014.