Chukwuneta Oby
It’s difficult to read the news these days without one story or the other about the Almajirai jumping at you.
When they are not being rejected by one state and ‘shipped’ back to another, a truckload conveying them to ‘God knows where’ is being intercepted and turned back elsewhere!
Frankly, very few things have left a bad taste in my mouth like the undeserved reality being meted out to these kids especially by the very system that enabled their existence.
I call it A SHAME OF THE NORTH. I fail to wrap my head around the wisdom of ‘shipping’ CHILDREN back and forth. As if the times are not traumatic enough!
Why can’t a system that deems it okay to have that multitude of kids on the streets protect them when the times call for it?
A region consists of people with common geographical space, interests and goals. Therefore, these kids are not outsiders to the North. Rather than all that degrading inter-state ‘shipping.’
Find a common centre and accommodate them there. Then, cater to their basic needs, first until the Covid-19 ‘confusion’ rolls over.
I didn’t expect this level of UNFEELING (towards their own) from the North.
The lion’s share of the palliative measures from the Federal Government went to the North and this is still happening?
To think that someone is even talking about ‘school feeding’ children that are in their parents’ houses! Sometimes, it’s difficult not to wonder what life could have against a people to keep rewarding them with certain accursed elements as leaders! Please, expend those resources on these ones being this socially traumatised.
Dear northern governors,
Can you forthwith STOP with the ‘shipping’ flop? If the bad times caught them in your domain, they are YOUR RESPONSIBILITY! I am also putting forward what I call the ‘Almajiri challenge’ to every prominent northerner!
Look around you and pick up at least one almajiri. Take up their welfare and empowerment (education or skill acquisition) and see it to a satisfactory end. If every senator and house of reps. member from the North makes similar efforts towards the Almajirai found in their respective constituencies (at least), there will be none to ‘ship’ to ‘God knows where.’
When you play politics with everything, humanity suffers!
So sad when ‘small-mindedness’ is injected into everything including the lives of children. Some of them will become a deadly thorn on the skin of you and yours someday because of your INSENSITIVITY.
The other day, it was reported that as many as ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY of them being sent back to ‘God knows where’ in the North. Who sleeps easy at night with that multitude of children roaming the streets with begging bowls?
A friend shared her experiences in a northern state during their NYSC days. She said their ‘official duties’ were at the house of a political ‘big man’ and their job was to serve tea and bread (daily) to the Almajirai.
Frankly, most people in this clime have a warped understanding of charity. Some believe that the gateway to God’s good books is by handing out pittance to the less privileged.
But I want to make it clear that God has nothing to do with the pittance you would rather hand out to those you systemically helped to impoverish!
Real charity is doing what you are elected to do which is MAKING LIFE BETTER for your subjects. The trickling alms never addresses the situation. It just is a pity we do not learn our lessons the humble way until life reacts.
A collapsed health infrastructure is currently biting both the rich and have-nots thanks to Covid-19.
The social negligence of the impressionable and vulnerable sector is also coming home to roost what with the daily news about terrorism, robbery and kidnappings?
END
I will only remind us that justice is the greatest interests of both human beings and animals on earth. And the said justice is the ligament which binds civilized societies together.